Minds in the making

These are the first four chapters of a sequel to my short novel "OCD-Odd and Certainly Different". This is through the perspective of the main characters (from the previous novel's) daughter.

Chapter One:

Tick tock.

The clock in her bedroom went. My lungs longed for the moment where I could cough out all the dust that had been building up.

Tick tock.

My legs were pressed into my chest. My neck was bent at an uncomfortable angle.

Tick tock.

I could hear her footsteps approaching. I closed my eyes and waited.

“I found you!”

She opened the door and pulled me out of the closet.

“Mama, why do you always find me?” I asked, twitching my nose.

A hand brushed through her lucious brown hair and ruffled my dust-filled black hair.

“That’s because you always hide in the same places Evie. You like to smell my clothes.”

I stood up, feeling mischievous she was not able to pinpoint the real reason I was in there. Mama kept jewellery from her mother in there. Green emeralds, red rubies, white pearls, and golden chains. I loved to try them on, but she rarely allowed me to. Mama also keeps little hidden treasures in her closet. Jars filled with dried flowers, plants, old rocks, and the richest soil in the northern hemisphere. She used to be an explorer, or a drifter before she married and settled here, in Santa Rosa.

There was one other reason I chose to hide in the closet. It was almost Christmas, and I was looking for presents. I only found it once, Mommy had hidden a new toy in a cupboard too high for me to reach. While making dinner, she opened the cupboard and the toy fell into the casserole. No one noticed, until dinner started smelling strangely, and we opened up the oven to reveal a spinning top half-melted in the casserole. But I was lucky that time. Mama is smarter than Mommy when it comes to hiding presents.

Mama spent the next ten minutes combing the dust out from my hair, with the same comb we used when Mommy got head lice.

It wasn’t long before I could hear the front door open. Mommy was home with groceries.

“MOMMY! WE’RE IN THE BATHROOM!” I shouted.

There was no response, but I could hear the rustling of the plastic grocery bags.

Mama seemed to notice the peculiar feel in the environment, so she gave me a hair tie from the counter and ran to help mommy unpack. I could hear whispers. Perhaps they were discussing my Christmas presents? I tied up my hair, and walked towards the whispers.

It was all so quiet. I could only take in a few words.

“Killed… why… tried to help… failure… himself HIMSELF!.. I’ll make dinner, why don’t you rest.”

The last part was mama, offering to make dinner for mommy. My eyes began welling up with tears. But I could hear music, which always cheered me up.

Mama made spaghetti with garlic bread and salad. Little bowls at each placemat for parmesan. Mommy wasn’t here. She went to visit Laney for emotional support.

Mama spooned the pasta onto my plate, along with salad, a piece of bread and a pinch of cheese.

Dinner was silent for the most part. I didn’t feel it was right to pry.

After we had eaten, mama cleared the table and brought out the tea mugs. Mine, she decorated herself with special Italian paint and broken pieces of seashells collected from the Dead Sea on the rim. Mommy’s had grape vines along the rim from a Swiss vineyard and it was painted with the wine from that very vineyard. Lastly, mama’s mug was the largest. With pearls from the Indian Ocean along the rim, painted black with squid ink. These mugs were never to be used for drinking.

Mama used a hand carved spoon from Africa to spoon out the dried tea leaves from one of her jars into our mugs. She poured boiling water from a Chinese kettle into the mugs and waved the fog aside. Lastly, she got out her book and watched the patterns formed by the tea leaves.

She learned this technique from a young girl she was travelling with named Sage, who taught her the magic of special tea leaves.

Mine stayed in place for the most part.

“Mama read mine.”

She flipped through the pages of her old yellow book.

“Evelyn Rose Rivera. You will win battles. You will fight. You will be challenged.”

I smiled proudly.

“Now do mommy’s.”

She examined the moving patterns and flipped through her book.

“Eden Amethyst Rivera. She will be tested, but will ultimately reach a state of total bliss and happiness.”

She then looked into her mug and flipped through her book.

I could tell something was off. Her face changed colour briefly.

“Melanie Katherine Ward. I will be content, but…”

She paused. I could tell there was more.

“That’s it. Very good! Very good Evie, if mommy were here she would be ecstatic. Let’s pour them back in the pot.”

Before I could catch a glimpse of her mug, she poured it in the pot.

