Monthly Archives: October 2023

There will now be a short intermission

Posted on October 30, 2023 | Leave a comment

Normal blog service will resume shortly. In the meantime, rather than the scary 1970’s test card image from the TV, here’s some cute kittens.

Images sourced via Google – credit to the owners

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Parenting… how do we know if we’ve done it right?

Posted on October 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

Parenting… one of the most challenging and rewarding roles but how do we know we’ve done or are doing it right? Million-dollar question right there!

Don’t panic, this isn’t going to turn into a self-help parenting guide blog. Humour me a moment.

I shared a short story on here recently (The Measly Jar of Motivation – Inside Out | Coral McCallum ) and there were echoes in it of the night my son was born.

There was a moment in time that has lived with me for more than twenty-five years and it came a few short hours after he was born. It was late, after midnight, and I was totally exhausted after giving birth. It had been a very long day! In the plastic crib at the end of the bed, my newborn son began to cry. Instinctively, I got out of bed, lifted him into my arms and tried to console him. He’d had a rough day too. As I gazed out the window into the dark night and at the streetlights twinkling below, the weight of responsibility of being a parent hit me. It hit me like a ton of bricks!

This tiny crying bundle of joy was depending on me. Was I up to the job? Could I nurture and care for and teach this child the life skills he would need to reach adulthood? I’ll not lie…at that moment I felt totally overwhelmed and SO underprepared for motherhood.

I’ve never classed myself as a natural mother but whether my now adult children agree or not, I’ve done my best. They both made it safely to adulthood. Whew!

Fast forward eleven years or so from the cold dark night that my son was worn. Over the years I had among other things introduced him to music and tried to nurture his tastes. The day had finally come when I was taking him to his first concert. Unsure as to how he would be in a crowd of rock fans, I’d erred on the side of caution and opted for seated tickets. (See I could be a sensible mother sometimes). He was beyond excited to be at his first “gig”.

The support act that night were a young up-and-coming Southern rock band from Kentucky called Black Stone Cherry. The first song they played was a song called Rain Wizard… and so began a lifelong love of live music for my son.

A few weeks ago, having queued outside in the pouring rain for over an hour, my son and I took up our spots just off the rail for the night and for the umpteenth time prepared to watch Black Stone Cherry play live. Rain Wizard was on the set and as the thundering drum intro began, I was transported for a moment back to that night from 2009 in Glasgow’s SEC.

Fourteen years  and countless gigs from numerous bands later, my baby boy was still happily beside me at a gig. I smiled to myself and realised that maybe I hadn’t done so bad a job of being a parent after all.

Oh and if you’re curious about the song, here’s the video from the other week

Rain Wizard – Black Stone Cherry @ St Luke’s Glasgow 06/10/23 – YouTube

(image sourced via Google – credits to the owner)

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Continue the Story – When Enough Is Enough (warning- references domestic abuse)

Posted on October 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

As the police clipped on the handcuffs, I knew that the nightmare was over. From the safety of the police car, I watched as the officers bundled him into the back of the second police car that had arrived all lights and sirens in our quiet cul-de-sac.

The neat little street in the “nice” neighbourhood was the last place anyone would expect any form of crime to take place.

But what really goes on behind closed doors?

I knew in my heart that I had finally done the right thing. In all honesty, I know I should have found the strength to do it years ago. If only I’d been stronger. If only I’d had more self-belief… but that had been slowly and steadily eroded away. If only I had acted sooner, then my kids might have been spared all that they have endured and not been exposed to it.

My son was the one who convinced me that I could set up cloud storage that his dad couldn’t access. He even helped me set it all up and password protect it. It was our secret. I used the “secret cloud” to store every email, every text message, every What’s App. If only I’d figured out how to record and save conversations…. Slowly over the weeks and months, I built up my body of evidence and my courage.

The final straw had been when he’d tried the same tactics with our daughter. She was barely a teenager! His vicious comments had almost broken her. Reading them had torn my heart to pieces and fuelled my anger. How could he do this to his own daughter? It hadn’t taken much to persuade her to share the screenshots she had shown me. What I wasn’t prepared for was the sad fact that she had been hiding his cruel messages for months, scared that she would be blamed for the behaviour.

I waited until the kids were at school and he was working from home for the day before confronting him. They didn’t need to witness that. They had already seen and heard more than enough. He kicked off as I’d expected he would when I told him I knew about the messages he’d sent to our daughter. For the first and last time, the abuse became physical. I was going to have a beauty of a black eye in the morning. I took the blows without fighting back then submissively crept from the room while he returned to his conference calls and emails. From the sanctuary of the bathroom, I dialled 999 and reported the assault.

As I watched the police car leave, I breathed a sigh of relief.

“That was a brave thing you did today,” praised the female officer who was sitting beside me.

I forced a smile. It hurt to smile.

I saw the curtains twitch in the house across the street. If only they knew what had gone on behind closed doors but enough is enough….

October is Domestic Abuse Awareness month.

Domestic abuse doesn’t need to be physical to be classed as a crime. Emotional abuse is a crime punishable under the Serious Crime Bill 2015 in the UK and can carry a prison sentence of up to 5 years.

If you’ve been affected by domestic abuse including emotional abuse, you can find help and support in the links below.  

