CyberMummy 2011

The Brewery, EC1

Last Saturday I got up at Stupidly Early O’Clock, caught a train to London, battled against tube line closures and only just made it on time to a swishy EC1 conference venue. A very dapper feller in a top hat ushered me towards the entrance and my name badge with blog name was waiting for me at reception. When I arrived in the main conference space I was overwhelmed by a huge room of circular tables and a subtly lit stage with large boards displaying sponsors’ logos: This was big. There were over 400 delegates (and I estimated that only about four of them were men).
The number of UK mummy blogs has increased to around 2,500 in the last two years and the parent bloggers social network Brit Mums has a rapidly growing membership. The lead speaker was Sarah Brown, mum, campaigner, writer (and wife of the former prime minister), and the choice of seminars to attend throughout the day was mind boggling.

An array of big name brands dispensed free goodie bags within a market place of stalls at ‘CyberMummy Central’ and the spontaneous comments and thoughts of the social networking twitter-bugs were displayed on an ever rolling Twitter wall. In the Recharge Room you could get your hair or make up done, and enjoy a massage.

The conference opened with Lord Richard Allan, Facebook’s director of policy for the EU. I attended workshops on Marketing Your Blog, Working With Brands and Making Money, Blogging Essentials (Stats, SEO, RSS feeds, design) and Blog-Life Balance (time management). I scribbled furiously in a notebook (supplied free in one of the goody bags) and absorbed a phenomenal amount of information. I was inspired by Erica Douglas’s seminar and really enjoyed chatting to Antonia Chitty about the exciting new direction that I’m taking my life into.

I’m doing Erica and Antonia’s Become a Mumpreneur course at the moment and I’m loving it. It’s delivered in bite size chunks to my email inbox in a way that allows me to progress at my own pace without feeling overwhelmed. I already have sixteen ideas on how to create multiple income streams which will allow me to work flexibly from home, and I've only been on the course for a month. Erica now earns a full time income in part time hours whilst also studying full time. Antonia Chitty is a researcher, journalist, mumpreneur, and author and is full of amazing ideas to help me to create my own business as a freelance writer and much more.

I was initially worried that the event was going to be full of career driven super-mums who are way more confident than me. However, everyone I met agreed that although it felt a little odd to approach a complete stranger with “Hi I’m (Blogger) from  (My Mummy Blog) we were all in the same boat and it was actually quite exciting to meet bloggers in real life that I previously only ‘knew’ on line. I also found that even the most influential, charismatic, high profile bloggers were people, just like me, and not intimidating at all!

The day was rounded off by crowd sourced keynote speakers reading inspiring posts from their blogs. We were in tears at a mothers tale of childhood cancer, and then in fits of laughter at the witty words of others.

At the after party (sponsored by Three) I got tipsy quickly, ate crisps, mingled and left the building at the end of it all completely exhausted and laden with bags and bags of free give-away goodies.

The next day The Sunday Independent (26/06/11) reported,
“Forget Mumsnet... A new breed of “cybermums” is using the internet as an office, PR agency and campaign HQ to launch businesses and charities from their front room.”

Some bloggers were sponsored by brands to attend Cybermummy, but I bought my own ticket as a treat to myself. For the experience, the amount that I learned, the lovely people that I met and the bubble of inspiration and motivation that I floated home on, it was worth every penny.

Silent Sunday

Dear So and So

Dear Blog 

When we first started spending time together I had no idea that our relationship would become so serious. You grew out of my life, but now my life has grown around you so that you occupy too much of my thoughts and my time. You encouraged me to write the first draft of my memoir and introduced me to readers that gave me positive feedback. However, I think the time has come for our relationship to change. If you want us to carry on a romance with this kind of intensity you are going to have to start earning your keep. I am going to monetize you. I am going to turn you into multiple income streams. (I got these fancy ideas from Become a Mumpreneur.) I hope that turning commercial doesn’t make you ugly. Soon I am going to a parent blogger conference called Cybermummy. I don’t know what kind of tweeting cyborg they will turn me into, but I know that I will be different when I come back. I hope that you understand that this love affair must now turn into a business relationship. I hope that we can still be friends.

Love from

Your Affectionate Writer

Visit Become a Mumpreneur

Dear Literary Agent

Many thanks for your constructive thoughts and kind compliments about my synopsis and sample chapters. I would be happy to sign a contract with you and appreciate the efforts that you have already made to sell my work. I was amazed to hear that you have several publishers bidding against each other for my memoir, 'The Real Life of a Narrowboat Wife'. I understand that I am not your only client so your detailed feedback on the commercial value of the book was very welcome. I realise that I have not yet written that amazing synopsis, but writing to you in this imaginative way assures me that you are real, you are out there, and you are going to love me and my book.

