Woke up hyperventilating like a hot pig way too early this morning, after a distinctly Dr Who-ish and rather terrifying nightmare. Lord H and I were in the desert which was full of large statues, some of which were in a museum also in the desert. I knew beyond any doubting that the large statue in front of the building was coming alive and intended to kill people. When it finally started walking, nobody would listen to my attempts to warn them - so Lord H and I went inside the museum where smaller statues were coming to life too. We attempted to find out if they were dangerous or not by communicating with them. But when they started to attack us, I tried to beat the thing to death, but it just wouldn't die. Thank the Lord I finally woke up! Haven't a clue what that all means, but hell it's been a difficult week and I do tend to have rather vivid dreams. Still, at least it meant I didn't have to wait for the alarm. There's always a positive side ...


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It has occurred to me that since I've been writing seriously, I have, on occasion, neglected to have as much fun/time off as I probably should have. And I think it's time that changed. Having time away from writing, even if it's only a little (this is a job we can very easily live in 24/7) is important. It is good to be fresh.

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Got into work today and one of the first phone calls to Ruth was to tell us that Penny, my sick Guildford friend, had died on Saturday at 1pm. Not sure what to say really, but it seems so unfair that she only had one happy year of retirement before she got ill. I’m sorry too that I didn’t make the effort to visit her last week due to my own minor set-backs, which seem very petty now. Just goes to show it’s important to do stuff while you can. Sometimes there aren’t any second chances ...




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Had a fantastic birthday yesterday - Lord H and I spent the day in Wisley where the rain mostly held off. Highlights of the day included (a) the amazing Chinese dragons made out of begonias, (b) the glorious rose garden, (c) the wild garden, (d) seeing two frogs, (e) the very good lunch at the Terrace Restaurant, and (f) seeing loads of birds, including a mistle thrush (a first for us). I must admit to being totally flowered out by the time we left. Also had lots of Clarins, books and money as presents, so that's all certainly put a smile on my face. And Dr Who was a shit-hot episode, so what more can you want?...

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I’ve just been watching Fight Club again and come to the conclusion that we have to drive into the skid if we ever want to get anywhere. I don’t mean capitulate and fit in with the norm: I think we should run away with the extraordinary. You know the old detective saying, ‘if the only thing left sounds crazy, then that’s probably the truth!’ So, the yellow brick road and the wisdom of the green wizard is the way to go.

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I can't believe it's been 2 months since my last rant..& so much has happened I've no idea where to start!

Well, against all odds we pulled off our

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In Wanting, needing, yearning, dreaming I found myself saying that post-hoc understanding of what you've written can be immensely useful, much more so than reading a textbook about how you 'should' do things before you write. The latter is like seeing a new fashion in a magazine and buying the dress to wear without trying it on: who would do that? The former is like trying it on in the shop to see how it looks on your body: as we all know, there are always some current fashions which are just wrong for our particular build. By the time you've written a piece and really revised it, you know it extremely well. If you then try some ideas about how good writing works on it, you're much more likely to decide whether they're the right shape for your work. If those ideas don't seem to fit, you're more likely to have the confidence to discard them. What leads to disaster is to be so sure the rules - like the fashion - must be right and your body must be wrong that you wear something that makes you look dreadful or, worse still, sign up for plastic surgery.

Not that writing to fulfil technical brief - as an exercise - doesn't have its uses.

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I can't believe it, but I'm actually feeling more like a normal human being today, bloody hell and put out the ruddy bunting. I feel today that there might actually be a glimmer of hope out there somewhere, but not of course in the publishing trade. That remains, as ever, a veritable pit of darkness and despair. Ah 'tis a place of strange mystery, Carruthers, from which nobody returns alive, or at least in human form ...

First thing this morning, I was bizarrely cheered whilst waving goodbye to Lord H to see a young man in a blue shirt walking an extremely large and very coiffured (is that a word?) poodle past the end of the garden path. It was really almost the size of a sheep. Perhaps it was a sheep, I don't really know. Strange things do happen in Godalming. But a poodle-walker is definitely a first here in the shires. For the rest of the morning, I have been having a wonderful massage courtesy of the lovely and really rather pregnant (should she be doing massage in her condition??) Laura. When she got to my notoriously stiff-as-boards shoulders, she was putting so much effort into beating the tension into submission that I feared she might give birth there and then. But luckily not. That would have been a terrifying start to my birthday weekend ...


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The weirdest thing, I must record it. I've been struggling with the final scenes in the book, not the denouement which I wrote a while ago but the last arc of the action. One of the things that's been a real problem for me is this character who keeps going into hiding. I know why she's hiding.

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