The pot was filling up rapidly. Sage had taught her, this tea is not for drinking. It is to be disposed of in a large body of water. For some reason. Since we do our readings every week, this would be very difficult to accomplish. So we pour our tea in a pot, and when it fills up, we empty it in the ocean.

Mama then filled up a glass of water and handed it to me along with my pill.

“How’s it been today?”

I studied the window, and was relieved to not find Martha sticking her head in. Such a snoop.

“Good. Very good.”

I swallowed the pill in one reluctant gulp. Mama kissed the top of my nose.

While tucking me into bed, mama snuggled me under the quilt Auntie El made for me when I was born. I had ladybugs hand sewn onto the oriental-like designs.

“Mama, what happened with mommy?”

She sighed heavily.

“Mommy had a client that did something very bad to himself. Mommy is sad because she tried to help him, but ultimately, it didn’t work.”

She put a glass of water on my nightstand and turned out the light.

“Goodnight Evie.”

I put my golden necklace with the letter “E” in a crystal bowl.

“Goodnight…”

I said to no one in particular.

Chapter Two:

Our home isn’t actually that weird.

But we recently moved from a no bedroom apartment, just one pull out couch we all shared. The kitchen was also the living, laundry, studio, and bedroom. The bathroom was separated from the rest of the room by a curtain. That was weird.

Mama brings lots of things from her travels, but the majority of them lie in cupboards or closets.

Our home is fairly normal. Faded blue walls, a crowded kitchen, a living room also used as a laundry room, two bathrooms, two bedrooms, an open closet used as mama’s studio, a balcony with Christmas lights strung up all year round, a small aquarium, and a closet we call the dark room.

The dark room used to be a broom closet, but now we use these special brooms made from yaks thick coarse hair that mama brought. It’s in the living room now.

The dark room is precisely how it sounds. It’s a dark room. It’s for me, when I need to calm down, or think. The dark room helps me sometimes, but I can’t stay in there for too long.

Despite that, our home is pretty normal, and likewise the environment.

We adhere to a pretty constant routine.

Wake up. Mommy makes breakfast, mama feeds the fish. I take my medicine. We eat, mommy drops me off to school. Mommy goes to work, mama stays at home and works in her studio. Mama picks me up, mama makes me a snack, sometimes I help her with her art.

Mommy comes home from work (sometimes with groceries) and makes dinner. We eat, I take my medicine, mommy helps me with my homework. Mama and mommy usually tuck me into bed, mommy and mama go to sleep.

On Mondays we do tea readings, on Wednesdays I see my doctor, on Saturdays Aunt Laney comes over for brunch, if it’s the last day of the month, we have a dinner party at Auntie El’s house, and if it’s a really special occasion like Christmas, the whole family comes together. Even Grandpa Gene.

It’s a good routine. We rarely stray from it.

Mommy is a good cook. She doesn’t tend to follow recipes, but she does tend to stick with the same meals she knows work. She often makes a sandwich for me, that was her favourite sandwich when she was younger. Jack cheese on pumpernickel bread with butter, salami, onions, and two tomato slices. It’s the best tasting sandwich in the world. Something I hate that mommy does is fill the home with oranges. Oranges, orange scented candles, orange coloured pillows, I detest the colour orange as well as the fruit. But mommy loves it so much. Mama used to make the whole home smell like garlic, as it was her favourite scent until we made her stop.

Mommy is a therapist, I am told. But I’ve never seen her work. I’ve never been to her office. She helps people with their brains everyday, that’s all I know. But not even she could help me with my brain. Only medicine could.

Eden Amethyst Rivera. Her full name. She is less adventurous than mama, but is very emotionally strong. Mommy lost people. She lost her grandparents at the age of six, she lost her old nanny Alessandra whom she loved, and she recently lost a client. But she still makes her life about helping other people. I hope I will be as strong as mommy.

Today was a Saturday. This morning, mama and me decided to decorate the tree. We make our ornaments every year with things we find in forests and things people litter on the grounds of the city. Cars made from paper cans, people made from sticks, stars make from painted wrappers, and animals made from rocks. We also strung a line of braided plants to wrap around the tree. Mama showed me how to make vines out of long green plants we find in forests.

