emmadotnott

unfiltered, unearthed, unfinished

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  • Popped out for milk for ten years ago, what have I missed?

    Well, this was an unexpected treat! A seemingly innocent conversation about dystopian fiction with my husband – as you do (and not the husband from any article prior to this one, but we’ll get to that later) and here I am hacking back into my old WordPress account and seeing my musings from the mid-noughties like they were being released from a time capsule. And a note for the Emma that questioned whether the 35-year old Emma would throw up a little in her mouth at the writing I had churned out then: whilst I can’t confidently report how she would have reacted, 40 year-old Emma chuckled, smiled and was almost verging on impressed enough that she got the Chromebook immediately off the coffee table and started typing this: this right now. (“Stop typing: STOP TYPING!” – Ah, Ross Geller you problematic but still strangely endearing jukebox of catchphrases…)

    So yeah, here we are.

    I think the fact that my last post was a little over 10 years ago, adds a certain timeliness to restarting this page; especially considering its context and content. Many of the ten items I listed as aspirations of change then in 2016, still ring true now but with entirely different circumstances, back-stories and whole new cast of characters – Number Seven on the list, being particularly telling. It sounds a lot like my 2026 personal gripes are the same struggles I’d nailed-down then, with the same general lack of motivation, desires to find creative outlets, be kinder to myself and change my bodily shape; but at least my consistency – and perhaps predictability haven’t diminished.

    ‘…he we are’, so where are we? Well, 200 miles away from where this page was established, both literally and figuratively. In 2018 me and the aforementioned baby (now almost 13) moved from our birthplace to the coast to start a new life alongside a new person. Finding love online was never on my 2016 bingo card – however much I had subconsciously yearned for it, but find it I did. In 2018 we packed up our lives into a rental van and headed down the motorway with excitement and hope, and that faith and optimism has never been proven naive; lucky perhaps, but I knew what I was doing.

    And you pick up the story now at a pivotal stage; not too far in that you can’t be quickly caught up on the fundamentals, and not too early that there’s nothing yet to tell. I’m working for a national charity and have done for over four years. I’ve managed to secure two Level 3 qualifications since we last caught up – which went a long way to pacifying my long-felt shame at not staying in education as long as I ‘should’ have, and am now underway with a Level 4 (dun dun, dunnnn) in Data Analysis. A lifetime of beating myself up about my lack of resilience and emotional roller-coaster living also makes sense to me now. Last year I was diagnosed with ADHD and despite still waiting to start medication, the knowledge alone has helped no end. Feeling happier in my skin is also much easier now that I’m married to a wonderful man, I have a cat who is my forever-baby and uterus-quietening furry offspring as I hurtle towards early cronehood; and I have my Goose. Ah yes, my Goose.

    Goose, currently at her boyfriend’s house where they eat cruditee with hummus and scroll Tiktok together, cuddling as only 12 year-olds in love can, is fast approaching 13 and has requested a nose piercing appointment to mark the occasion. I have no problem with this whatsoever, and am actually thrilled that she wants to express herself in a verging-on-the-alt-girl sort of way; it’s refreshing to see her make a decision based on her finding her own authentic identity rather than moulding herself on Instadrips and other cookie-cutter Cringefluencers. However, this blossoming of womanhood has not been without a few electrical side effects and it’s looking like she’ll be officially diagnosed as epileptic later this month when we return to the hospital to discuss the findings of her EEG last week.

    Pardon the pun, but this has definitely come as a shock to all of us, not least Goose herself. She’s always been a pretty fit and health kid with the constitution of an ox; save for a tonsillectomy aged 3 and a flirtation with chickenpox and Covid (apparently) but she’s certainly had nothing neurological going on. And so we find ourselves at a crossroads: she’s experienced four tonic-clonic seizures since mid-December last year which has given her Consultant enough of an indication of the likely diagnosis before we choose an anti-seizure medication to start her off on. We don’t know much, but we know enough that we won’t be electing to give Goose a personality transplant and increase in suicidality by way of Keppra.

