Returning to Schizophrenia and its numerous manifestations.
     The next most prevalent variety that besets me would be the type of schizo behaviour my children and my nearest and dearest experience all too regularly. It's the form of WS (Writerly Schizophrenia) of which I believe I am least aware and that occurs when I've spent rather too long in bed with my characters. I emerge from my room and, to all intents and purposes, I am the matriarch, present once more at the heart of my household, capable of communicating with family and engaging in simple domestic affairs, such as cooking supper.
     Trouble is there is a timelag (oftentimes significant) between my mind emerging from the story and me physically exiting my bedroom. This causes problems. I call everybody by the wrong name, I think I have said/done things but apparently I have not, I am dazed, forget stuff and am generally useless as wife and companion. It irks me; especially when I find that our meal has been sitting in the oven for one-and-a-half hours but the oven is not lit.... Or, worse, I forget to pick a child up from an after school activity. As soon as my phone blips with that text saying, 'Where are you, Mum?', I'm rocketed back to real reality.
     These things happen yet I know I am a well-organised, highly efficient domestic dynamo. It happens because I have developed two realities: Bernie's World of Book and Bernie's World of Unbook. And it's hard to leap from one to the other.
     Fragile Conscience has a habit of putting her two-bits in at the most excruciating moments of forgetfulness that occur mid-leap between these worlds. While pointing out that the book may be getting a bit too plotty, or that the dialogue's taking over and the whole thing's looking like a script, she will also take the time to remark to me that I may be failing my family, chronically. But my gorgeous children and my lovely partner step in at these times and help me persuade Fragile Conscience to 'shut it'. There are times when they are not as gentle with her as I would like them to be but their methods generally work and she scuttles off.
     If I ever get a book to print (paper or e) I will have to include a long list of acknowledgements as I have five children to mention just as starters.
     I'm not sure FC will feature on the list though.