Stress

Five lockdown whinges

May 15, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

Lockdown: You know how everyone has up-days and down-days? And during this pandemic, they’re only too ready to tell you all about it? Today is my depression down-day. And yes, you’ve most likely read the same self-indulgent nonsense from a hundred other people, but it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.

These are my five reasons not to be cheerful. I share them hoping that by getting them off my chest, depression will lift. And if you recognise how yourself in these words, you’ll feel better too.

What’s the point in writing a book?

Since lockdown, every vaguely sentient being has decided it’s time they found that one book that supposedly lives inside us all. WTF! There’s already enough competition. If every actor, comic, singer or lead guitarist now thinks this is their moment to shine, what chance is there for a mid-table writer with a feisty new RomCom in the works?

Is my book historical fiction?

I’ve been working on ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’ for the best part of a year. I’m editing a story written pre-lockdown. People hang out together. they kiss. Love happens. At one point there’s a very messy three-way bedroom scene (not what you’re thinking). Do I tweak scenes to imply contact? What will the new normal (TM) look like? If I started over, would I write a very different story? Most of what I know is the comedy of interaction. Am I past my sell-by date?

Even without distractions, I’m not writing

I can no longer blame my sluggish pace on lunch invitations or meeting mates for coffee. Or shopping. I’m on furlough from my proper job, and that means eight weeks of time to write. I figured If I got up early, sat down at nine and worked through, I’d soon complete ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’. Instead, I’ve picked a perfectly good plot to pieces, and spent days staring at the same piece of dialogue. That’s when I’m not hoovering, baking bread, polishing mirrors, washing windows, ironing, sitting down for a cup of tea, watching a box set or reading the news … or Facebook … or Twitter. Long story short, even with zero distractions, targets whoosh past.

What if I lose my proper job?

I can’t be alone in letting this fear fill my every waking minute. How can anyone write when they might end up having nothing left to do but write?

When all of this started, we told ourselves lockdown might last two to three months. Now we’re looking at the rest of this year. Maybe longer. And how many companies can afford to pay their staff until then?

As any writer will tell you, books don’t buy you much in the way of a life. Unless you’re already rich and famous … and then they absolutely do.

People annoy me – even more now we can’t mix

Thursday at 8pm should be a time for communal joy. The first time our nation clapped for carers, I was moved. Genuinely. My cold dark heart thawed. By week eight, the magic is gone. There’s an element of: if you don’t clap, you hate nurses and deserve to die. The ageing homo who lives above, blasts Vera Lynn from his beat box while the students two doors down take a break from what sounds like a constant state of virtual pub quiz. And when I see politicians who only three months earlier were busy selling off ‘our NHS’ clap their money-grabbing hands, my head hammers.

Having shared my five-item list, a weight has lifted. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll knuckle back down and tidy the words back into pages and into chapters and then a book.

Be kind.

That’s really all we have.

Weight loss – simply the BEST

February 25, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

Have you ever stumbled upon a magazine called ‘Best’? You’ll find it in every low-grade supermarket next to the crossword puzzle books. They’re designed to sharpen the mind. ‘Best’ sets out to ruin it.

Reading ‘Best’ is like having your nasty aunty Pat round for tea. It’s sixty pages of fat-shaming, miracle diets and Meghan Markle bitchery, interspersed with motivational stories of women who lost weight by eating tar. Two dry heaves and a dizzy turn later, they’d lost a pound. There’s a problem page. Written by Vanessa Feltz. Who in their right mind takes advice from Vanessa Feltz?

‘Best’ is addictive. I have two settings. Worried for the world and craving cheese, and yet ‘Best’ has me convinced I’ll lose ten pounds in ten days by committing to their good sleep diet. You swig half a pint of Night Nurse before each meal. By the time desert arrives, you’re face-down in a plate of spaghetti.

Most mornings, the man in my mirror looks like something the dog slept on. My body isn’t a temple. It’s a phone … on emergency battery.

Lose weight … change everything

I know I should change my diet. Healthy eating involves more than an ability to refuse doughnuts. We’re talking serious lifestyle changes. Much as I’d like to fit 32-inch jeans, I’m not getting up two hours early each morning to turn a head of cauliflower into couscous for an exciting weekday supper.

