I need to detox. I need weaning. I need something – a placebo, a substitute, a whatever – which will prevent me from going cold turkey.

Why? Because I’ve gorged myself. For two weeks I’ve been ingesting sport to the point of overdose. And not just any sport. This is unadulterated, uncut, 100% pure sport.

I love sport. I love football, rugby, motorsport. I love sport week in, week out. But once every four years something happens to me.

Once every four years the Olympics comes along and reminds me I only *think* I love sport, and that actually I’ve been just skimming the surface, absorbing the easily absorbed. Because every four years, for a couple of weeks, the narrow spectrum of my sporting enjoyment is suddenly widened into a vast kaleidoscope, embracing the incredibly engrossing but often criminally underexposed feats of, quite simply, heroes.

For these are Olympians, athletes at the top of their game, whose raison d’être culminates in this summit of like-minded, like-bodied and like-willed individuals, representing not their club, nor their sponsor, but their country, and whose experience of sport in its most crystalline form only serves to embolden their desire. They tread a mercurial line between triumph and despair and I’ve felt the knottiest of knots in my chest and the lumpiest of lumps in my throat for those whose efforts have fallen on either side of that line.

If these men and women fail to inspire a generation, I think to myself, we need a new generation.

But that is not all. My condition has been worsened by me mixing my highs. If I wasn’t intoxicated enough by the drama of those striving to go faster, higher, stronger, I’ve been experiencing the extra, ecstatic buzz of national pride.

I’ve been hooked on the stories of British endeavour: Super Saturday when the British medal count rose at an exponential rate; the exquisite surprise at discovering how good we are at sports I never knew about; and the genuine realisation of a decades old dream that our country can be a player in the global arena.

And of course, the fact that this year, the arena has been built here.

For seven years our nation has been party to a long and arduous gestation; the rows over money and sponsorship and facilities and transport and ticket sales and the lasting legacy – in fact, everything in the “How to stage an Olympiad” handbook – and the nervous apprehension that the appetite for it may not extend outside the capital.

But bugger me if we didn’t pull it off. We did it. We built it and they came. It was the best Olympics ever, both by our country’s performance and in general, and that makes me immensely proud.

So what now? There are the London Paralympic Games beginning on August 29th, where even more aspirations will turn into achievements regardless of the challenges. And finally, when the very last shiny medals have been bestowed, the very last triumphant tears have flowed and the very last anthems have been heartily bellowed, the Olympic flame will die until it is lit anew in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

I only hope the dreams and inspiration don’t die with it. Sportsmen and women are not born, they are made, and making them takes time and facilities and money, but more importantly it takes a national will and a national commitment to succeed. In short, while we have all basked in the brilliant light of the Olympic comet we now need to make the most of the long tail in its wake.

But let that start tomorrow. For today, let us thank London 2012. The athletes, the coaches, the organisers, the volunteers, the supporters, the broadcasters and everyone responsible for creating the most incredible, enjoyable, unbeatable 16 days.

Yes, I need to detox. Yes, I need weaning. But maybe not just yet…

The Tipping Point

It’s often said of strife and wars,

There are two truths: mine and yours.

That history is written by those who win,

And real truth lies somewhere within.

.

But then, one day, the stories fly,

Of acts too barbarous to deny,

Against a people whose only crime,

Was existing in wrong place and time.

.

And while our eyes take in the proof,

They mist as we resist the truth.

That children, playing as children should,

Were cut down, dust running red with blood.

.

 With leaden hearts we feel the fear,

Of victims of such tender years.

And as we stare at those innocent faces,

We hope they rest now in better places.

.

Those children speak to you and me,

From within the pictures we’d rather not see,

Begging us not to turn the page,

But to bring full force of our grief and rage.

.

The tipping point is upon us now.

To the innocent dead we make a vow:

Your history will be written by voices anew,

For we are human,

And we have children too.

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This poem was written in support of the #tippingpoint campaign led by Netmums and Britmums highlighting the horror of events in Syria, particularly the atrocities visited upon innocent civilians, many of them children.

Follow the hashtag on Twitter, visit the Netmums and Britmums pages, and take time to contribute to these online petitions at Save the Children and Avaaz.org. Use your voice and stop the killing.

I’ve discovered I am a compulsive sharer. The lure of social media in the last 14 days has been strongest when I’ve really had something to say but no one to say it to. It is uncanny how turning to Twitter has become second nature, and to not have that outlet was, at times, frustrating.