    Husband 2.0 – AKA Notty is also living with new health realities since his ‘What-in-the-actual-fuck’ coronary incident in the autumn. Apparently it only takes 11 mind-numbingly boring days in hospital to make you give up energy drinks and address a Troponin count of 17,000, but a brush with mortality will gift you amazing perspective on what matters and for Notty what matters is rewriting history. Even prior to his stay at HMP NHS he’d had a transformational 2025, breaking away from decades of stagnancy that he both detested and yet desperately clung to.

    Needless to say the theme of change has featured heavily for all of us over the last few months. I’m committed to continuing with positive progression and moving towards better places, and so if I can keep this up and get my kicks from emptying my brain by trotting out some more drivel on here, I shall do my worst.

    Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  • The best of intentions.

    2016 is going to be a good year.

    2016 is going to the the year I do more things that I want to do and since list-making is easily one of my most favourite past times, here’s another.

    1. Play the piano more. Practice more, play more, perform more and spend more time teaching Seren.

    2. Sing! I’m joining a choir next week… I know, I know but stick with me. Amazingly the week before Christmas I had publicise a choral concert at work and it just so happens this choir is ran by my two previous school music teachers and rehearsals are held a two minute walk from my house. How much more ‘right’ are circumstances meant to be before I take action?

    3. Get back my gym bug and get back into shape (and by shape I mean not circular).

    4. Be more patient. I’m always aware of how I need to do this but I really do. Things don’t happen over night or immediately, deal with it.

    5. Get more of my pictures out into the public domain. I have so many opportunities to pursue in my quest to get published, I have better connections than most to achieve this and yet still I do nothing? Lazy!

    6. Write more. It helps me no end to commit my musings to pixels or ink; getting thoughts and ideas out of my brain space gives me a greater sense of clarity and direction to develop better ideas and thoughts. Just saying.

    7. Let go of toxic relationships and nurture worthy ones. Fairly self explanatory.

    8. Listen to more music; discover new stuff, revisit old favourites and take the time to really listen, not just hear.

    9. Get out and about with my camera and try shooting new things. Oh, and master my camera properly, ISO settings, exposure… the lot!

    10. Always make sure you end lists on a nice, round number.

    So there you have it, here endeth the manifesto and we’ll see what happens.

    Ttfn x

  • I will write more in 2016, promise!

    Title says it all. I will. I promise.

    I don’t know when or how often but I will.

    Watch this space.

  • Writing, bitching and growing up.

    I decided today to start a WordPress blog. It was a snap decision based on a Facebook status I was writing in my mind that got lengthier and lengthier and thus the Mummybearbeans page was born. Mummybearbeans being one of my names as part of our family unit, Daddy Bear Mash, Mummy Bear Beans and Baby Bear Sausage.  Don’t ask.

    I’ve always loved to write; from being a child and revelling in the big writing projects at school that everybody else hated, writing a diary through my angsty teenage years, to starting a book at 21 (that of course was never completed and since cast into Silicone Hell along with all the calculators and toasters) to deciding to freelance as a recruitment writing consultant and proof reader after not returning to work following maternity leave. Understandably the way I write has evolved and developed as I’ve gotten older; my writing now at nearly 29 is vastly different and probably superior to those musings offered at 21, 25 and will no doubt leave me cringing and hitting delete when read back at 35, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

    Since becoming a parent, my views on the world have changed radically. Suddenly having another human being’s very existence in your hands gifts you a new found sense of responsibility, worry and desire for change. A desire for change, a desire to right wrongs and a desire for knowledge and better understanding of the things you deem in need of change. However my favourite change to my attitude is my ever-growing sense of not giving a fuck. For years I’d agonise over what other people thought of me, how I could be more liked, how I must be doing something wrong if people had a negative opinion of me and why do they think that? I avoided confrontation like the plague, I would try in earnest not to rock the boat and instead dwelled on all my over analysis, worries and theories in silence and invariably suffering.

    But no more!

