weird

Mum, Am I Weird? Yes Darling, Because All The Best People Are

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

My son is nine and for the past few years he has often stopped mid-sentence and asked me this question: ‘Mum, am I weird?’

For the record, he isn’t overtly weird, well, not in my opinion. He gets on really well at school and finds it easy to make friends. He is known for being able to make people laugh and since he started school at aged four, his teachers have always told me that he is kind, empathetic and very diplomatic. I expect part of that is his experience of being the youngest of four children.

At home, however, he is free to let all his weird out whenever he wants. We all are. In fact, we often have conversations where we debate who is the weirdest in our family of six. Most of the time, they all agree that it’s me, but my youngest son is often next. Our ‘weirdness’ takes many forms and is often the source of belly-aching laughter and a fair amount of teasing. I think it’s what makes us, us and I wouldn’t change a thing. However, I suspect that at school, to be labelled ‘weird’ is not a good thing. I can recall that from my own schooldays. No one wants to be the weird kid. No one wants to stand out.

What things mark a person as ‘weird’? Often its the way they dress; perhaps in a wacky or eccentric or unusual fashion. Perhaps its their hair. Maybe its something to do with their social or conversational skills. Sometimes its because of their hobbies.

I don’t think my son looks or acts ‘weird’ in any way, and yet he keeps asking me this question.

I tell him he is eccentric, one of a kind, and memorable! When he was small he had a host of imaginary friends he would make up long and complex stories for. Even as a toddler he pretended to carry around a creature known as ‘Hock’ who sadly died one day when my son sat in the pushchair and squashed him. I tried to say Hock was fine but my son insisted he was dead and even carried his dead body home! I once caught him running a bath by himself for another ‘friend’ and at the dinner table he would have us all in hysterics with his stories about made-up characters. He even had accents for some of them.

My son is obsessed with music. When he was only one, he danced non-stop to Peter Hook from Joy Division at a local music festival. This was in the rain. He just kept going and going. At the same age, I videoed him reaching up to the CD player in the kitchen to turn the volume up on a song. I have videos of him dancing on tables, dancing at restaurants, dancing on holidays and rocking his highchair back and forth violently, yet in tune to the music! When he started nursery at three, he’d get a bit anxious on the way there, but if I played ‘Birds’ by Eels, he would cheer up instantly. As a newborn baby, I could only get him to sleep in the car if I played ‘Hold on’ by Tom Waits.

These days his favourite band is The Clash, but he is also obsessed with Tom Waits, Beck, Blur, Oasis, The Black Keys, Talking Heads, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and many more! He has his own CD player next to his bed and falls asleep with a CD playing. He fills up notebooks with information about bands and singers and because he wants to be in a band himself, he has even designed his first four album covers.

There is absolutely nothing he does not know about Joe Strummer.

Yes, he is a little unusual. At home, he lets out his ‘noises’, as he calls them. He developed a habit of releasing strange noises sporadically during the Covid lockdowns. Home-schooling him was interesting and I often videoed him doing his work whilst making random noises and movements. I researched Tourette’s Syndrome and even spoke to a health professional about the possibility of him having it. Going back to school seemed to cure most of it and school have never seen or heard the noises we still sometimes get at home.

He gets very easily distracted and although he is almost ten, I still have to direct him with getting dressed, brushing his teeth etc. I have to tell him to do these things over and over again, as he will forget seconds after you saying it. He is so bright though, the sunshine in all our eyes, he lights up every room he walks into and has a beautiful habit of taking people under his wing if he feels they are a bit left out. He will then talk to them endlessly about music, but adults love this! Everyone comments on his unique personality. He can be hard work, but he’s so pure at the same time, there is just no malice in him at all.

He’s very creative, always doodling in various notebooks. Recently, while waiting to go into school, he whispered to me how interesting all the details were. I asked what he meant and he started pointing out things like the treads on car tires and the reflections in puddles. It was such a sweet moment. A few years back, we were driving to school and he was watching the world go by the windows and suddenly announced how the world was better when it was green. He was only little, but his words reflected my own thoughts, and I felt, as I always do, what good company he is. I always tell him he is ‘good value’. He asks what I mean and I say, you just give so much, I get more than I paid for! I can’t wait to find out what his future holds, yet it saddens me when he worries about being ‘weird.’

But as I constantly tell him, all the best people are!

