Goodness me - what a busy day indeed! But fear not (as the angels said ...), some of the title events actually took place yesterday so I am not stretched out in a gutter somewhere attempting to regain my strength. Not entirely anyway. Had a wonderful dinner at Liz & John's - great food, great company and a really really good laugh. The social highlight of my Christmas, I believe. Many thanks, Liz. I was also very touched as three of the couples there (Liz & John, Robin & Gavin, Michael & Mary) are all very keen to come to the February launch of Thorn in the Flesh, and take me out for a celebratory dinner afterwards. Gosh indeed! And they might even buy a copy of the book - double gosh!...

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Last night at 4am, walking home from a club, I was set upon by five lads who started calling me names. Names like queer, poof, and faggot. I shouldn’t have left my friends and stumbled home alone. This city can be dangerous. I should have kept my head down and my mouth shut, but unfortunately, being a bit of a hothead sometimes (and exceedingly drunk), I responded by telling them what I thought of them. Cowards, one and all.

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Had a lovely long lie-in today. Felt I deserved it, but still felt guilty I wasn't up and doing stuff. Ye gods, but I have to learn how to relax. I really need to take lessons in it or something. I rubbed my special Clarins relax oil on my shoulders this morning, but I think it might be fighting a losing battle. Though it's a lovely smell of course.

For most of the day, Lord H and I have been wandering around Thursley Common spotting birds and working out which direction we should be going in. It's a fantastic place - bleak and black and gold and strange. All at the same time too. Almost like a landscape from another world ...

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Xmas is getting closer and, surprisingly, I'm almost finished. Have run out of sultanas and suet as the birds have been given a festive treat. In turn, they've rewarded me with their constant presence. Two thrushes have been venturing into the garden braving six blackbirds wrath. Managed to finish Prospero's flash. It's milder today but a misty grey that hangs drearily over trees.

Is it just the human condition, or is it the particular fate of novelists to live with contradictions? In Being a snow leopard I explored the creative potential in having a foot in each camp, but now I'm talking about things that actually preclude each other. For example, in our writing we explore human interactions in all their multiplicity and complexity, but almost all of us need to be alone to do that work. We read and research and plan, but must be prepared to abandon it all if the story or the characters - those strange, seemingly pre-existing entities - seem to demand it. We write books that are carefully, so carefully, constructed to work all of a piece, but we make them too long to be read all of a piece, in one sitting. We may devote our working life and our hearts and minds to a novel for months and years, knowing that perhaps no publisher will buy it. And then we spent years promoting, selling and talking about a novel that is, in a way, gone. Not dead, but past. The real, burning fire in our minds by then is about something else entirely...

Why? I've said before that some of what drives most writers is neither balanced nor healthy, and I claim no greater sanity than any other of us.

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1. Never leave your only winter coat in your partner's car on a Sunday night

2. With your keys in it

I was still drowsy on Monday morning when The Australian whipped out his wallet, bizarrely Del-Boy-like, and produced a tenner:
'Do you want to give this to the bin men?' he said.
'Umm, do I?' said I. Despite having thought about my bin men tip dilemma approximately every half hour since the previous Monday, I'd failed to work out a definite strategy.

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Bloody hell, great title for a novel. I suspect I might use that someday. But don't talk to me about teeth. Double groan ... Lord H & I had our regular tooth doctor appointment today, and this time I have to have four fillings done and they're worried about my bleeding gums. This after having no fillings last time and perfect gums. I am doing nothing differently!!! They think it might be to do with the HRT I'm on - even though I've only been on it five minutes and, really m'dears, one's boobs are no bigger than they were before. Sadly. Good to know that in the future, when I'm a hundred-and-bleeding-twenty, I shall be able to have a baby (God forbid!) but won't be able to converse with it as I shall have no teeth. Bloody big sigh, eh ...

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Word counts. Can’t live with ‘em…I’ve always had a bit of a problem with the old word counts, rarely managing a short story at the designated 3,000 words, and now it looks as though my latest novel is going to be somewhere in the region of 200,000.

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As part of the Allan Cunningham Project we are following in the footsteps of our tenacious Botanist. Our first adventure outside of the Sydney metropolitan area took place some time ago. We visited the Glenroy Camping Ground, just a little way from Hartley, west of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains.

Glenroy was the site of a military station set up to guard the original western road later known as the Old Bathurst Road. I assume the soldiers, guarding the road, were protecting the colonial invaders from the local Gundungurra tribe who's territory extended from the Blue Mountains at Hartley and Lithgow through the Burragorang.

Many of the early colonial explorers and scientists passed through this area. Allan Cunningham set up camp at Glenroy several times. The first time was in 1817 when he was part of John Oxley's exploration party headed west to trace the course of the Lachlan River, a journey full of privation through bogs and scrub that ruined the health and shortened the life of all involved.

After we parked our car, we tried to walk down to the Coxs River but the whole area was fenced off with barbed wire fences, locked gates and signs saying private property. One sign said "Danger". We couldn't get close enough to read it, however the black bull lazing in the sun nearby gave us a hint.

There was a bridge across the river but we couldn't risk walking on to it as it had no shoulder. The fence of the bridge butted right up on the two lane tarmac road. To make matters more difficult and more dangerous, very large semi-trailers were speeding across the bridge, going backward and forward. In the short time we were at the camping ground we would have seen at least 10 trucks barrelling along. We assumed there must have been some serious roadworks going on, further up the road.

John was inspired to write a little ditty after our lack luster attempt to walk in the steps of our protagonist.

GLENROY
by John Challenor

Glenroy, what a failure
There were semi trailer after semi trailer

We went down to see the river
But because of the trucks we couldn't deliver

There was another hurdle that confronted us too
A barbed wire fence we couldn't get through

And even if we did, there was a bull in our face
and being tired and hot we definitely would have lost that race.

We took photos of the Memorial which celebrated the first church service west of the Blue Mountains, on April 20, 1815, attended by no less than Governor Macquarie himself. The land, the memorial stands on, was donated to the public and is the only piece of land that is easily accessible. Nearby, within the accessible area,were the stumps of two recently felled trees. As the searing Australian sunshine beat down on our heads, it seemed a shame that the trees would no longer give the traveller shade as they read the memorial plaque and contemplated the past. We sensibly retreated to our air conditioned car.

A sign, on the locked gate, supplied a telephone number (02 6355 2186) for enquiries. It was the phone number for the Glenroy Cottages described as "a magnificent historical rural property overlooking the Coxs River in Hartley, where you can enjoy warm and friendly hospitality in country style cottages with luxurious interiors in a bush setting overlooking tranquil river pools".

We hope to return to Glenroy another time when we will be able to call the owners of the property and request permission to take some photos and walk down to the river. We may even have a "wild" swim in the spirit of Roger Deakin, the writer and environmentalist, who wrote the wonderful book "Waterlog", about a journey across Britain taking a swim in every rock pool, river, mountain tarn and open-air swimming pool encountered on the way.

I've read, up the hill from the road, there are some ruins of the military station that once guarded the road and there is a grave stone, marking a colonial burial ground. We will be better prepared next time.

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Was delighted to find that my interview with Chroma Journal is now online under the 19 December 2007 heading - the first one at the top at the moment. My, how normal I look, and how mad I sound. So no changes there then ... And thank you so much to Liam and Eric from Chroma for arranging it. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience ... (please click on full post to read interview)

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