Full of woe?

I'm gutted! Devastated! Humiliated! OK, I'll calm down in a minute, but I don't think you can blame me for being upset. For the whole of my life, I've believed something about myself (obviously told to me by my parents) which I've just discovered isn't true!

I'd better explain. The other day we were talking with our eldest daughter about which days of the week the grandchildren were born on. We had a Monday's child first; and the new babies have been Sunday, Saturday and Friday in that order. You know the old rhyme, don't you? Monday's child is fair of face, etc. So we got to discussing how true the various labels were, in terms of our own family. We thought it was most unfair, and untrue, for poor Middle Daughter to be labelled 'full of woe' (being a Wednesday child), but the others (Sunday and Tuesday) have nice, complimentary descriptions attached to them. I was happy to show off about being a Friday's child - loving and giving. Nice one. I've always thought that was obviously a fair and accurate description of my loving and giving self! (!)

When it came to my husband, we giggled pityingly about the fact that he didn't even know which day of the week he was born on. Well, granted we were both born a long time ago! - but my Mum had made a point of letting me know (so I thought) about being a Friday's child. So this morning I got on the internet and looked up the calendar for our year of birth - and giggled a bit more to see that he was actually a Monday's child - fair of face. Ha! Well, I suppose he'll like that!

And then I checked my own birthdate. I don't know why - after all, I knew it was a Friday, didn't I. And I nearly choked on my cup of tea. There it was, in black and white (well, in figures on the screen) - a WEDNESDAY. What??? Has someone been fiddling with the calendar? I was so shocked, I had to exit the page, go back into it and look again. But there's no getting away from it: my lovely mum either got muddled up with the day, or just told me it was a Friday to keep me happy! Fair enough, if I'd gone through life believing I was Full of Woe, I might have turned out differently! (I hope my lovely middle daughter doesn't believe in all this stuff!).

Of course, I don't really believe in it myself, either - but it just goes to show how easy it is to believe something about yourself, just because you've been told it for so long. As a postscript, I had a quick look at the calendar for my older brother's year of birth. I was wondering whether Mum could have got the two of us confused - maybe he was the Friday child! But no - he was born on a Thursday. And for once, this is completely appropriate. He emigrated to Australia at the age of 22 and has lived there ever since. Thursday's Child has far to go!

OK, I'm off to bury my Woeful head in shame. Loving and giving? Well, I did try!

A tale of three babies - and a new e-book.

Well finally, after what feels like a whole year of waiting (and I guess it has been, actually!), we now have all three of our new grandbabies safely delivered. And ... it's a matching set! Yes, history seems to be repeating itself. Thirty-odd years ago we had our own three little girls, close enough in age to grow up together with all the joys, companionship and the odd argument that entails! And now, each of the girls has produced a daughter of their own during the last few months.

If you've managed to wade through my recent blog postings (and I know some of you have followed this on Facebook too), you'll know we had Caitlin Emily in July, Alice Molly in August, and now - last Friday, the 28th October, Kitty Ruth arrived. She's a lovely little sister for Noah George, who has been a specially good boy and as you can see from the pictures below, has welcomed her in the nicest way! Noah is going to grow up as the Big Boy of the family and we're sure all the little girls will look up to him and think he's the Bees Knees!

And here's a picture of the three girls with the three girls! How lovely that the cousins are so very close in age and we hope they'll grow up to be as close as their mummies still are.

Writing news has taken a bit of a back seat as you can imagine, but I do have one announcement: The first of my Olivia Ryan books ('Tales from a Hen Weekend') has now been published on Amazon for Kindle - at the very special price of only £1.14 (even more of a bargain than my Sheila Norton Kindle books!). Here's the new cover image:

And although I've decided to publish this under my own name 'writing as Olivia Ryan' (now everyone knows who I am!), you'll find the e-book on the Olivia Ryan page - there's no facility for being in two places at once on Amazon, unfortunately!

Just a couple of days before Kitty was born, I had a short story accepted by my editor at The People's Friend. It had been under consideration since April so I was pleased it's sold - especially as it's about a grandma whose whole family produces babies during the same year! Although it's not my life story at all, I must confess to having been inspired by events in our own family! So the story will always be a little bit special to me. I'll let you know when it's published.