Many years as a teacher of English and Media Studies have taught me a great deal about how ‘realities’ are constructed on film and in text. That doesn’t mean I’m an expert in constructing them myself, but it does mean that I am able to deconstruct pretty much any text that gets thrown at me and look at it in an analytical way.

Take this blog, for example. On the surface of it, it’s a pretty standard account of my writing process, liberally interspersed with things that inspire me, a smattering of day to day noteworthy events and the odd episode of more offbeat stuff. However, it is, essentially a construct. I, like any other blogger, filter, or mediate, the information that I put out on here, in order to present an image of myself, my life and my writing in a way that, hopefully, an audience will find interesting. I represent myself in a certain way, I suppose.* And that means that, of necessity, a lot of what I talk about is filtered, or edited to present my world in a particular light. That doesn’t mean I’m being untruthful; far from it, but I am choosing to share the good things more than the moments when I really am pulling my hair out and wondering how the heck everything went south. Those moments, thankfully, are few and far between, but they do happen!

So why am I writing about this now? Well, because yesterday afternoon I had what was essentially, a line of perfect moments all put together. And I’d hate for anyone to think that this is how my life is all the time, because it really isn’t. Don’t get me wrong, obviously in all lives there are bad times, but it’s just something I don’t choose to dwell on here because it’s not particularly interesting or relevant, and, in the grand scheme of things, thankfully, nothing too dramatic has happened as yet. I am, generally, pretty fortunate, and most of the time I can handle the stresses when they come. That’s not to say I haven’t lost it on occasion, as a damaged copy of Jilly Cooper’s Wicked  attests to, from when it came into contact with The Husband’s head a couple of weeks ago, but, thankfully, he forgave me and I got over it.

However, driving home from the birthday party of the daughter of a good friend yesterday, which was in an idyllic setting, with my two daughters giggling away in the back of the car, The Husband actually allowing a little bit of cheesy music on the car radio (Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill, which couldn’t have been more perfect, thanks Breeze FM!), and actually having a conversation about the day, the evening ahead and having a good giggle, things seemed pretty close to perfect. I felt this incredible feeling of contentment, where I just let go of the stresses that have, inevitably, built up over the past few months, and I just lost myself in the moment. It reminded me that, sometimes, I do get caught up in the day to day, and that it’s nice to be able to just, to paraphrase a certain ice queen, let it go once in a while. So here’s to moods of mellow fruitfulness, and here’s hoping there are more moments of them! And no more book throwing.**

*Can you tell I’ve just spent three weeks marking A2 Media Studies exam papers?!

**It was a paperback copy, but really, that’s still no excuse…