Birthdays and Books

Welcome to the shiny and new looking blog. A lick of paint and a shifting around of the furniture was overdue so here we are, looking all different.

From time to time, I do wonder what I’m doing with this blog. When I look around the internet at the Disney “blogging community” I seem to be doing pretty much everything wrong. It would appear that I should be an early thirties Mum of at least three kids with names like Gunner and Zeke and my profile should proclaim that I am a social media strategist, which I think means you use Instagram and have more than 100 followers.

Anyway, I do what I do, writing the same stuff for the same loyal folks and it’s all good. It seems I am missing the opportunity to “monetize” my blog and allow it to fund my lavish lifestyle, but all of that sounds like a load of work that I don’t have time for.

I clearly shouldn’t go looking at what other folks are up to with their blogs, it’s just a distraction. I’ve never really considered myself a Disney blogger in the sense that most seem to, as they don’t drone on about everyday stuff in the glorious way in which I can and do!

Speaking of funding my lavish lifestyle, Facebook memories reminded this week that it is now five years since I self-published my first lot of trip reports.

Book Image
Mkingdon’s Tales of Family, Food and Florida

It launched in a blaze of typos and spelling mistakes but God bless you, many of you bought it, promoted it and gave lovely feedback. Though some members of the Disney forum community may never believe it, the intention was not to make money from that exercise. You will notice that I have not retired to a beach front Florida location yet.

The idea at the time was to do a few things…

  1. Save my trip reports somewhere a little more permanent than a forum site on the internet that I had no control over
  2. Learn how to self-publish a book as I had been toying with the idea of writing a novel and I needed to know how hard/easy it would be to get that self-published. I did eventually write that novel, All This and More, so you should buy it immediately.
  3. Be discovered by someone willing to fund my permanent residence in WDW and write about it for loads of money.

As Meatloaf once said, two out of three ain’t bad.

Anyway, if you bought it, thank you. The fact that is has nearly eighty reviews, almost all of which are five stars, is both incredible and very much appreciated.

Elsewhere in my Facebook memories, it showed what I already knew. I have always been slimmer and younger than I am right at this moment, but also that this time of year is a cavalcade of family birthdays. My nephew George, my niece Sarah and of course Louise all have a birthday over the course of two days in late March.

We went out for a lovely meal on Wednesday to celebrate Louise’s. It was our first meal out with Freddie and he was great. He enthralled the waiting staff, played and laughed his way through the entire thing. This augers well for the many dining experiences planned for Florida later in the year.

I have been off work this week and it’s been glorious. I have done very little indeed and therefore it qualifies as glorious. I took the very deliberate decision to do as little as possible and force myself to relax. I do find that hard to be honest. My type A, get stuff done mentality is my enemy. I constantly battle my brain’s need to feel as if I have “done stuff” before I am allowed to do nothing. Doing nothing of course has included a tip run, some tidying, some admin tasks I’ve been putting off and walking the dogs, but beyond that I have been using the couch and streaming services in equal measure.

I have watched all of The Looming Towers on Amazon Prime, which was excellent and much better than I was expecting, and having had my “Whitehouse drama” taste buds whetted, I sought out the original in the form of The West Wing and I devoured Season 1 in a few days. Season 2 is going much the same way.

With Easter upon us, and Happy Chocolate Day to you all by the way, you never know, the weather may be turning , the nights getting lighter, and in terms of what is most important, we are entering the home straight in the run up to our holiday. It’s roughly twelve months since our last trip so by the time we go in August it will be exactly far too long between trips and I think we are all feeling it. Rebecca, having not been with us last time, is suffering more than most as I think this is the longest period in her life that she hasn’t set foot on WDW property.

Right, I’m waffling now, a symptom of me not planning out my blog posts, which is something else I’m not getting right. Next week, there will be a “haul post” where I walk you through everything I got from Asda in the big shop. This will be linked to my Pinterest, YouTube channel and Friends Reunited account. Please, click, share, follow, subscribe etc etc.

