How I used my extra hour
when the clocks moved back
The clocks moved back by one hour in the UK last night. A good friend asked this morning how I was using my extra hour, and at that point, I was ashamed to admit that I’d whiled it away flicking through social media. I read an interesting article in the Guardian about the state of the Catholic Church, one in The Pool about women reclaiming the right not to be ambitious, and numerous Medium posts about how to improve my life.
But I had this nagging sensation at the back of my mind that I hadn’t used my extra hour for anything creative, anything useful.
In order to remedy that, I set about making roasted butternut squash and carrot soup, homemade bread, and the year’s first batch of mince pies. (Yes, I realise we’re not even in November yet, but something about the clocks moving and the cold weather just made me feel a tiny bit festive. I apologise.)
I felt like a bit of a domestic goddess. Just a tiny bit. Probably her left little finger. But my husband was happy with homemade fare and I thoroughly enjoyed making a mess in my kitchen.
Of course, this is displacement activity. I understand that.
Cooking and baking bread today has given me some justification for not writing. And I really need some serious justification with NaNoWriMo 2017 now only three days away.
I should be researching PTSD and voices and schizophrenia. I should be making notes about women working in the shipyards of Wallsend during the Second World War. I should be reading the poetry of Northumberland bard Barry MacSweeney. And most of all, I should be doing a chapter by chapter plot for my intended novel, Darkling Ford.
Instead, I messed around in my kitchen. Wot larks.
And then the news came through — while I’d been kneading dough and roasting vegetables, my friend had given birth to our baby. I’d missed the birth on social media but arrived in time to see the newborn take its first tentative steps into the world. No, not a prodigiously talented human child, but a newly-published anthology of stories — complete not with ten fingers and ten toes, but with a beautiful cover and its very own ISBN number.
It was the writing equivalent of having a surrogate mother for my child; I felt all the joys of motherhood without any of the pain. In fact, it was so easy that I am already contemplating having a second one next year. If I can talk my friend and fellow anthologists into it.
So huge thanks to Lisa Wilton, who asked what I was doing with my hour, unknowingly spurred me into unaccustomed culinary activity, and meanwhile went off and quietly laboured to produce our firstborn. The long-anticipated new addition has arrived just in time to fire up our veins for NaNoWriMo and make us believe we are serious and capable writers.
Hurrah for that extra hour!
