Secret Post Club

This month I received a parcel from the lovely Susan.K.Mann! It was lovely to be linked up with her as we'd just followed each other's blog's a few days before! This is what Susan sent to me:

A book light and a range of stationery from a fabulous company called Smiggle. I've never heard of them before but their stuff is funky and very, very cool! So cool in fact that my daughter promptly stole it all away from me and banned me from using it!! Her favourite is the bendy pencil made of plastic! A huge thank you to Susan for the awesome gifts.

If you fancy looking at some of the other cool parcels received then head on over to see Heather at Notes from Lapland who kindly organises this each month!!

Gone Fishing.....

......to Somerset but you can find me here:

I was going to start off by saying that Bradgate Park is one of Leicestershire’s best kept secrets but then I read that it has a million visitors a year so that may well not be true!! Since I was a child Bradgate has been the place that we go to as a family for bike riding, fishing, dog walking and hiking, no matter what the weather.  Glorious in Summer and beautifully wild in Winter, it’s a truly awesome place all year round.

Bradgate was originally created as a hunting park around 750 years ago from Charnwood Forest.  The park is 840 acres and once you are surrounded by the slopes, bracken and rocks, it’s hard to believe that you are only six miles from the Centre of Leicester.  There are three different routes into the park and each one is vastly different.

Head on over to Smitten by Britain to read the rest of the article!

So Many Lies - A Guest Post

As I'm on holiday this week I have a guest poster for you.  Kerry from And Then All I Thought About Was You who I first met at CyberMummy and have kept in touch with ever since! She is Wife to Mr.L, Mum to Baba and moving up the rankings to become an Avon World Sales Leader! I think that she's awesome and I'm sure you will all agree!!!

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You were so so clever, you took it to your grave. But do you think that was really the best thing to have done? You have left us with so many questions, so many answers not given, that we all need to know. Do you not think that by not telling her, you were doing the right thing?

Sorry you probably did!

Let me tell you something though, you have ripped a piece of her apart and she will never truly rest now. Is that really the outcome you wanted? Is it? I don’t think it was, was it?

We all know that you obviously had your reasons, and we respect them, we do 150% respect them that is fine, but do you think that maybe you should have just written it down for her to find when you were gone. Just a name would have been fine. You know I would have found him, that would be all that she needed to know.

It’s just the not knowing that she hates.

She always grew up thinking she had a hero in her life, a man who died in the war. He died alright, but the only thing we know for certain is that he died in your eyes. We are not sure when, how or even if he has died in real life. I think that is the thing that I find the hardest. I was always proud of the story of him dying at war, proud that we had someone like that in our family. Couldn’t wait to tell my children what great ancestors they had, now, well I have nothing to say. We know nothing.

You made sure of that!

I think you even made your brother swear and he loves you so dearly, nearly six years on he is claiming he doesn’t know. He is nearly ninety years old and keeping your secret save, a loyalty to his sister no one can break. I wonder how that makes him feel, knowing his niece and great nieces so desperately want to know and not wanting to go back on his word! Did you ever think of that? Did you ever think about your actions? Or were you just blinded by what you wanted to do?

We understand that there may have been a reason, that he may have done something bad, that you were protecting her. Of course you would do that, it was your job, but do you not think she was capable to know the truth at 20, or 30, 40, 50 or even 60 years old? Do you not think she was strong enough? Or were you worried about the response you would get? Did you then leave it for too long?

I wish I had one more day with you just to ask you everything that we all want to know. Where did you meet him, his name, what happened? Where was he from? Why did you sneak off and get married 30 years after you said you had? What happened there? 

She has so many questions for you too. She vaguely remembers being whisked away in the middle of the night, and being moved down here to a whole new place. She knows he came with you, and from that moment on you were married. You told her that you got married when she was at school. What a huge lie that was! You didn't get married till she had a seven year old and was going through the worst experience in her life!

Do you know what she said when she saw your marriage certificate! That it was the weekend her life was broken. Her birthday weekend in fact! The one where she lost the babies, and you were on holiday and didn't come home for her, she remembers that. She said it was so out of character for you and she never understood why you did it. Now she knows you were getting married! But you put down false addresses! So where you ever really married? And what were you going to do when she was twelve and you asked if he wanted to adopt you, I think you were really lucky she said no, weren't you how were you going to get round that? Especially as she already was by someone else and no one knew it!