It was a nice morning. Mommy was busy in the kitchen making food for Aunt Laney. She was making black coffee with little metal cups filled with milk and cream and a glass pitcher filled with orange juice for drinks. A platter of scrambled eggs, a basket of homemade muffins, a big fruit salad consisting primarily of oranges, flax seed crackers with Brie cheese to spread on, and mama’s infamous homemade cabbage rolls which mama makes ahead of time and puts out for every brunch. Mommy usually eats them to not make mama feel bad, but they are truly dreadful.

The radio was playing Christmas carols, and mommy was balancing the phone in between her shoulder and her ear talking to Auntie El. Timers were going off for the food, mama was showing me how to wrap the vine around the tree, I almost didn’t hear Martha tapping at the window yelling at me to let her in. I didn’t was to see her today, so I turned away and waited for the tapping to fade out. She grew impatient and went home.

There was a knock on the door, which I was convinced was Martha once again.

“Mommy, can you please tell Martha to leave me alone, I don’t want to speak to her!”

Mommy nodded, but opened the door to reveal Aunt Laney holding platters of food and bags of unknowns.

“Oh Laney! We weren’t expecting you for another half hour!” Mommy exclaimed.

“Oh, I know Eden, I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead of time, but I couldn’t wait to see you guys! I also thought you might want some help with the Christmas decorating.”

Aunt Laney set down her bags in the kitchen and came to greet me with open arms.

“Hello Evie! Merry almost Christmas!”

I took in her scent and everything about her. She was older than both mommy and mama, yet younger somehow. Her hair was sleek and slightly above her shoulders. She dresses in form-fitting dresses, and wears makeup that looks as if it was professionally done.

She took me in too. But I looked how I always do. Long black hair, light brown eyes, pouty lips, olive toned skin, birthmark resting on my neck.

“I have a present for you. An early Christmas present. Would you like to open it?”

I nodded with excitement, and led her to the Christmas tree. She brought her black grocery bag with a medium sized box addressed to me.

“It took me some time to find this, but I knew you would love it.”

I opened the wrapping paper with care, knowing mama would want me to save it, to make more ornaments or to put on the wall behind the tree.

Inside the carefully unwrapped cardboard box was a miniature carousel. It was white with gold details and pink horses that moved if you twist the small crank at the top.

She was right. I did love it.

“Thank you Aunt Laney, it’s beautiful! Mommy, mama come look!”

They hurried over and admired the gift.

“Laney that’s amazing! Oh it’s perfect for Evie, she does love miniature objects.”

“Beautiful. Just beautiful!”

“Delicate, porcelain, fragile, intricate, outstanding gift Delaney.”

Comments were being thrown around concerning the carousel. I wondered if they were competing to see who could think of the most adjectives that describes the carousel. Mommy took the carousel to put in my room, and mama took the wrapping paper and the box.

Brunch was perfect. I took some morning medication with my apple juice and we exchanged stories from the past week. We were able to avoid the topic of mommy’s client.

When Laney left, mommy cleared the table and began washing the dishes. Mama took the wrapping paper and smoothed it out.

“We can save the wrapping paper and use it as wallpaper for the wall behind the tree”

Hearing this comment, mommy got out the iron which we would use later on in the day.

Mama took the cardboard box and reshaped it into a feeding trough as I filled a container with the leftover scraps of eggs, morsels of muffins, pieces of cracker and drops of juice. We filled the box with a portion of the leftovers and I set it outside our door. There is a cat that comes around who is not well fed in search of any food he can get. We don’t know the cat’s true name, we just call him Phil. He usually stops by and eats some of our leftovers. Mama also brought out a bowl filled with water. The rest of the leftovers we grind up and bury outside for it to degrade naturally into the soil.

Nothing ever gets wasted here.

Chapter Three:

It was the night.

Mommy was boiling water for tea, to drink, and mama was finishing up her Christmas piece.

“Maybe you can bring this to work Eden, hang in your office when it’s done.”

Mommy came and planted a kiss on mama’s head, stroking her beautiful hair.

As she did, mama gasped in pain. I turned from tinkering with my carousel to look. Mommy pulled a large chunk of hair off of mama’s head.

“Eden what the hell just happened?” Mama said disregarding the fact she was using curse words in front of me.

Mommy couldn’t speak. She just kept staring at the chunk of hair. I for one couldn’t stop staring at the bald spot it had left.

