Everything changes. Sometimes those changes are slow and gtadual, and sneak up on you and sometimes the change is wrenching and rapid and happens so quickly you’re left breathless.
And when you have kids, sometimes those two kinds of changes happen at the same time.
Our kids (ages 17 and 21) have started making plans for the summer. The older one has done this before, gone off with his mates on summer holidays. A thing I’ve never done. And this summer him and his girlfriend have decided they ‘re going to Japan for three weeks. I’m so proud of him. If you’ve been a reader of the blog for as long as I’ve posted on it, you’ll probably have an idea of why, but he’s such a smart, independent, utterly useless at the same time, but good man I’m proud of him and us for raising him.
The youngest has announced plans to go to London to see Bruno Mars with his mates. This is big for him (and us) and will happen after he turns 18.
Since this is happening at the same time as our eldest going to Japan, this means, for the first time since before we had kids we will in effect have an empty nest. Granted, for a couple of days. But still. It’s the start, isn’t it.
It’s real “Oh, we’ve hit some sort of milestone here, haven’t we” territory.
Because we now live in the house that I grew up in in my later teenage years, I can’t help but see echoes of my own past in all of this. My mum and dad had more kids, but I remember us all starting to feel our way in the world, I guess I never really appreciated how much of a wrench it was for my mum. Talking to my aunt about my mum and she said “Your mum was the only person I ever knew who loved the school holidays” – mum loved kids, loved being surrounded by kids and I’m not sure she was ever not looking after first us, and then other peoples kids.
There’s a silence that comes when kids grow up, when we lived in a flat, one of our neighbours would often talk about the noise of our kids when they were young and would burst out of the flat at school time, the cacopony of giggling, shouting, feet slamming on ground, doors being wildly flung open with abandon. And he’ll often say how he misses that noise.
I’m going to miss that noise.
Irish Stew in the Name of the Law
I honestly can’t tell you if my mum was a good or bad cook, I remember every meal was accompanied by bread and butter and most meals had chips. But, she was cooking for an army so you filled out with whatever you could. One thing I do remember though is her irish stew which is funny cus mum was English.
I’ve been chasing that stew for decades. Mum never taught me to cook (I was too busy being an idiot to ever want to learn). So all I can remember about it is some of the key ingredients and the taste of it and just how incredibly thick it was. As the eldest in my house I’d often do some nonsense with food and declare that I’d invented an entirely new way to consume it. With mum’s stew I remember dolloping it between two slices of bread and declaring it a stew sandwhich. That’s how thick it was.
Here’s how I do stew. Veggies (I mean the usual things here, but you can buy a mix – cube them all up). Potatoes(cubed). Meat – I like chunks of stewing steak (mum used mince meat, which I assume was cheaper – we were not rich – that said mince steak is an insane price now) and tomato ketchup big dollop, gluten free Worcestershire sauce. Some sort of beef stock. Now, lots of recipes suggest floury potatoes, and they’re probably right, but in a pinch I just make a slurry of cornflower and water and mix it in. Now, the problem I discovered with this is if you do the slurry late in the cooking (I cook a slow on a slow cooker all day) then the slurry will not cook in and will just sit – you can tell because the stew will go a sickly pale. You’re gonna need to either slowcook that longer or add that slurry right at the start. But man, give it a day before eating. And it’s amazing.
Still not as thick as my mums though.
Yesterday in Bluesky
(A selection of bluesky posts along with the occasional deeper dive in to them)
BUT FIRST! A Plug!
Over on patreon, it’s page 21 of Terran Omega The Ghosts of War!
21 pages of free comics. Read it from the start here:
www.pauljholden.com/patreon.php
(and if you want to support me making more free comics From as little as $1 per month you get access to the full colour version!)
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I went to do some edits on page one of Terran Omega and discovered this idiotic selection of folder names
Also actually, I don’t think any of them are right –
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Imagine making 2k on patreon a month. Oh man, the free comics I would just be doing every single day…! (I make $100 per month on patreon, which is a tiny miracle as is!)
Here’s the thing, it’s an achievable goal. It’s about building an audience and doing work that is consistent and is good. Sarah Burrni replied and said “I was once there. It was the most ideal form of work which I ever had. Of course it didn’t last […] but I realize that time was special”
I think there’s a massive drawback to, in essence, making patreon your only income. That’s a real danger point, on the other hand, that independence to do whatever work you want to – Simon Roy (https://www.patreon.com/simonroy?utm_campaign=creatorshare_fan ) just does whatever fanciful space stories he wants, as does “Bad Space Comics” https://www.patreon.com/badspacecomics?utm_campaign=creatorshare_fan
They both have around 1200-1300 followers and an unknown number of paying patreons (but notably they start their payment tiers at $3-$7 for comics.
Anyway, a man can dream, but until they bring back the little weird hovels at the bottom of rich peoples gardens for artists, this is my platonic ideal of an artist life.
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An observation:
I don’t think the problem is that Bluesky is a bubble I think the problem is my personal bubble isn’t small enough. My personal bubble sometimes needs to shrink to just my head and let nothing else in. So I can sit and think in peace. Instead of the old superman canard of too many voices at once.
So I think we all live in bubbles, no matter how much of the world you think you’re paying attention to there’s always stuff you’re missing. I mean my news consumption is limited to english language, that means the UK and the the US are where my attention sits in the day to day. But the UK and the US aren’t everything. And I can tell you now, I know far more about American politics than I do about Welsh politics (or Scottish, or Irish). So, sure, Bluesky is a bubble but the idea that anywhere else isn’t is laughable.
I do think too, if you can do it (and not all of us are in the kind of position where they can) it’s good to spend time away from the news. It’s certainly not healthy to wake up at 6 and spin out from doomscrolling on bluesky and then hit up the news for a palete cleanser.
This is why the blog has been good for me, I think. I wake up, look at bluesky, become despondent (I used to need to go look for the doom but now it comes to me), and then sit on the blog and think of whatever it is I want to talk about – which is grounding. It actually has been a great way to control that spiral. Yes, the world is important, yes, the stuff going on in the states is awful, and Ukraine, and politics in the uk, and sheesh the never ending list of terrible terrible stuff is hard to fathom. But there’s only so much of that I can control. Only so much I can actually do something about. The stakes are too high and I’m too powerless, and you feel like one person in a dinghy cosseted by heavy seas. Blogging, by contrast, I have complete control over, and the stakes are so low. SO LOW. It’s like sitting in the same dingy, in the paddling pool of a local leisure centre.
I do feel guilt for saying “Look, I can’t do anything about this crap fire that’s going on in the world, so I’m going to ignore it”. And when given a chance to perform an action that might help, I try and make the right choice. But my world is here, my family are here, my life is here, and the choices I make here are the choices that can make a difference every day and I think that’s probably true of every one every where and all at once.
Thats your lot! Bye!
