So I have good news and bad news…the good news is we have another fabulous blogger to feature this week: Alison aka Madhouse Mum. A relative newbie to the #coolmumclub but a stellar contributor none the less, she even won best post just a couple of weeks back with her piece on The voice of experience. She’s got a wise head on those shoulders…obviously not been knocked off on any of those Taekwon-do fights yet…

The bad news guys is the guest series is being paused for the summer hols. Along with the linky…the two go hand in hand and we can’t have one without the other. Please drop me a line if you’d like to be featured for the grand return in September…I’m always looking for subjects 😉

Anyway, back to Alison. You are going to LOVE this one…

x MMT

Greetings fellow bloggers aka don’t recognise the kids anymore – too busy blogging, oh and job – what’s that?

I’m new to all this blogging lark and I’ll tell you what – it has knocked me for six…taken over my life (almost). It’s overwhelming! I started my blog: MadHouseMum – after my best friend in New Zealand sent me a book that she thought I would enjoy: Ali Smith, ‘How to be both’. The way the narrative is written, its conversational style, sparked something in me and my blog was born! In fact, the title is pretty apt for us bloggers and sums it up really.

Now I am a complete technophobe. No really. I know that others claim to be, but I am the real deal. Black boxes terrify the shit out of me, remote controls make me want to hide my head under the cushion and weep, I forget passwords, how to log in to everything, oh I could go on and on.

I can cope with Facebook and ‘get’ Instagram. (One of my daughters set it up for me). I set up a Twitter account and just link dumped for months – I’ve only just learnt what this means. I’m terrified that I am creating all sorts of faux pas on Twitter without even realising it. I did ask a fellow blogger whether I could swear (she said, ‘no’). I do sometimes swear in my blogs, though my mum says I should know better and my daughters sometimes shake their heads at me.

I have 4 daughters and one step daughter. I also have a step son, who lasted 6 months in this Mad House, before escaping to Australia and has not been seen (nor hardly heard from) since. My daughters are aged: 12, 14, 15 and 16 and my step daughter is 21. She has also escaped to Uni. So left living it up in the Mad House are myself and partner, 2 dogs, 2 cats and 4 girls. Yes, hormones fly around this house like fake nails, tights and wine: in copious amounts. Partner does have a shed, but it’s so full of crap that he can’t get in. He sold his motorbike to pay for something we needed at the time – probably more tights or tampons. All he has left to escape to is his drum kit and I even moan about that – poor bloke.

Our real job is running a Taekwon-do school together and teaching around 450 students a week. I’ve kicked and punched the hell out of people…ok…done Taekwon-do, since I was at university over 20 years ago. I’ve competed for England and Great Britain on and off – babies permitting – for about 20 years. I’m even a World Champion (gasp!) All the girls do Taekwon-do, all are black belts and teach in our classes. It keeps us all pretty sane for some of the time and gives us the tools to sort out any problems at other times, haha!

In my past life, with my ex, we took the girls on a trip around the world for 7 months. They were aged: 4, 6, 7 and 9. I wrote a blog about our travels that I e mailed to friends and family, but back then, 2008/9, blogging was not what it is now. Partner keeps telling me that I should turn that travel blog into a book. It obviously planted a seed for a love of blogging.

MadHouseMum is a blog about teenagers, dogs, random musings, stuff that I read in the papers or on social media and the odd poem thrown in. I’ve always loved poetry and my thesis at university was a poetry anthology. Partner is a graphic designer by trade and he does all my artwork. I keep it simple, get stressed when something in WordPress doesn’t work and get scared by a URL or a widget. It really doesn’t take much.

So, what are my aims for my blog? Well, I won’t be doing any product promoting. For me personally, that isn’t part of my journey. I just love writing. I love sharing my thoughts with others who then share theirs back. At the moment this is what my blog is about – a creative outlet like an artist paints a picture. I’m hoping that from my blogging, other creative ideas will sprout: I have just written a children’s book that I will shortly be sending to hundreds of publishers to get rejected over and over again and will want to give up and say: f@#k you all! I hope I am made of stronger stuff, however, and that my blogging journey will wind its merry way around different landscapes, meeting all sorts of different, wonderful and like-minded people along the way.

Looking forward to meeting you all. Pour a glass of something and settle yourselves down to check out: www.madhousemum.com and feel free to comment and tut away and feel totally embarrassed for me – I’m used to that with teenage daughters. As I mentioned before, I am also on Twitter: @MHouseMum (I actually had to go and look that up – you see, THAT’S how crap I am!) and Instagram: madhousemum01 (yes, looked that one up too).

Thanks for listening to skim reading my bollocks profile.

Alison x