I refuse to follow any diet plan where breakfast is two almonds and you get to lick an apple for lunch. You skip dinner to cry at photos of yourself aged 17 in Speedos.

I’ve tried a Fitbit. It was like having the bitchiest of gay best friends on my wrist. Most days, I spend my time counting down the hours until I’m allowed to eat again.

Meditation appealed. I loved being able to call lying down a lifestyle choice. I downloaded a class and put it on, before promptly falling asleep. At three in the morning, I woke starving and ate a whole bag of oven chips. Still frozen.

I’ve become an organ donor. It’s one way to make sure I get to wear slim-fit coffin jeans.

Whatever ‘Best’ wants me or its target market readers to believe, dealing with grief is hard when I can’t even drown my feelings in food.

Gloom: hope died, but it’s Christmas …

December 15, 2019 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

First up, forgive the gloom and somewhat downbeat nature of my news this month. I’ve not been well. If you need better news, skip to the end. I’m going to do the misery first. The idea being my three ghosts of Christmas are all Christmas present and at the end I’ll skip through the front door with cries of ‘God bless us everyone one’.

The first winter chill descended on the Fanning household last weekend. After days of complaining of backache and a bit of a cold, I found myself wrapped in a blanket with chattering teeth and a bucket. I want to call it flu, but these days people say this about the slightest sniffle. Over the course of a week, I threw up daily and had to be helped to a chair in Lidl. Lidl, I tell you, not even Waitrose. It didn’t help that Mr Fanning ran in my shadow, falling sick just 24 hours behind me. We sat in a grumpy bed, resenting each other and snapping at the slightest provocation. Having a dog to walk didn’t help. I woke near a bus stop with him licking my chin as concerned faces loomed to ask if they should call an ambulance. Dignity be gone.

I’m better now, thanks for asking.

And this came after a week of feeling like the world was playing a cruel trick. For almost a year, Mother Fanning has suffered with AMD and needs injections in one eye. Being a typical Fanning, she hates the idea and needs a general anaesthetic to cope. At her advanced age, this knocks her around so the doctors ration what should be a monthly treatment. Guess what. She’s gone blind, and not just in the eye that they now tell us is ulcerated beyond repair. The hurt of seeing someone you once thought of as a fighter struggle to even find her way from one room to another is enormous. Worse yet is the bond of hope she makes with me it will get better. Finding the right time to break away and head back to Brighton after putting in place care was close on impossible and I’m still not sure we did the right thing.

And finally, the triple gloom whammy. In 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union. A decision I was sure we would overturn. Last week, all hope died. The election result forced me to accept that the vote wasn’t a one-off choice made on the back of misinformation. Britain wants to Brexit. For three and a half years, there’s been a small sign in the window of my neighbour, an elderly French woman who long since scored a British passport. A laminated sheet of A4 paper on which she printed ‘I demand a second vote on the terms of Brexit’. Nothing more. It never moved from the window through all the turmoil and government paralysis. She added no other poster, badge or proclamation, just this simple demand. On Friday morning, it vanished, and that caught in my throat more than any other image from that dreadful dark morning.

Right, I’m done with the gloom

Christmas lurks around the corner, and much as I’ve sulked in bed, insisting I’m cancelling the turkey, not getting a tree and looking into the return policy for a range of online stores, I’ve loosened the Scrooge switch today and we’re heading for a garden centre to buy a tree. Gloom be gone!

Look out for my many postings where I moan about needle drop, and remember, this is a sign of healing. If that’s all I can find to moan about, the Fanning life is getting better.

My short story collection, ‘Five Gold Rings‘ is the perfect companion for this time of the year – and it’s remarkably cheerful and upbeat in parts (there are dead bodies, but only what you might expect). It’s FREE for Kindle for the next week (starting late on the 15th and running for five days).

If you’re alone this Christmas

Sarah Millican does something wonderful at this time of year. The #joinin campaign is for anyone who needs to chat. Sarah encourages people to use the hashtag and link with one another so as not to feel lonely. People from around the world have already tweeted with their experiences.