I’ve confirmed to myself that I use social media for affirmation and acceptance. Sharing is good, but for me the motivation to share comes from the feedback. I guess that is why some people join networks. In the last fortnight the only thing more frustrating than not being able to share is knowing what I had was gold dust and no one would ever see it.

I’ve surprised myself at the isolation I’ve felt not communicating with regular followers. I didn’t expect that. Given the points above, I thought my networking was quite selfish – maybe it is – but this fast has proved you’re not all ciphers.

Finally, I’ve realised that I don’t want to blog anymore. It is the one thing I haven’t missed. I wrote one draft piece while I was disconnected, just to see if the faculties were still operative (they were). Other than that I haven’t felt the pull of the blog at all.

So after this post I’m closing The Blog Up North for good.

Last summer I re-evaluated what my blog meant to me and what I wanted to use it for. Despite that – and despite myself – the pull was too great, I relapsed into old ways, and the love/hate relationship resumed.

Well, no more. The past 14 days have proved to me the only way to get a monkey off your back is to get clean and stay clean. Perhaps that’s something else I’ve learned; I don’t have the willpower to control it entirely on my own terms.

Anyway, I’m back on Twitter. According to stats, your average tweeter tweets 15 times a day, so I make that over 234,000 tweets I’ve missed in the last two weeks. I have some catching up to do! I’m also back on Facebook (for what it’s worth – ie Words With Friends) and I will be continuing to explore the new sharing network called bo.lt. I will trawl, I will share, I will continue to be the pain in the arse I always was.

Admit it, neither you nor me would want it any other way…

Why? Because.

Oh please elaborate… I hear you cry.

It started when I read about the Mashable Social Media Disconnect Challenge in which five guinea pigs will be taking the same challenge. I asked myself could I do it? Only one way to find out…

So from 00:00 on Sunday 18^th March until 00:00 on Sunday 1^st April I will be going on a social media starvation diet.

Social networks have become part of my everyday life in the past four years. There’s no escaping that fact. Reading and posting updates as well as reading and writing blog posts is as much a part of my daily life as food and drink. However, unlike food and drink, I inhabit the social networks by choice rather than necessity, or at least I think I do. Two weeks without online social sustenance will tell.

During the blackout I’ll be following the rules as laid down by Mashable:

*In our challenge, disconnecting from social media limits you to: emailing, SMS texting and content consumption via a news site or an embed video. This means you are not allowed to create or share any type of content. Actions like writing blog posts, uploading videos, commenting, Liking a comment, posting status updates, sharing a post, checking in, playing social games, chatting online, video chatting, or anything related to those actions are not allowed.

I’m not doing it because I feel I need a break. The social media themselves, or the people who inhabit it, haven’t forced my hand. I’m certainly not doing it as a stunt. It’s just to see how it goes. I’ll be conducting my normal daily life so it won’t be like cutting the cord by going on holiday. At the end of it all I’ll be back to tell you how it went.

If anyone reading this considers themselves a social media addict and/or blog slave and wants to try the same challenge, following the rules above, say so in the comments below. Bear in mind this isn’t meant to be group therapy. I won’t be on hand to provide comfort during periods of cold turkey. It would however be interesting to share our experiences when the two weeks are up.

Wish me luck. See you on the other side.

HUN

PS Because of this hiatus, the next Crowdsourced Sunday will be on Sunday 8th April.

Amidst the discourse about his life and his work there came a part – a short monologue – on his outlook knowing his life was nearly over…

This worldview, all at once poetic yet pragmatic, always positive and never pitying, was more remarkable in light of the fact Potter was nursing his wife through her own cancer battle while living with the physical challenges of his illness.

Within two months of the interview, both Dennis Potter and his wife had succumbed to their cancers.

Melvyn Bragg recounted the interview in a documentary this week and described, with teary eyes, how remarkable the words were from this frail but fiery man. I watched it completely entranced. It simultaneously brought a huge smile to my face while causing that familiar knot in my chest. I realised that for many of us, myself included, such clarity of thought and awareness of being is seldom felt.

I wanted to share Dennis Potter’s words with you and I hope you share them too.

I read a headline about Syria, but I turned the page.

Why were our children butchered by one American soldier? We did not deserve this. There is no Taliban here. No enemies of the allies. Why us?

I heard a radio report about Afghanistan, but I turned it down.