    My first and probably most trivial and tragically 21st Century step in not giving a fuck was a Facebook cull. I asked myself “Am I friends with this person because they are genuinely my friend or because I felt obligated to be at some point?” If the answer leaned towards the latter, they went. Poof! Gone. I also rekindled a friendship with a person so divisive amongst my other friends that I had previously and quite unreasonably, dropped like a stone in another attempt to quell boat rocking. I began posting more opinionated updates on social media; showing my political alignments, my ideals, myself. Don’t like it? Don’t read it, easy as. This was a revelation to me, it felt like a suppressive and dominating weight had disappeared and as the relief grew, so did my confidence to continue.

    Since recovering from post natal depression, and following a number of periods of depression through my adult life, I can see a definite and strong correlation between not giving a fuck and good mental health. I had recognised in my early twenties that my depressions were fuelled by over-analysing myself and my life and the subsequent cycles of scrutiny, self-deprecation, guilt and feelings of failure. Without worrying whether or what other people were thinking about me, I didn’t look at myself so carefully or so adversely either and the cycle was broken.

    Writing has always been my salvation and now I’ve got this blog in place, I’ve got the ideal location to ramble on without worrying what anybody thinks about it.

    So there you have it folks, the key to happiness is children, writing and not giving a fuck.

    Simples.

     

  • 50 Shades of Shite

    I’m not generally a bandwagon jumper-onner; I always come late to the zeitgeist party whether it’s Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Anchorman – I eventually find them, realise they’re great and enjoy them in my own time. This is partly true for the 50 Shades trilogy by E. L. James. When the mania first hit I was working full time, childless and probably far too busy to be arsed to read anything. I was also pretty put off by being constantly told by friends and colleagues how ‘great’ it was, so ‘sexy’ and ‘naughty’. Now, I’ve read some of the Black Lace series books and can report that there are ‘great’ and ‘sexy’ and was fairly sure that 50 Shades being mainstream, they wouldn’t be as ‘naughty’ as the BL books; it also didn’t help that I’d been reliably told by my Mum that they were horrifically written (she hadn’t read them either but had read a number of scathing broadsheet and feminist website reviews). This was the biggest turn-off; not the thought of paddles, ball-gags, spanking or fisting, but the appalling writing – just, not, sexy.

    So I managed to avoid them, politely turned down numerous offers to borrow the books from friends, replying with disgust at people’s suggestions my soon-after pregnancy was fallout from the ’50 Shades Effect’ and genuinely having a little sick in my mouth at the sight of baby changing mats being sold on Doncaster market with ‘9 Months Ago Mummy Read 50 Shades’ emblazoned on them. However – to be fair, I spent most of my pregnancy with varying amounts of sick in my mouth, not always related to crass changing mats. So much was my developing loathing of this fad that I remember posting this on twitter:

    tweet–

    Then it fizzled out. Everybody who wanted to read them had the trilogy by now, people stopped hiding their Kindles on public transport as they went back to reading less ‘naughty’ and ‘sexy’ books and that was that. Cue Hollywood stage left. Of course they would make this drivel into a film, of course it would become current again, of course everyone would start speculating the perfect actor for ‘Grey’ or the perfect ‘Whatever-her-name-is’ and I went back to cynically rolling my eyes and zoning out of conversations in the office.

    Fast forward to July 2014, I’m no longer working and now have a beautiful 16 month old daughter. I have lots of time, especially when my husband is working nights and therefore have lots of hours to fill with carnal pursuits such as reading terrible books. This week the 50 Shades film preview was presented to the salivating masses. Somebody I probably ought not to follow on Instagram posted a link and out of curiosity I watched it. While I have no point of reference to compare it with – having still successfully not read it, it left me thinking ‘So what?’ I have no invested relationship with these fictional beings, I have never created a picture in my mind of Christian Grey or Whatever-her-name-is and thus it moved me in no way whatsoever. However as the day went on the realisation dawned on me that at some point I’m likely to watch the sodding film; years in the future on Channel 4 one evening, or a night in with the girls or god forbid by husband wants to see what all the fuss is about (any excuse to watch a bit of shagging on telly, Spartacus, GoT etc. etc.) Given that I’d conceded I was probably going to see the film at some point, I reasoned with myself that I probably ought to read the book. I’d now realised I was desperately looking for rationale to explain away reading it and thought ‘Sod it, just download them. Find some free ePub files online and read them on the tablet’. This way I didn’t have to spend money on them, nobody could tell what I was reading and I’d not lost out if I couldn’t bare to get further than a few chapters. So I did.

