Hell hath no fury like a father in the queue for a National Trust car park shuttle bus. Or so I found out last weekend when I truly discovered what ‘Giving someone daggers’ actually felt like. Seriously. Had the guy not had a screaming toddler strapped to his back I’m not sure I would have lived to tell the tale. Yes, it was freezing cold. Yes, he was at the front of a very long queue and it might have looked like I was pushing in. But all I wanted was to ask the nice lady in the high-vis jacket and matching Santa hat a question.

“It’s OK!” I chirruped, hoping to change his stony face. “Not pushing in!”

The guy snarled back. Actually snarled.

Had we not all enjoyed a lovely Christmas market and twinkly light display I would have forgiven him his grumpiness, but this was a juxtaposition of a magical Christmassy setting and the world’s most-furrowed brow.

WARNING: BLOG CLICHÉ COMING UP... Is it just me or have people gone a little crazy in the run up to Christmas this year? I blame Black Friday. It makes me a little bit ill just writing those words, because Black Friday isn’t really a thing in the UK. It’s a US tradition linked to Thanksgiving and as far as I could tell it was simply an excuse for retailers to palm off a load of old tat to wild-eyed shoppers wearing knuckle-dusters.

I don’t mind a bit of over-excitement at Christmas (we regularly have to pin my Dad’s feet to the floor and find his volume switch on Christmas Eve) but it’s the highly-stressed, joyless, endless shopping and rushing about that’s going on right now that is the issue. 

I was merrily enjoying a Christmas wee in a well-known department store when I noticed a gift card stuffed with £20s on the cubicle floor. I rushed out (after doing all the necessary hygiene checks) to find the lady who was in there before me, expecting something reminiscent of the final scene of It’s a Wonderful Life, only to be thanked with a snatch and a grunt. Next time I won’t wash my hands. That’ll show her. 

But Christmas is also a time of forgiveness (apparently – not sure why – Jesus? No, that’s Easter). So I smiled back at the snarling mega-dad, and I shrugged at the indifferent money-loser-er and I’ll try very hard not to ram my buggy into people as I do my Christmas food shop – even if I am in danger of losing that last pack of mince-pies to a stray octogenarian in M&S.

God (or whoever) bless us. Every one.

Don't get me wrong. I realise that I have missed the blogging boat by around seven years, but I secretly like the fact that blogging is now seen as somewhat old-fashioned. It's probably that, and what I am about to explain, that has made me want to pick up my quill and plump the carrier pigeons ready to send my messages out into the world.

You see, I am a writer by trade. In that, I write words and people pay me to do so, but by no means am I on the best-seller's list. I write activity books for children, mostly, and goodness do I know how lucky I am to do such a wonderful job (apart from when I meet new people and have to explain what I do. It starts with real interest from the said party, followed by a glassy look and furrowed brow - '...and you get paid for that?'). The physical writing I do rarely stretches longer than a paragraph per page - so I suppose it's my imagination people are actually paying for....

Anyway. The second reason for why I am now drawn to enter the blogosphere (I just had to Google how to spell that) is that as well as being a writer, I am a mother, and I mix up my writing hours with looking after my freakishly beautiful three-year-old and 10 week-old daughters. I love it. I can't say how much I love it simply by using the mere hundreds of thousands of words in the English language.

However, over the course of a single day I can have a thousand thoughts, ideas, questions which, God love her, my little three year old would find tremendously boring. You see, if it's not a Disney Princess or one of the dancers from Strictly, she's just not interested, 

In days gone by, should I think any of my musings be interesting enough, I would have swung round in my office chair and chatted to one of my lovely ex-colleagues. Whereas a lot of these wonderful people are now my friends, they're not there on tap anymore. I can't ping them an email and meet them in the kitchen for a 10 minute gossip and moan about our line manager. One: because teleportation hasn't been invented yet, and Two: because my line manager is now me. I don't want to moan about me. I like me. 

I suppose that's why a lot of my freelance friends and I spend a good quantity of time on social media sharing articles and random thoughts. Facebook and Twitter have replaced the staff kitchen and email exchanges. Whereas once a trending YouTube video would fly round the office internal mail, it's now posted to Facebook for us all to comment on. 

So, to sum up, I suppose blogging will be my way of talking to my colleagues (me) without scaring my daughters or the neighbours by carrying on an external monologue. If only I were being paid to write this, if I compare it to the word count in my last few published books I'd have earned £1000s by now...

As a writer, every aspect of writing holds intrigue and possibility for me. Even poetry. Maybe not poetry.

For a long time I've daydreamed about the possibility of writing a script for stage or screen, but having no background in it I conveniently decided that I'd need proper training before even attempting to tap out any of the ideas floating around in my head. 

Enter The Husband:  Stage Right. Thanks to a well-known voucher site, my husband found a heavily-discounted screenwriting course, one day in length and in a central London location. It was a done deal. 'Great!' I said, smiling, whereas inside I was kicking and screaming like a toddler. 'But I don't WANT to better myself!' 

I'm sure that's how all writers feel, right? Write? 

As it was, I went to the course and learnt quite a bit. Watched some clips of iconic movies and deconstructed their scripts. The content was a little skewed towards writing Hollywood blockbusters, which seemed to jar with the rest of the attendees somewhat, and we were repeatedly told it was nigh-on impossible to make a living as a screenwriter, but aside from that - all good fun. 

Mainly, however, the course served the purpose of reminding me that, before the onset of babies and, more recently, pregnancy, I was a person who only really had her own career to think about, and could revel in the idea of taking that career a different way. 

Since then I have read a lot of scripts thanks to the amazing BBC Writer's Room, written a few sample pieces and kept an eye out for possibilities. No matter what, it remains the most inspirational time spent in a church - for  me , anyway.