73 – an update… current affairs

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that Richard Kefford, my fellow blogger and writer, and I set ourselves the challenge of attempting every one on a list of seventy-three blog ideas – and not just that, but we have decided to collate and edit them and put them together into an anthology. We decided that publishing something which was seventy-three times two pieces of writing would be overwhelming, and so we have decided to break it down into three volumes – that is the aim! We have just about completed the first twenty-five (we are doing them in order!) and before too long we are going to really set to with the editing.

When we began this challenge we didn’t actually think we would attempt all of the suggested titles and ideas – it was just a bit of fun. It was indeed challenging because I confess, I had got stuck in a bit of a rut with my writing – always writing fiction, always writing longer stories which became novels, so tackling a shorter brief has been interesting for me with my blog here; before the seventy-three I chose what I wanted to write… so it was mainly memoires, family history, writing about food, critiques of books etc. Having to write a funny story, or a parody or about something controversial or a case study was indeed a challenge for me.

At first I struggled and had to really work hard with some of the tasks we had set ourselves, but as the weeks went by I found I was more able to tackle the list. However, now I look back at some of the early things I wrote, I want to rewrite them – and to write them here as blogs in the true spirit of the challenge!

The one which really sticks out as not being very good is ‘current affairs’; the one I did was just looking at stories in the news and to be honest it really was pretty humdrum. I’ve been pondering on what subject I could write about – at the moment there are so many really significant and troubling stories in the press – we live in difficult times. Although I have opinions on the various issues in the news, I am not very well-informed about them so anything I wrote would just be opinion and what ‘facts’ I could garner.

Then I came across an item which I do have an opinion on because I am in the very situation described.  Returns home by children and changes in parents’ well-being in Europe is a study which has been carried out by the London School of Economics and Political Science and the title speaks for itself. It is about the so-called ‘boomerang kids’ returning home to their parents, ‘the empty nesters.’ I was interested because that exactly describes our situation. Our children left home – first to Uni then to working and living independently; our daughter returned home last September, our son last December. We are delighted and love having them with us, and they seem to love being with us too, so all is well, all is very well here.

‘Boomerang kids’ and ’empty nesters’… yes that can be the current affairs topic I write about!