Emotional abuse | Relate

Getting help for domestic violence and abuse – NHS (www.nhs.uk)

What Is Emotional Abuse & Things You Should Know | NSPCC

Guide to support options for abuse – Mind

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The Measly Jar of Motivation – The Tin (flash fiction)

Posted on October 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

So many years had passed since she had last seen “the tin”. When had it even last been opened? The old shortbread tin was beginning to show its age. The tartan sides and border on the lid were faded. The image of snowcapped Scottish mountains on the lid was growing faint with age, almost as though a veil of mist was hanging over their peaks. The tin was older than she was. In fact, it might even be older than her mother.

Holding it in her hands, memories of playing with it as a little girl came rushing back. She had spent many hours sorting through the contents, plaguing her gran to tell her the stories that went with them. Her gran had happily gone wandering down memory lane as she reminisced about where each item had come from.

When she had been a child, the tin had seemed huge and heavy. Now, as she held it in her hands, it was the weight of the memories within that she felt.

Taking great care, she eased off the lid. As she glimpsed inside it, everything looked exactly the same as it had done over forty years before.

The tin was filled with buttons.

There were buttons in all shapes and sizes; there were buttons of every colour.

Lost in her memories, she ran her fingers through the buttons.

She spotted the large dark green buttons that had belonged to her grandfather’s army coat from during the war. There were small round pearl buttons from one of her mother’s summer cardigans from the 1950’s. Big round purple buttons caught her eye. Those came from the wool coat her aunt had bought with her first wage packet. She could see some bone toggles that had been snipped from her father’s duffel coat. One still had its leather loop attached. Several small pearly white buttons with a star in the centre made her smile. They were from her own handknitted baby cardigans. In one of the corners, she saw four or five grey buttons clustered together that had come from one of her primary school cardigans.

Reaching into her jeans pocket, she pulled out four navy blue buttons about the size of a two pence piece. With a wistful smile, she added the buttons from her gran’s favourite cardigan to the tin.

Her whole family history could be told using the buttons from the tin. In her hands, she held several lifetimes of memories. If only those buttons could talk. The tales they would tell!

She was now the custodian of “the tin”. Silently, she promised her gran that she would keep up the family tradition and add her buttons and her children’s buttons to the tin. In time, the tin would pass down to the next generation but for now it was hers to cherish.

A teardrop fell, landing on a red button in the heart of the tin.

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Meet The Writer pt 11-15

Posted on October 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

Now for the final instalment in my Meet The Writer series that was first shared as part of a 15-day challenge on my author Facebook page back in July. Seems like a lifetime ago now…

#MeetTheWriter Day 11/15…MOVEMENT

Walking…meandering…. gives my mind space to drift off into the storyline. I often puzzle through the roadblocks of my writing as I meander after work. That daily post-work walk also serves to clear the day job out of my head and allow the creative spaces to open up again.

“Dancing” (I use the term loosely as I have very little sense of rhythm) at a gig helps in general. There’s a great sense of freedom in it. I love losing myself in the performance. Watching what is going on up on stage closely is also good research for my book babies, especially watching soundcheck when the chance arises.

#MeetTheWriter Day 12/15…FIRSTS…

Before I answer this one, I’ll give you a little background. I started to write my first novel in May 2013. Later that year I shared an excerpt from it with a close friend who encouraged me to keep chasing the dream. One small problem – I’m terrified of letting people read what I write. That’s a fear that’s still very real today but I’ve got better at dealing with it. My way of attempting to overcome it was to start my blog back on 29 Dec 2013. So to answer the question, this blog post was the first piece of writing I shared publicly https://coralmccallum.co.uk/2013/12/ The journey began right there..

#MeetTheWriter … DAY 13/15…DREAM

There’s two answers to this …humour me for a moment.

If I could turn back time, I would love to go back to my aunt’s house and sit and write out on her sun deck while I listened to the sounds of nature around me.

The current dream (and I will make it happen one day) is not to write at a specific desk but instead is to sit on my favourite beach, listening to the waves crashing in on the shore and just lose myself in the moment with my notebook and pen on my knee.

#MeetTheWriter DAY 14/15….ADVICE…

The best writing advice I have been given to date was given to me by one of my high school English teachers who told me to write about places I love and topics I am passionate about. I think it took me about 30 years to fully understand what he meant by it.

Another creative analogy that has stuck is the one about first drafts being like chucking sand into the sand box. There’s time to build castles later. I heed that one when at the end of an evening’s writing I start to doubt the quality of the words I’ve written.

#MeetTheWriter … Day 15/15… MIRROR

Oh good question to end this 15 days of #MeetTheWriter! I would like my writing to be described as genuine. I write from the heart. I strive to create believable, slightly flawed central characters (no one in this world is perfect) and I do my best to write about characters that people want to get to know. I’ve had several folk say to me that they want to hear the songs my rock stars sing. I’ve had folk sigh because they’ll never get to see Silver Lake or After Life or The RJ Band on stage. If I can evoke those feelings, along with the laughter and the tears, then I’m happy. The greatest compliment I’ve been paid to date came from someone at work. After I wrote Stronger Within they approached me in the staff restaurant and said they’d read my book and quite enjoyed it. They followed that comment up by adding that it had encouraged them to read other books. Job done! If I can make someone pick up a book, then that’s good enough for me.

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