Unconditional Slug

Standing in Leeds train station on a summer Sunday morning, feeling a little worse for wear having travelled down from the higher parts of Scotland for a wedding the day before necessitating a 3.a.m start and a 2a.m finish with one too many champagnes thrown into the mix, a voice popped into my head that said, "it's time to write Unconditional Slug" Well you can imagine my resistance and protests to this request, feeling tired and a little queasy from the travel and celebrations and I answered, "Can't this wait?" You had long enough, it's now or never and though right at this time never sounded fairly tempting. You see I already had this idea some months prior and had not found the time to act on it and I am realising in that moment that divine slug was speaking to me was reminding me a few things, like there's no time like the present, it's now or never and life will always through up a million reasons not to do things! I conceded and as soon as I sat down on the train, I whipped out my tablet and began to channel Unconditional Slug. The sparking point for the book initially came when I and my children were placed in temporary homeless accommodation upon splitting up with my former husband. Don't get me wrong, I was and am still extremely grateful to our local authority for the support at that difficult time and the flat was a reasonable place to live in many senses, but it did have a couple of less desirable attributes namely the damp pong that no amount of incense sticks, plug in fresheners and oils could remove. It permeated your nostrils and clothes and greeted your senses first thing in the morning when the windows were closed like an overnight fart fest. Then there were the slugs, the resident bathroom slugs that came in an array of sizes from uber tiny to big mothers, squelching on and around the toilet, the floor, up the walls, in the shower and on the sink. Yum. We discovered much about the creatures during this time, like if you try to move them their immediate line of defence is to pee on you. They come in an interesting array of colours though we were blessed with mainly all black ones, since moving out I did find a large slug in a camouflage get up get up trying to break in across the threshold of my new house. (Argh they are following us and taking to insurgency!) So there you have it. The timing I guess also came in that I just had been to my best friend from my school days wedding. This was as romantic as she had been going out with him when we were both at art school in Newcastle and still living at home at that tender age of 18, a lovely local lad from Newbiggen by the Sea. But as life progresses, we both left the area at 19 for art schools in the Midlands the romance finished and they both married someone else. Those marriages ended and through the power of the facebook they found each other again and their love was sparked once more. Ahh love! And my love life had been a subject for me with the breakdown of my marital relationship of over 20 years, so if Unconditional Slug needed a time to visit this was a great time as any! Interestingly enough, at the end of the separation and the selling off of our marital home, I developed a blip on my face just above my lip on the right hand side. It swelled into a big lump and then opened into a hideous looking open wound that proceeded to take the shape of a heart, red and then to black before healing into a heart shape scar that I guess will remain with me for my days, a fitting tribute to heartache and break a bit like Harry Potter's lightening shaped scar is a tribute to the pain of losing his mother as an infant. All getting epic now! So that is the story of how Unconditional Slug came into being. I scribed over the following weeks on trains, planes and by the pool on my holidays because Slug insisted I do so and the rest is history!