All those singers and songwriters he idolises at such a young age, they were different too. I bet they often thought of themselves as ‘weird’. ‘Normal’ people don’t tend to be as creative. You’ve got to be a little bit weird to be an artist of some sort. I tell him it is something to be proud of.

And it is.

I know how weird I am. (No one else knows the extent of it!) But I love myself anyway. I’m my own best friend. I’m good company for myself. I couldn’t write books and poems if I wasn’t weird and eccentric….

I hope my son soon realises the same.

I wouldn’t change a single thing about him.

3 Weird And Wonderful Things About Writing

~ ChanAtkins ~ 6 Comments

I noticed something weird about writing lately and this prompted me to think about how weird and wonderful writing it is. Am I just very weird or does anyone else relate to these?

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay
  1. When I read something I wrote, I can’t remember writing it – I’ve always been somewhat aware of this but just recently I really noticed it and it struck me as very weird. If I pick up any of my published books and read an extract, I am always more impressed than I was at the time of writing it. It feels like someone else, someone better than me, wrote it. I can’t really remember writing those exact words, even though the plot and the characters are utterly mine and will live on in my head forever. Just last week I started typing up my Black Hare Valley story. This was the one I’d had in my head and in planning for a few years but ended up writing in longhand about a year and a half ago when a prolonged power cut meant I couldn’t carry on with stories I had on my laptop. I remember writing Black Hare Valley mainly because all the plot ideas came to me while walking. At the time petrol prices had gone through the roof and I was trying to walk more than drive. It was during this long walks to work that this book wrote itself chapter by chapter in my head. Then once it was done, I put the notebooks aside and had to forget about it. Now I’m typing it up and reading what I wrote it genuinely feels very strange; like someone else wrote it. I know the words are mine (when I can decipher the handwriting!) but I have no memory of writing them, or the thought process behind putting each sentence together. Typing it up feels like I am discovering this story for the first time even though it has been in my head for so long.
  2. When a world becomes so real, I can’t wait to get there – I’ve not had this experience for a while because I’ve been editing various books for so long, so it was a lovely but weird surprise when this started to happen with Black Hare Valley. It took a long time to build this world; starting with the drawing of a large map of the fictional town. It’s a valley town, surrounded by iron age hill forts and it has everything from a school, post office, vets, cafes and pubs, library, theatre, police station, church and so on. It was a lot of fun to create and after the map came the character bios. As I created each character I could then add where they lived to the map and this in turn sparked of plot ideas and scenes. This made writing it so much fun as every time a character moved from one place to another I could check on the map which way they would go. It really made the whole place come alive and now that I’m typing it up, I am right back there again. Every night when I go up to write, I feel excited to be returning to Black Hare Valley, this strange, beautiful and terrifying place I created. For me right now, it is entirely real.
  3. When a book writes itself – I love it when this happens but it’s not always the way it works for me when I write books. Sometimes characters will arrive, presenting drama and plot and I’ll have to figure out how to start it, where to start it and how to divide the story up into chapters. I’ll normally do a certain amount of planning before I start, but then once writing commences, the writing and planning run alongside each other, usually with me knowing at least the next few scenes and then working it out again as I go along. But sometimes, something really weird and wonderful happens. It happened recently with a book that will be ready for publication next year and it happened when I was writing Black Hare Valley for the first time. It’s like once I pick up the pen, something else takes over. The pen moves faster than my mind; I feel a bit like I’m in a trance, being controlled by something else. The next words are spilling out before I’ve even had a moment to consider them or hesitate. It’s like the story wants to be written so much it just writes itself. I feel almost disconnected at times, like I’m the reader waiting on the sidelines to enjoy the result.

There are a lot more things about writing I’d consider both weird and wonderful but these three really struck me lately. How about you? Have you experienced any of these things? Or are there other things you find weird and wonderful about writing? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

Weird Is The New Normal and It’s Okay To Be Constantly Confused

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

Yesterday in the UK we heard the news that lockdown will continue for at least another three weeks. It’s probably what most of us were expecting. It also seems the most sensible and the safest course of action in light of the fact deaths are still rising.

The last few days I’ve been struggling with a constant mix of emotions and from what I hear on social media, this is a very common way to feel. In a weird way, we have all adjusted to lockdown and for the most part, we seem to be making light of it and digging up our sense of humour to survive. I think most people would rather stay at home while the virus is still rife, if only to protect their loved ones.