Oh, that reminds me. During last week I saw a news article telling of some waste of oxygen YouTube “star” who was arrested at WDW. Sigh, this intentionally provocative, self promoting, desperate for views and clicks shite is everything that is wrong with social media and YouTube specifically. There’s some belting content to be watched on there, but these types need to be stripped of their smartphones, broadband and human rights until they learn their lesson.

Till the next time…..

Don’t Mention the Mushrooms!

To paraphrase a very famous song, it was eighteen years ago today. However, I do not refer to any member of the armed forces teaching folks to play musical instruments, instead, it was the day on which all of Louise’s dreams came true. Today, is our wedding anniversary.

Right about now eighteen years ago I was stuffed full of the wedding meal (we had chicken, but no mushrooms…that’s important. The mushroom debate seemed to take up about six weeks negotiation, angst and debate in the build up to the wedding due to certain family members not liking them) with that meal ending with some legendary profiteroles that we still remember to this day. It will come as no surprise that some of the most vivid memories from the day are food related. I also remember spending ages planning and organising all sorts of things for the big day but then managing to completely forget to even give a moment’s thought to the speech I would have to give at the reception. I don’t recall what I said, but it was a mash-up of thank yous and a lot of errs and ums.

A recurring theme of my ramblings here is the speed of passing time. This is all relative of course, as I know tomorrow at work will feel like twenty-five years, but the time since this photo was taken feels just a bit longer than a commercial break, and I don’t mean one of the Appliance Direct ads in the States.

wedding

 

A lot has happened in the years since I looked so dapper (Louise looked OK too I suppose), including a lot of great holidays, oodles of hard work, a fair few crappy decisions, lots of fortune both good and bad, and I may have gained a pound or two, but I’m not sure. We’ve done a decent job with the girls, I think, managed to keep a roof over our heads, and not kill each other, although Louise may have come close on an occasion or two. I  understand that I can drive the ladies crazy with my outright adorableness at times. Apparently porcelain is the symbol of eighteen years of marriage. For anyone desperate to get us a gift, you can keep your tea cups thanks, we’ve got some. I believe that the traditional symbol for a nineteenth anniversary is First Class flights to Orlando, so just hang on until next year as we haven’t got any of those.

Our celebrations have been fairly low-key. If you can call Louise working on her latest assignment for most of the weekend, watching our new obsession, The Killing, on Netflix, followed by a few episodes of The Walking Dead Season 2 celebrations.

We did celebrate Rebecca’s return from holiday this week. It is always a relief to have them home again isn’t it? Especially with half of the world seemingly desperate to kill each other and any overhead planes at the moment. She appears to have brought half of Turkey home with her after discovering a local market she liked. She returned with handbags, clothes, jewelry and make up, and I hadn’t even asked for a present!! She had a great time, although found it a bit too hot at times, and it hasn’t managed to usurp America from her number one holiday spot. I don’t think that was ever in doubt though.

By the way, last week I forgot to mention that the first big book of trip reports had been formally reviewed by a book review blog. You will know that it was favourable as I am mentioning it now. If you’d like to read the review, and explore the rest of that blog to get some ideas on what to read next then you can do so at Random Redheaded Ramblings here. The fact this book now has 72 five-star reviews on Amazon is just crazy, and I thank every single one of you that has taken the time to say how much you enjoyed it. Hopefully, the next one won’t be too far away!

If you have read any of my books, and liked them, please do try to find a few moments to tell the world on Amazon. It makes a difference to any folks considering buying them, and of course satisfies my endless craving for attention and praise.

I’m away to Facebook now to view pictures from what seems to be everyone I know being in Florida at the same time, posting updates just to make me even more wistful and moany about not being there myself. You know who you are!!

Till the next time…..

Just thank you!

So….it’s been a quiet weekend.  How about you?

I just wanted to post a quick and simple thank you to anyone and everyone who took an interest, posted something or indeed bought my book.