“The main rule is to be kind. We’re all here for each other.”

Starry starry night

May 3, 2019 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

We live in a connected world. My phone knows if I’m about to have a heart attack. I can learn a language and order dinner without getting off the toilet. How come we can’t swipe right and change our marital status?

Later this year – after living almost 8000 days in mortal sin – I’m to marry Mr Fanning.

I’ve never been big on the sanctity of marriage. When my husband-to-be assured me we could get hitched with minimal fuss … in a registry office … with no guests … and that neither of us would need to write special vows, I voiced doubt.

He comes from a family of eager celebrants. No life event is complete without a themed cake and barbecue.

New York, New York

But no! He had thought everything through. I’ve been promised a New York City Hall form-filling affair, in the company of paid strangers, followed by a huge dinner.

It sounds like the best of all worlds.

Except now, his inbred need to mark the occasion has surfaced. Twice he’s asked what I plan to get him to mark our big day. Knowing how little attention I pay to life, I’ve replayed every wedding conversation and can find no mention of gifts. But as anyone partnered to another human being will know, that matters not one jot.

I turned to that font of bad advice, the Internet. After scrolling through page after page of flat-earther claims that carrots cure cancer lurk sites whose raise d’etre is to relieve the pain of gifting.

All I had to do was input Mr Fanning’s age, sex and interests.

After a minute of cat gifs, the recommendation engine settled on a star. In a special presentation box. The perfect way to declare my love.

He’s dropped many unsubtle hints about an Apple Watch.

What does the purchase of a random star say about me?

That I’m an incurable romantic?

Or an idiot who can’t be trusted with access to any joint bank account.

High anxiety

October 7, 2018 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

This has been a difficult week. Is something hanging in the air? Out of the otherwise blue came a crippling anxiety attack as Friday progressed, spurred on by the slow shift to the dead-leaf mellow mists of autumn. All at once I found myself unable for things, gripped by ‘the fear’ and desperate to hide away.

I’d tickets to a comedy club, and that ruled out lurking behind closed doors … after all, this is my ‘year of saying yes‘. By design, there will be days like this.

And so, I spent Friday evening with my feet stuck to a carpet in a room that resembled the scene of a violent crime with sixteen other people, most of whom had shown up to perform. One of the guys terrified me, one of the women is clearly destined for ‘Live at the Apollo’.

Saturday dawned, I opened one eye, breathed deep and hoped for the best. Was it over? No. Still the fear held me in its grip. Less able than ever, I forced myself to get dressed and show up at comedy class. The misery-soaked three hours felt like the seventh circle of hell as every sinew strained to keep me from bolting for the door. I stumbled through – unharmed, albeit with self-confidence gutted.

Drop out

I came home dejected, sure that week four of twelve would be my last. Determined to see a half-full glass, I told myself I should be proud to have managed a quarter of the course. I signed up knowing it would terrify me, and yet I love the people, the supportive atmosphere and how my wonderful tutor tries so hard to make me trust her process. I fear she’s fighting a losing battle. Someone who writes like I write – someone addicted to story telling – will always struggle to jump tracks.

And while I‘ve your attention, here’s a tip. If your head hammers with anxiety, avoid any on-line interviews with ‘heartbroken vets explaining the need to be with your dying dog at the end’. I spent two solid hours sobbing in the dark.

Recovery

For today, I’m playing things safe, and refusing to leave my bed.

Fellow cancer sufferers warned me these crashes land in waves. The roller-coaster of ‘remission and recovery’ is as devastating as diagnosis and treatment. Until I got close to this vile and cruel disease, I’d assumed when the doctor announced you were getting better, your spirits would soar. And now, I accept the need to permit despair. But also, that despair isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Writing

I’ve a book to finish writing. A romantic comedy – and being so unable for the world is poor form. Sure enough, the editorial feedback left me daunted, but I’ve sifted through what I want to take on board. I’m halfway through what reads like a solid draft … and with three more months to the deadline, I’ll make it. I’m sure.

No matter how crap the last few days, I don’t want to stop myself saying yes.