Looking forward to meeting you.

The Author

 

Dear Mother’s Little Helper

I am worried about what people will think about us spending so much time together. Maybe they think we are co-dependent. When I tried to break it off with you I felt sick for weeks. I should stop worrying about what other people think and enjoy the fact that we are happy together. They say you are simply a serotonin re-uptake inhibiter, but to me you will always be, my imaginary friend Mick Jagger. Thanks for being there.  

Boat-Wife

Dear Reader

Thank you so much for reading. You are an important part of my life. I love to hear what you think, so don’t be shy, leave a comment below, and let’s make this blog interactive! 

Thanks 

Peggy

The idea to write letters comes from Kat at http://3bedroombungalow.blogspot.com/

You can click on her Dear So and So badge to read other Dear So and So letters. Cool idea huh?

The Doctor

I don’t usually publish pictures of The Doctor and the girls; I like the fact that they are anonymous on the blog; but I think that this picture retains their anonymity.

Have you ever done that thing where you write a wish list of what you want, to focus your thoughts and make it all come true? Once upon a time, after too many times tossed in a sea of stormy and unsuccessful romances, I wrote in one of my many scribbling books a list of the qualities I’d like in a perfect partner. I wanted someone passionate, interesting, and spontaneous with a real lust for life. It would also help if he liked narrowboating. Sometimes you hear love stories where the heroine finally realised that she knew her soul mate all along, but just didn’t know it yet. A surprise email from Friends Reunited, a lot of strange coincidences, and some time later I found myself travelling through space and time with my handsome Doctor and two perfect boat girls.

The Doctor is clever and playful, patient and loving and when he arrives home from work the girls scream like they’re at a Beatles concert and fall over themselves to fight each other for the first hug.
“My girls!” beams The Doctor proudly, and gathers both into his arms at once.
My Doctor, beams the Boat-Wife proudly.
They love his spaghetti bolognaise and the way he always has a good answer to questions about science, religion and philosophy. (What is God? How big is the sun? Do spiders have eyes?)
Baby Sister voices her appreciation by a happy cry of “Dad, Dad, Dad!” but Big Sister is more specific.
“I do love you this much Mummy,” (displays ‘this much’ with wide hands) “but Daddy is my favourite and best.”

The theme for 'The Gallery' this week is dads. Click on 'The Gallery' to visit other entries, and comment if you like them or feel inspired by them. Go and encourage and support blogging amateur photographers out there!

Contentment

Image Credit: Hemel FM

‘Sleep is for The Weak’ Writing Workshop has given me the opportunity to reflect on how my narrowboat life has changed over the last ten years.  I’ve been writing this blog for over a year now, through depression and bereavement. People always ask me, ‘What’s it like, living on a boat with kids?’

My blog is the answer to that question. But now, with a bigger boat, my beautiful boat girls and my handsome Doctor I think I can gingerly approach Contentment, perhaps introduce myself to her, and see if we can get along. So at the same festival that I went to ten years ago, I notice how my attitudes have changed...

Boxmoor Canal Festival 2011

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the 2011 Boxmoor Canal Festival.

For more than twenty years you have been supporting the famous Tring Canal Festival organised by The Wendover Arm Trust (or WAT) to fund the restoration of the Wendover Arm from Tring to Wendover.

As we are unable to hold the festival at our usual site in Tring, from this day forth the festival shall be known as The Boxmoor Canal Festival! You can expect to see decorated narrowboats, traction engines, fairground rides,  live music, a real ale bar, birds of prey, a craft marquee and boat trips on offer throughout the day. Later on you can see the Ellesborough Silver Band and the Fun Dog Event – best canal dog.  If you have children you may not see the inside of the beer tent this year. You are more likely to be standing beside the swing boats or the merry go round in the rain. But the real enjoyment this year is watching the eyes of your children transfixed on the falconry display, seeing an owl and a vulture swooping up close. Then you watch expressions change from fear to  delight as your three year old becomes absorbed in her first ever Punch and Judy show; oblivious to the rain she stands up at the front to shout out a reply to Mr Punch.

Note that the boat with flower pots, a bicycle and fire wood on the roof with washing hanging off the tiller is a live aboard boat.  These people do not really mind fishermen or Rosie and Jims.  You can ask them three questions. Is that your boat? Do you live on that? And; Isn't it cold in the winter?