I have been stunned at the support, encouragement and generosity of spirit of you all.  At the risk of being sincere and serious for once, just thank you so much.

Yesterday was crazy.  I just couldn’t keep up with the messages, tweets and posts, so if I missed anything from any body I apologise.

As I type, the book is number 1 on Amazon in the Family Travel category, number 4 in the Travel category and number 528 in the overall Kindle book category.  It is hard to take that in really.

For those of you now reading the book, I apologise again for the grammar and spelling mistakes.  Proof reading 350,000 words all on your ownsome is tough, as after a while you develop word blindness, and as I look through the book now on my tablet I see mistakes which drive me mad.  I’m updating and correcting as quickly as I can and you may well get an alert from Amazon to get your hands on the update at some point.

For those who have reviewed the book, an extra thank you.  Fourteen five-star reviews at the moment.  Incredible.

So to stop me gushing any more I shall leave it there and get back to correcting stuff.

Just wow!

Till the next time….

That Book What I Wrote

What is this madness?  A blog from me on a Saturday?  Crazy I know, but these are not normal times we live in.  For a start, it feels like a Sunday due to the Goodness of the Friday I just had.

What is the reason for this earth shattering deviation from the comforting grip of routine and normality?  Well, I’ll tell you.

Some weeks ago, I undertook a detailed and extensive teaser marketing campaign, as I said…

“As some sort of teaser marketing campaign, I shall …..erm…tease you by letting you know that I am working on a “secret project” at the moment and at some point soon I may reveal it to you.  As an added bonus one or two of you might even give a toss.”

All none of you picked up on this, and I was inundated with absolutely no enquiries as to what I was up to.  As teaser marketing campaigns go, it may not have been the most successful in the history of advertising.

Weighed down by the massive sense of expectation this campaign created, I have been working hard on this project, and can now reveal all to you.

As I said at the time, sadly it is not the annual booking of our holiday.  If it were that would be the least surprising reveal since Duncan from Blue announced he was gay.  It is holiday related, and is in fact the news that I am now a published author!

That sounds grander than it actually is, as frankly anyone can be a published author as long as you can figure out the labyrinth of complexity involved in Amazon’s self publishing programme.  But still, published I is.

So it is with great pleasure that I can reveal to you all my first (and probably only) book, Mkingdon’s Tales of Family, Food and Florida.

Book Image
Mkingdon’s Tales of Family, Food and Florida

Don’t worry, I’m not trying to fund our next trip with the sales of this book.  Believe me, once Amazon and the tax man have had their share I would need the population of China to buy a couple each to be able to fund more than the taxi to the airport!

It is more that I have been meaning to do this for a while now, mainly to preserve them forever on somewhere other than a certain Disney forum.  Who knows when that might blow up or self-destruct in a fire-ball of reclining seats, tipping and right-wing views?  If it did, all the work I had put into these would be lost and I couldn’t have that.  I spend less and less time on there now, so felt that I needed to reclaim them for myself, and of course if I sell a couple (I have already bought one copy, so just one more sale to reach my target) at the same time then that would of course be lovely.

It’s a big book, and should represent decent value for the (random) price. (Amazon’s pricing engine is slightly more complex than space travel).  With ten year’s worth of holidays in it, the page count is as impressive as the photo quality isn’t.  Amazon’s file size restrictions mean they have to be a thumbnail of a thumbnail!

Some of the grammar and spelling will not win any awards.  I have tidied them up a little, but you will still find typos and the like, but hey, that all adds to the charm, doesn’t it??

So, please tell your friends, and even your enemies that such a thing exists, and if any of you are kind enough to invest in a copy, that in itself would be incredible, but should you even enjoy it, then that is what the review system is for on Amazon so don’t be shy to add one!

So there we go, I finally got my arse in gear and created a book from stuff what I wrote.  Enjoy!  We all enjoyed making the holidays that are in it.

Till the next time….