    I was first struck by the confirmation that it is indeed terribly written. It feels so amateurish and reminiscent of a primary school children’s ‘What I did at the Weekend’ story – obviously without the mild bondage and BDSM (but this is Doncaster, so who knows?) E. L. James should invest in a thesaurus and quickly before she writes anything else; ‘mutters’ is horrifically over-used and if it’s intentional and Grey really does mutter, maybe a heartwarming tale of his blossoming love with an elocution professional may be more appropriate. The clichés come thick and fast too; the first one causing me to screw up my face in disappointment involves ‘Anastasia’ (no longer Whatever-her-name-is) scrutinizing herself in the mirror and remarking on her ‘too-big-for-her-face blue eyes’. This said however, I managed to plough through the first third of the book before calling it a night. For those who’ve read it, I left it where ‘Ana’ is weighing up whether or not to sign the contract after reading it for the first time’. By this point I had read through a number of the ‘sexy’ and ‘naughty’ parts and had decided that I’d give the story development the benefit of the doubt and that they were so tame and mild as ‘Ana’ is a virgin they’re working up to the good stuff. I’m now half way through the second instalment: ’50 Shades Darker’ and can report that the sex is still mild, tame and boring. And that reminds me – the word ‘sex’ is the only reference made to our heroine’s vagina. See, you can use the word; that’s what it’s called, a vagina. At no point, up to now at least, does our lusty, filthy, quote unquote ’50 Shades of fucked up’ anti-hero Christian Grey even refer (by any name) to his Plaything’s plaything… that’s just odd. The entire way through thus far ‘Ana’s’ internal monologue and musings on the sex acts only every refer to feelings, sensations and cravings ‘down there’. Down where? The Southern Hemisphere? Devon?  Perhaps not, given that our tale is set in Seattle and James insists on constantly reminding you of this with unnecessary details of the Interstates taken in various car journeys and postcard references such as the Space Needle. Guess what E. L. James? I have no point of reference to roads in Seattle and I don’t need to know, I suspect that people from Seattle don’t need to be told this repeatedly either. Speaking of unnecessary details, the books are littered with them. Completely pointless descriptions of items and details that feel more like an attempt at reaching a word quota than offering an insight into the storytelling. Equally irritating is James’ insistence on showing some basic knowledge of wine with every encounter between our shag-happy couple. What difference does it make that it’s Chablis or Frascati? We only every read that it’s ‘crisp, light and delicious’ whatever the vintage we’re to believe they’re quaffing pre, post or mid coitus.

    The most irritating and distracting point for me however is our leading lady herself. It was my belief that this series of books was meant to empower women; unleashing their sexual desires while offering reassurance that it’s OK to want to do something a little more outside of the box, without being a ‘slut’ or a ‘slag’. In my opinion, ‘Ana’ misses the mark of achieving this by as many miles as the I-5 we’ve heard so much about. Her constant need for reassurance that she’s ‘enough’ for Grey and habitual whining and overall dissatisfaction at everything, really pisses me off. She is without doubt the most unlikeable leading woman in a book I’ve ever read and I’ve now got to the point where I hope Grey drops her like a sticky butt plug and never sees her again. Of course, I realise there’s time for this yet, being only half way through the trilogy, but I’m fairly sure by now I’m meant to have developed some empathy with ‘Ana’ and be rooting for them, but I’m not.

    To conclude, if you haven’t read these yet, don’t. Defy James’ message to give in to your desires and curiosities and supress them, deep, deeper and then even deeper than that. Tie a knot in them, a BDSM ligature knot if you must, either way, don’t read them. Not if you have a vagina, a penis, a sex, or you mutter, if you live in Seattle or drink wine.