Finally mama turned around.

“EDEN WHAT’S GOING ON?” Mama yelled.

She was near tears.

“Mel, calm down. Put on a hat, we’ll take you to the hospital. I’ll call Laney to stay with Evie.”

“No let me come! I want to make sure mama’s okay!” I protested.

Mommy grabbed a flower hat off the rack for mama.

“No Evie. Take your medication, go to your room and Laney will be here very soon. Don’t worry about mama.”

“But-“

“EVELYN! Go to your room I’m not going to say it again.”

She used my full name, I know she meant business.

I put my head down, tears filling my eyes and went to my room.

As soon as I could hear they were gone, I stayed in the dark room. This was around the time Martha comes around, and I couldn’t bear to see her.

Music started playing, which I chose to ignore. It didn’t make me feel any better.

Suddenly I heard the door open.

“Evie?”

I closed my eyes, terrified it wasn’t Laney.

“Evie it’s Delaney Yong. Come on out sweetie.”

Laney never referred to herself as her full name. It was Martha.

“Evie, darling, please come out. Mommy and mama told me to come.”

I hated Martha. I couldn’t take it anymore.

“JUST LEAVE ME ALONE! GET OUT!”

Hearing where the voice was coming from, Martha opened the door to the dark room and came in.

She crouched beside me and put her arm around me.

“Evie, you can’t avoid me forever.”

I didn’t respond.

“We used to be so close. Why can’t things just go back to how they were? Playing hopscotch, braiding hair, climbing trees… Don’t you miss that?”

She knew I did. She also knew why things could never be the same.

“Your parents got between us. Them, doctor Bela, those fucked up white pills they make you shove down your throat everyday.”

I put my hands over my ears and rocked back and forth. I couldn’t stand cursing.

“No one is hear. Laney isn’t coming. Just one game of cards. Just one game of hopscotch. Just talk to me Evie. I know you want to as much as I do. Don’t send me back home.”

I looked to see her. Soft blue eyes, curly brown hair, red cargo pants, and a yellow stained blouse. Her eyes were watering. I knew it was a ploy, but she looked so convincing.

“Martha…”

A name I hadn’t said out loud in months.

“You have to go back home. You can’t be here. Things can’t ever be the same. Please leave.”

I pointed to the door.

Martha’s tears dried within a matter of seconds. Her eyes seemed to turn darker. Her face turned red. I always dreaded this part. She had a temper.

“No. NO. I WON’T! I WON’T! YOU ABANDONED ME! YOU LEFT ME ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD! I WANTED TO COME WITH YOU AND YOU TOLD ME NOT TO FOLLOW! I HAD TO WALK BACK IN THE RAIN ALONE! DON’T YOU EVER TELL ME TO LEAVE!”

She stomped on the floor, I could feel the vibrations through the wood.

Martha paced across the floor. Muttering to herself.

“Everyone has tried to keep us apart. They turned you against me! Those f*****g meds!”

Her voice had turned coarse and gruff. Her temper was rising.

“You can’t take them anymore. That’s the only solution! You can’t go to your appointments anymore either! They’ll just brainwash you!”

She looked around for my pills.

“Martha, please you have to go! Aunt Laney will be here any minute she can’t know I’m talking to you! She’ll tell my parents!”

Her eyes began to twitch.

“You stupid girl. Laney isn’t coming! She died this morning! I killed her!”

My temper began to rise. Laney is my family, and I am very protective of her.

“NO SHE’S NOT YOU LIAR! WE SAW HER THIS MORNING! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!”

Suddenly the door opened. It was Laney. Martha stood there. Laney gasped as she saw me in tears, my voice strained.

“Evie are you alright?” She asked frightened.

I struggled to get out words.

“Make her leave. Make Martha leave Aunt Laney.”

Laney sighed.

“Martha, get out of this house at once! LEAVE! Go back home!”

Martha stood there defiantly.

“You s**t. You don’t scare me. No one can make me leave. The Devil himself couldn’t drag me out of here if he wanted to!”

Laney raised her eyebrow and held the door open.

“Martha, you need to leave. You can come back to play tomorrow if you’d like…”

Martha’s face lit up with joy.

“Oh thank you thank you! See you tomorrow Evie! Bye Laney!”

Laney closed the door after she left.

I started crying. Sobbing actually.

