The Kate Bit

Amanda say that I should get used to the blushing because she reckons it's going to happen a lot over the next fifty odd days. But I'll admit that it's taking some getting used to. And the problem is that I can hear my mother's voice in my ear telling me sternly not to let it go to my head!

My mother was great at dishing out what she thought was even handed praise that ended up sounding like nothing at all. The classic 'I'm proud of all my daughters' was the one she responded with when someone asked if she was proud of me for getting my MA. So I think that was a yes - sort of!

And then of course there was the fact that to many, my childhood, girlhood dream of being a writer was just that ' a dream - and I should come down out of the clouds and get real (though they wouldn;t have said that way back when) and get a sensible job . (They very defnitely said that!) So I did that - and I became a writer.

Perhaps this is why I love working with new writers and 'wannbe' writers so much - I remember only too well they way it felt to have those dreams and to want - need - to work hard to make them come true. Because that's the combination - the wanting and the working - that makes your own luck!

So as I've been working on a new Blog Party post, ready to put it up here and I'm reading yet more stuff that makes me blush, I have some lines from a favourite poem going round and round in my head - it's one that works for romance and love and for hopes and dreams. It's by William Butler Yeats and the lines are:

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.


These celebrations are because I held on to my dreams - so today I'd like to wish you all good luck with your dreams - whatever they are - I hope that one day they come true.