“To sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I saw the news on the television.

But I turned it off.

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This week’s 100-word challenge was prompted by Julia’s keywords “…but I turned it off…” and by recent events.

Click the badge above to visit Julia’s blog and the other contributions.

Amanda Egan took the self-publishing step last year with her debut novel, Diary of a Mummy Misfit, and the follow up, The Darker Side of Mummy Misfit. In this guest piece she gives us an insight into why she took that step, and the difficulty facing self-publishers in getting noticed in a crowded market.

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I tout my wares on the web.

I shamelessly sell myself, beckoning punters over with an alluring proposition.  ‘Look at me!”  I say.  “Come take a closer look at what I have on offer and see if I can tempt you.”

Every day I do the same thing, almost like pounding the pavements – just to lure another customer, to make another cheap buck.

Yes, I’m an Indie writer and my days are filled with raising my profile and praying that a few more books will sell and my exposure will go up another notch.  Because without the support of a publishing house or agent, all these jobs fall to me.

And of course there’s a fine line to tread – not enough plugging and I fade into obscurity, too much and I start to piss people off.  Oh to find that perfect balance!

When my first book was released last June, nobody knew who I was.  I’d just been rather unceremoniously given the flick by two major publishing houses (“Oops, sorry, just signed someone too similar!”) which in turn led to me sacking my agent for dragging the chain.  So I launched myself and my book into the cyber world and hoped for the best.

I quickly realised that I was the tiniest, most insignificant little drop in the ocean and that writing the book had been a doddle compared to the job ahead of me now.

I did (and continue to do) all the things you’re meant to – Facebook, Twitter, Klout, blogging, guest blogs (like this) and interviews.  I also gave my novel away to reviewers and prayed for positive feedback.
The 5* reviews came, as did the writing of book two and currently book three.  It became easier and easier to put a 90,000 word book together and harder and harder to promote myself.

Twitter’s great for promoting because it’s so immediate but you can’t be ramming your wares down peoples’ throats all the time – they get the hump.  It’s far better to plug a couple of times a day and then spend the rest of the time chatting, getting to know people and hoping that they find you interesting enough to go and check out your work.  It’s a case of building a rapport and trying to be witty within 140 characters, then standing back and hoping for the best.

But the absolute best way of selling – like any business – is word of mouth.  My readers do the job for me.  The Mummy Misfit Brigade are a loyal lot and they tell friends who go on to tell yet more friends.  I guess it’s pyramid selling in its purest form.  My readers are now eagerly awaiting my third book so I must be doing something right!
So, as I limp towards my first anniversary as an Indie writer, what have I learned?

• the writing is the fun part
• it’s a slow old burner
• it’s a 24/7 job
• it’s rewarding and disheartening in varying degrees
• it’s not for the lazy.

But watch this space.  I’m a fighter and I won’t give up until I hit the big time – hopefully with a mini-series. And then I can put my touting days behind me!

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Thanks to Amanda for taking the time to write this piece. Obviously, if you take your writing seriously and decide to self-publish, it is a huge undertaking. Getting the book written is just the beginning, and all of it is not for the faint-hearted or the thin-skinned it seems. So all you budding novelists, still interested in publishing that meisterwerk yourself?

Amanda Egan’s books Diary of a Mummy Misfit and The Darker Side of Mummy Misfit are available to buy on Amazon for Kindle and in printed format at Lulu.com. You can follow Amanda on Twitter at @mummy_misfit and her Mummy Misfit Blog is updated weekly.

Amanda Egan lives in London and is currently working on her third novel.

Greetings, Pop Pickers! Welcome to week 5 of Crowdsourced Sundays. This week I asked you to spin me round like a record, baby. Or something. And did you stand and deliver? You better, you bet!

Okay, enough with the song titles. This week’s subject was A RANDOM CD COVER. Music taste is a personal and fickle thing. It changes with the years, with our moods, with our circumstances. So there’s half a chance when you pick a disc at random you’ll find a complete shed. But who is to say what’s hot and what’s not? Nonetheless, I breathed a sigh of relief when I closed my eyes and pulled this off the shelf…

It’s difficult to be completely random when choosing from my collection. Why? Because they’re arranged alphabetically of course. Still, the Isley Brothers is far from embarrassing. It could’ve been worse. A LOT worse…

So to yours!