“Why did you do that Aunt Laney? I don’t want her to come back! The things she said, the-“

I couldn’t get out another word.

“Don’t worry Evie. I promise you everything will be alright. I’ll be right beside you the whole night. Don’t worry. We will get rid of her. Why don’t we schedule an appointment with doctor Bela tomorrow hm?”

This was difficult. I knew Martha would freak out if she knew I was going to the doctor’s. But doctor Bela could make me feel better.

“Okay. Thank you Aunt Laney.”

Martha would be back. No one could stop her. She wouldn’t leave until she got what she wanted.

And I knew exactly what she wanted.

Chapter Four:

Mama and mommy were back home waiting for test results. The rule was to not worry until there was something to worry about.

Mama went back to working on her Christmas painting, and mommy went back to work.

Martha hadn’t shown up since she was scared of my parents. She won’t admit it but she is. Really scared.

I spent my free time helping mama. Mixing the coloured powder with the water in her tray. Mama occasionally would show me art projects to decorate the house. We dried lemons and added them to the tree, we took ribbon and twisted them as streamers, we ironed more wrapping paper, and taped them to the wall. We burned carmel to give the house a nice aroma. Everything felt the same.

And yet, nothing did.

Our hearts would jump everytime the phone would ring.

I was really afraid it was cancer. I didn’t want mama to die from cancer.

The doctor’s told us if it was cancer we would have seen signs before hand typically. So we tried not to worry.

I was stressed out lately, so I needed some aspects in my life to remain constant. Mommy made dinner every night. It’s either casseroles, pasta, soups, sandwiches, stir-fries. We ate together. We did our most recent tea readings.

I was off for winter break, and I could not be any more excited for Christmas to come and sweep away the negativity in the air with tinsel and tule. Laney would come over and bring food for our Christmas party.

Today I was helping mommy ice cookies in the kitchen.

Then the phone rang.

We held our breath as mama picked up the phone. As we couldn’t hear the other side of the call, we had to listen carefully to what she was saying.

“Hello?”

“Yes this is Melanie Ward.”

“Oh… alright what does that mean?”

“How much?”

“Yes, thank you. Yes our family doctor is Joanna Norman.”

“Okay thank you. Yes. Goodbye.”

Mama put the phone down and turned around normally, and proceeded to the kitchen to help us ice cookies.

Mommy and I were waiting for her to announce the findings from the phone lady.

“Mel? What did the doctor say?”

Mama ate half of a cookie.

“She says it’s not cancer. She says it’s alopecia. A disease where people tend to lose hair from all over their body. So I’m going to lose all my hair probably.”

Mommy sighed.

“Are you perfectly healthy otherwise?”

“Yes.”

Mommy smiled a little and tousled her hair.

“Alright. Well as long as you’re healthy right?”

Mama gave her the coldest look I had ever seen. As if she had betrayed her in the most inhumane way possible. She got up and left the room, tracking cookie crumbs across the floor.

Mommy finished icing the last cookie and followed her to their room.

When mommy left, I could see Martha’s plump face pressed up against the window. I just decided to ignore her. If I let her in-

No.

No I couldn’t.

I could never let her in, ever. Not after what had happened before.

Author's Note

I am open to hearing your perceptions about the main character. I absolutely love writing about people who's minds work differently than the societal "normal" so I would like to hear what you think about Evelyn. Thank you for reading, and this is just the beginning!

Reviews

[JayG]

I was going to pass this one by, but since it is your second novel, you’ve been working hard on your writing, so I thought you would want to know.

The problem you face is that you’re thinking in terms of telling a story, and are explaining what’s happening in a scene you can visualize, but which you’ve not given to the reader. It’s a common misunderstanding, so you have a lot of company, and, it isn’t a reflection on your talent, potential, or the story.

Think about it. Before you read the first word of the story the scene is alive in your mind. You know who the people in it are, why they’re there, and what they expect and hope will happen. And that foreknowledge provides the necessary detail—and context—as you read. You can hear your voice, alive with emotion, explaining the situation. You can feel the expression changes that are part of your performance, plus the gestures that visually punctuate and the body language that plays such a large role in providing the emotion that goes with the words.

But what does the reader get? Words that have no emotion in them other than what punctuation suggests. Why? Because while we can tell the reader how a character speaks a line, there is no way for the reader to know how the narrator speaks their lines.