I have a theory we know you were married! But I think that he was too, and he just up and left for no reason, so you had to wait until she died before you could do it yourself. What a life of lies you too must have lead, was it really worth it all in the end?

Is this the reason why you and your sister-in-law fell out for so many years? You know you never said why you did! Did she tell you that you were in the wrong? Maybe it is maybe it isn’t, it is something that we will never ever know and it drives me mad, it drives us all silently insane.

I just don’t understand, I want to scream and shout at you. You have made us all so mad did you not know that? Why oh why did you leave such a massive thing unsaid and rip a dream apart? Why? As I have already said, if you didn’t want to be around when it happened, fine, but why didn’t you write it down so that we could at least understand?

I tell you what though you have covered your tracks. We have tried everything to find the truth and there is nothing out there so well done you, I congratulate you with a sickly sweet taste in my mouth because I hate the fact that you have made it impossible to find out. I don’t want to dis you I love you, you will never know how much, but I really want to shout at you, it is not fair. Everyone should have the choice on this matter.

You should never have taken it away from her, it was not your right! Do you know that, it wasn’t your choice, or your right and that is what is bloody unfair.

Your brother gave her a photo you know, he feels for her so badly and is truly torn in two. He told her that one of them is the one, but he can't remember which one. Every one knows he is lying we all know that for certain. He said he met him once, but you weren't going to get married. So she has a photo, of two men, one being the one! We have found out he was a chef, he has let us know that but what a burden he carries, and that is because of you, and you alone!

So this is the story I have to tell my children, the story of our ancestors, how you kept the biggest secret there is in our family and took it to the grave. I hope that maybe just maybe I will find the truth. I know she will always live to regret not knowing, and it saddens me deeply to see that in her eyes.

You were fantastic in many many ways, and never to be faulted, but this, this here everything that is written down is your biggest fault.

You forget to mention something major, you upset her, then you were gone, and it could not be fixed.

A Town Called The Past

The past is a Town that I don’t like to visit too often, but when I was offered a holiday cottage in a place I lived in 16 years ago, I didn’t even consider it to start with. We arrived today after a four hour drive with two kids and a dog that needed to run wild for a while, so we headed straight to the beach and let them all off the leash.

The beach runs parallel to the place that I lived at and we could hear the music booming. At first glance the only thing I recognise is the coastline and as this hasn’t changed for thousands of years, I guess that’s not so surprising! What worries me most is that being here takes me back to a horrible, dark place that was me sixteen years ago.

Sixteen years!?! Man, that’s a whole damn lifetime. My Dad had died three months previously. I’d been rejected by Disney who felt that I was too young to work for them. My whole family was in complete disarray and so I ran away to the other end of the Country to try and deal with life.

I didn’t eat or sleep properly for the whole summer. I lived in the most horrendous accommodation EVER! I tried to deal with my Dad (and Kurt Cobain!) being gone. I tried to ignore all the rumours from home about my Dad’s other half being involved with someone else. I tried to ignore the rumours about my boyfriend shagging around. I lived in the moment partying harder than I ever had in my life!!

It’s not a time I think about to be honest apart from to tell the funny stories about when I was young and lived at a holiday camp. I file it away in that time of my life that was utterly shit and doesn’t need to be talked about and it’s so long ago that it’s not relevant enough to be discussed.

I feel really off centre being here and I keep reminding myself that I’m thirty four and not eighteen and that my Dad died sixteen years ago, but it doesn’t seem to make it any easier and I don’t know what I can do to disassociate these thoughts and enjoy the holiday. It's made all the worse by the fact that I'm completely blind sided at being bothered by the associated history.

I really want to phone my Mum and my Brothers to discuss it but it wasn’t the best time in their lives either, so I’m battling on and trying to ooh and aah at the cottage and be excited with the kids and join in the fun and games but what I really want to do is sit on the beach and cry like I did sixteen years ago and mourn the loss of my Dad!

I guess I’ll see what tomorrow brings!