(Hover over the pics to see the contributor, click to open the lightbox viewer, pictures are randomly ordered so every time you visit they will be laid out differently)

In the words of Billy Wilder, you all have Van Gogh’s ear for music… Actually, I jest. There’s some great picks in there. Some of them even encourage me to take a listen. But most of all, once again I’m totally blown away by your enthusiasm to contribute. These collages get better and better. Thank you one and all for taking part.

Now for the bad news…

Crowdsourced Sundays is taking a breather for a couple of weeks, for reasons which will become clear next week. As Chicago once sang, you’re a hard habit to break, but I’ve been so amazed by the reaction to this, there is no chance it is going away for good.

What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a monster? No, it’s WEEK 5 of Crowdsourced Sundays. Want to know more? Read this bit here.

Last week was a tour de force on your part. Such a wonderful collection of school pics; individually great but really brought to life in the collage  – which is what it is all about after all.

So to this week. The theme itself was sourced via Twitter and two followers had roughly the same idea. So send any fan mail or hate mail to Adrian Snood and Claire Roberts (both worth a follow and a chirpy hello sometime).

This week’s theme is…

A RANDOM CD COVER

All you have to do is grab a random CD, take a photo of the cover and send it in! One’s musical taste says a lot about the person, and it is easy to deliberate over which one to shoot, but I want one picked entirely at random. Whether it’s Rachmaninov or Rizzle Kicks, just grab a case and shoot it!

NOTE: I’m going to be strict this week. CD covers only. If you only have music on one of these newfangledangled mp3 players then move along. Nothing to see here.

When you’ve got your picture, send it to me by any of these methods:

• Twitter: tweet me @himupnorth or tweet using the #crowdsourcedsundays hashtag
• Email: send your pic to crowdsourcedsundays@live.co.uk
• Facebook: post your pic to The Blog Up North’s Facebook page
  

Have your pics in by the end of Saturday. On Sunday morning the Crowdsourced Juke Box will be there for all to see (except it won’t have any actual music). As always, tell your friends about Crowdsourced Sundays and get them to join in. My love of music is well documented so I’m REALLY looking forward to this one…

You have to understand, getting the true story from this boy is like reading a detective novel whose pages have been scattered around town. You think you have all the clues, then discover an important leaf, with a salient fact, fluttering against a post box. Only by searching, revisiting and doubling back do you get the full story.

After gathering the pages and sellotaping the fragments we discover: there was a classmate, some name calling, and a playtime spent writing the case for the defence.

We have a Mum and Dad conference. The boy’s timing is deliberate and the strategy is obvious: get your rebuttal in now before parents’ evening later. Do we mention it? Or will doing so give the issue more oxygen than it deserves?

The vote is tight (1-1 but she has a casting vote) and the decision is: bring it up.

Two hours later we are sat in the small chairs. This is a much-underrated and clever ploy. It brings you down to a level below that which you are used to. It is all at once awkward and preposterous.

And although I’ve never gotten used to the small chairs, seven years of parents’ evenings have given me a sixth sense for detecting the timbre of these meetings. Tonight, as the academic achievements (on or ahead of target) are dispensed with summarily, it is clear what we will be talking about.

Only not quite.

We are told we need to talk with the boy, to warn him. We need to warn him that he risks getting a reputation.

Is this about the classmate and the name-calling and the witness statement?

Yes and no, she says. He needs to be careful what he says, how he says it and who he says it to, she says. She doesn’t want him to be the one always in the middle of things.

We shift in our small chairs.

She likes our son, she says. He’s bright, popular and always honest, she says. But she is concerned that his attitude might make him a target for those looking to draw him into trouble.

We nod our heads in our small chairs. And then OH starts talking…

It goes back two years, she recalls. He was part of a circle of friends and was happy. Then a new pupil joined the school and our boy was given the responsibility of looking after him. The new pupil inveigled his way into the circle of friends and our boy was edged out. Since then, since that very time, we could tell he was different. Less confident. More aggressive. He has had other friends since but it hasn’t been the same. It is as though some damage has been done.

And then she cries and cries.

I’m glad because if she hadn’t gone first, I know I would have. I know too this moment has been two years in the making, born from a period when incredible strain was crammed into a few months, when the playground was not a pleasant place and the end of the school year couldn’t come soon enough. Moreover, this moment is born of two years of regret, of wishing what might have happened, and it hurts.

Then, as we sit in our small chairs, the teacher only has one thing to say:

“What can I do to help you?”