I was thinking the other day how quickly we have got used to things that would have been very weird to us a few months ago. On our daily walk or cycle ride, we’ve got into the habit of looking out for other people. It’s only so that we can change direction if we need to, or move to make room and allow everyone enough space to pass. Ideally, we don’t really want to see other people when we are out because it has become very awkward and strange. No one really knows what to say. Everyone starts moving out of the way and it feels weird, like we are all diseased or dangerous or something. I start feeling like I’m living in a film, a post-apocalyptic one, where strangers usually mean danger.

I’m worried about causing anxiety about strangers in my youngest. I suddenly realised the other day how many times I say phrases such as; ‘let’s go early, so there’s no other people,’ ‘let’s go this way, because I can see people coming,’ ‘there’s people coming, so move over here.’ Scary, really. I have obviously explained to him why we are doing this and so far so good, he is five and seems to have adjusted to this better than the rest of us. But it’s unnerving in a way, how quickly weird things have become normal.

Like avoiding people. Like not going to work. Like not driving anywhere. Like not doing the school run. Like staying at home and making the most of the house and garden and our imaginations. Like eating slightly odd dinners based on the fact we can’t always get what we need in the shops. Like constantly wondering what the fallout of all of this will be on society…

It’s weird, but it’s become normal. We’re getting used to it. The other thing is the constant confusion, and by this I suppose I mean confused emotions. I’m an emotional person at the best of times, so this is playing havoc with me. I’m up and down and all over the place. I have such mixed feelings about everything. I both love and hate lockdown. I both long for ‘normal’ life and fear it returning. I’m thinking a lot about a lot of things and that’s pretty exhausting.

My own confusion is hard to understand, although I think I’m getting closer. I will probably delve into it in another blog post.

But from what I see and hear around me, feeling constantly confused during this strange and scary time is perfectly okay. Maybe our confusion is the most normal part about this. No one really knows what is going to happen. Everyone is scared on some level. Everyone is doing their best and putting a brave face on as much as they can. But it’s weird that weird has become normal and we are definitely very confused.

See you next time and stay safe xx

7 Reasons Christmas Is A Very Weird Time Of Year…

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

I can’t help thinking this is a very strange time of year, where we all act very strangely. Normal rules just don’t seem to apply! What do you think?

  1. You never know what day it is – With the absence of school runs/workdays, we have absolutely no idea what day it is when we wake up. Or even the rest of the day. It takes me a good fifteen minutes some mornings to figure out what the day is!
  2. It’s perfectly okay to drink at 11am – What is it about this time of year that makes it acceptable to put whiskey in your coffee before lunchtime? Or to crack open a bottle of wine while you’re preparing the dinner? I don’t know, but I like it!
  3. Normal meals do not exist- The other day I ate Panetonne for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And I’m not even ashamed. More often than not right now, I’m telling the kids its dinner and letting them attack the cupboards unsupervised! Just go for it kids, find food!
  4. You panic about having certain foods in – Even when they are foods you never bother with the rest of the year! What’s that about?
  5. You think you are ‘done’ and then write another little list…- This is me right now. I actually finished Christmas shopping a few weeks ago. And yet those little lists linger on!
  6. Every time you see another human being you have to ask them ‘are you all ready for Christmas?’ and they ask you the same back – This is one of the weirdest things of all. We’re asking out of politeness and habit, and yet actually, we do really want to know. We long to hear about their panics and their failings, and we enjoy hearing about how they ‘do Christmas’. It’s like talking about the weather for the British, only Christmasssy.
  7. It’s perfectly fine to constantly lie to small children – Father Christmas will come down the chimney! Father Christmas will fill up your stocking! Father Christmas knows if you’ve been bad or good! No, Mummy didn’t buy you that, Father Christmas did. Okay, it’s wrapped in the same paper, but that just means we both have the same taste! Oh yes, you’re right, Father Christmas does shop in Tesco! He does it all by magic you know! No, he didn’t get you exactly what you wrote on your list, because we don’t have room for a pet cow!

 

I think I could add a few more, but a fresh glass of wine is calling. I’ll have that and cuddle up with the kids to watch some overly cheesy Christmas film we have all watched a million times before, and we’ll pass around the chocolates and then ask what else we can eat? Because you know, it’s Christmas! So, all these things are okay! Have a good one everyone!

(Also apologies for the lack of fun images/memes; I’m having bad times with my laptop and this was all I could cobble together before I threw it out of the window!)