Try asking that Boat-Wife there, the one with the fancy new boat. (She ought to polish her brass.) I asked her one little question, that was it and she was off!

Yeah the festival Wendover

In the beer tent I recall

She held our table spell-bound

With her stories that are tall

And cruising down the Cut

She told me all about it
She said when you get a boat
I know you're gonna like it.
And you won't believe the people
And the things that people do
But they're lovely water gypsies
In fact they're just like me and you.

(Read the full poem on this post http://narrowboatwife.blogspot.com/2010/07/angel-islington-to-uxbridge.html)

Tring Canal Festival 2001

We recently passed through Bulbourne and Tring. It reminds me so much of all my old boating friends, James Hopper Bissett, The Yorkshireman, The Rufty Tufty Biker Bloke, Lina From The Lock, Nancy-Moo, The Marine Engineer and The Original Boat-Wife. In 2001 I’d been living aboard for nearly a year and this was my impression of my first ever canal festival. 

Tring Canal Festival 2001 

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the 2001 Tring Canal Festival.

For eleven years you have been supporting the famous Wendover Canal Festival run by The Wendover Arm Trust (or WAT) to fund the restoration of the Wendover Arm from Tring to Wendover.

I am pleased to announce the joining of this festival with the Bulbourne Waterways workshops weekend (usually held in July) and from this day forth the festival shall be known as The Tring Canal Festival!

We are opening with a Punch and Judy Show and Big Foot and Furry Foot the Clown, followed by

Leighton Buzzard Youth Theatre and the tale of the carrying boatmen. Please don't laugh at the little boy at the front who sings loud but out of tune.

Bob the Builder will be appearing in the arena to announce the winners of the under fives painting competition but he can't actually speak with that great big costume on so someone else is gonna do the talking.  In between his public appearances we're hoping that Bob remembers to turn up for his shifts on the canal restoration project.  There's a retaining wall that needs finishing and I don't want to hear that he's in the studio again. We had to build Little Tring Bridge without him this year following the success of his Christmas number one, ‘Can We Fix It? (Yes We Can)’.

There's a gentleman here who has lost his friend somewhere near the classic cars exhibition.

He's got tattoos and a waistcoat and his black hat has got two feathers and canal festival badges on it from Wendover 95, 96, 99 and 2000.  What do you mean everyone's dressed like that?

But talking of those types come on, why have some of you got A4 paper taped to your back saying that 'This is the Wendover Canal Festival 2001 NOT Tring'?

The three men dressed in sacking each with a box hanging around his neck are actually Ye Olde Fruit Apparatus, a human fruit machine. Dip into each box and if you find three pieces of matching fruit it's the jack pot!

The band in the beer tent tonight are The Geezers. They will be playing both kinds of music, rhythm and blues, and the real ale will be served by volunteers from the Lion Hearts Cruising Club.  In the craft tent there are opportunities to buy sugar mice and coconut ice. There are also watering cans, coal scuttles, Buckby cans, mugs, coasters and wooden spoons  all with traditional roses and castles painted on them.

As you wander around the festival you will notice that there are many different types of boater.

There is a group of lads who are spending the festival by their tent in the car park so that they can listen to their car stereo really loud. These people are normally hire boaters but maybe no one would hire them a boat this weekend.

Note that the boat with flower pots, a bicycle and fire wood on the roof with washing hanging off the tiller is a live-aboard boat.  These people do not like fishermen or Rosie and Jims.  Rosie and Jims have got really shiny expensive narrow boats with two rag dolls in  the window and are also known as Brass Polishers.  They only take their boats out on very sunny bank holiday weekends, drive too fast past moored boats and try to tell other people how to operate locks. People who don't have boats but wish they did, stand at locks and watch boaters struggle with lock gates, but don't help. They ask three questions. Is that your boat? Do you live on that? And; Isn't it cold in the winter?

The sun tanned people with neckerchiefs and brown cords on are from working boats. These are seventy two foot historic boats that travel with a butty of the same size selling fuel to live-aboards or doing contract work for British Waterways.  These people have very beautiful boats decorated traditionally and have the ability to squash themselves up very small so that they can live in a tiny boat mans cabin.

Tomorrow the festival will open with a Punch and Judy Show and Big Foot and Furry Foot the Clown followed by Leighton Buzzard Youth Theatre. And time becomes a loop. But if you sample enough of the Real Ale in the beer tent tonight you won’t remember a thing about today, and can enjoy the same festival all over again tomorrow.

Silent Sunday