In other words, for you, each line acts as a pointer to the images, ideas, and context, stored in your mind, that will bring context and emotional content. For the reader? Each line acts as a pointer to the images, ideas, and context, stored in YOUR* mind.* And since you’re not there when it’s read to explain…

Look at the opening as a reader must. Keep in mind that the reader has only what the words to any given point suggest to THEM, based on THEIR experience and background.

• Tick tock.

This is meaningless to a reader as it’s read. It could be a wristwatch, a grandfather clock, or the name on the label of a can of peas. Only you know the significance. Only you know where we are, who we are, or what’s going on. For the reader this is missing all trace of context. Should it be whispered? Spoken with authority? No way to tell, and explaining after the fact cannot either retroactively remove confusion of provide a second, first-impression.

• The clock in her bedroom went.

“Her” bedroom? This is meaningless given that we lack context for who “her” is. And given that this is a new paragraph, it’s a new subject, so we read it as unconnected to the first line and wonder what word you left out after “went.” Think of the difference for a reader had this appeared before the tick in line one, and “her” had been replaced by a name.

• My lungs longed for the moment where I could cough out all the dust that had been building up.

Makes no sense. If dust is “building up” it would appear that this person is dead, and that their throat is open, allowing the dust on. Not what you meant, but it is what you said. And while you may say, “You know what I mean, the reader doesn’t. You have both context and intent for how it’s to be taken, so for you it makes perfect sense. But you’ve given the reader none, and no scene-setting that might provide it. So what the reader is getting may be unrelated to the meaning you take—and intend them to get.

• My legs were pressed into my chest.

How can this have meaning to the reader who doesn’t know who this is, where s/he is, his/her age, situation, the era they live in (or the planet), or the smallest thing about them? Answer? It can’t.

The problem isn’t one of how well you’re writing, it’s that the profession of writing, like any other, has a huge body of craft that the writer must master. But we leave our public education years possessing only the nonfiction book-report and essay-writing skills our teachers give us. And the goal of nonfiction is to inform, so the author explains the events and details TO the reader. But fiction’s goal is to entertain, a VERY different goal, one that’s emotion, not fact-based. And different objectives require different techniques.

Good news? Hell no. It’s certainly not something you either wanted to or expected to hear. But on the other hand, it is something you need to know. After all, the reader has been raised on a steady diet of professionally written and polished work. If we want to please the reader as the pros do, we NEED to know what the pro knows.

Telling the reader a story, as a storyteller, can only work is the reader can hear and see us, because storytelling is a performance art. Moreover, it’s a parallel technique. As in life, and on the screen, the reader is perceiving all respects of the performance at once. They see your performance in parallel with hearing it, for far more impact than reading about one item at a time as we do on the page. And in our schooldays we learned pretty much none of the tricks of writing fiction, because the focus was readying us to be productive, and employed adults, possessing the skills employers require. And to aid in that, we’re given a set of general skills. Professions and trades are learned after that. And as I mentioned, writing fiction is a profession, as complex and difficult to master as any other.

I don’t say that to discourage you, but to help you understand the problem Mark Twain defined with “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” After all, you can’t fix the problem you don’t recognize as being a problem.

For example, you say you “like writing about.” But fiction is not “writing about people. It’s making the reader live the story in real time, as-the-protagonist. Think of the books you’ve read that were so intense that you felt it was happening to you as you read. They’re the ones you remember. And no way can the schooldays skills we’re given provide that level of intensity.

So to give your words wings, some time spent picking up the tricks of the trade would be time wisely invested. And in the local library’s fiction-writing section you’ll find the views of successful writers, publishing pros, and noteworthy teachers. And, you can’t beat the price.

And after all, doesn’t your story deserve to be framed perfectly? Doesn’t your reader deserve a reading experience that’s so real that if someone throws a rock at the protagonist the reader ducks?

So keep writing, of course. But at the same time, pick up the skills of writing fiction. If you truly are meant to be a writer, it will be fun. And you’ll love the difference in your writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/

[Olivia Danielle]

Thank you very much for this review and with the constructive criticism! I will take your notes and apply them and attempt to rewrite parts until I have something I hope you will review in the future and recognise as a polished piece of work. Thank you once again for taking the time to read this.