I'm keeping busy lots of new writing,
still going to night school although they haven't started teaching anything yet.
I was hoping to be making great progress by now, still maybe later.
The books are still going a pace. Ah! reminds me I must get back to them.
That's all for now.

I let the dart go. Now it's the start of another story. Have decided not to read newspapers or watch the news for a few days. Reading about celebrities and their troubles,infuriate. But in our local paper there was an article about a boy of 8 who'd cared for his young, dying mother. Goodness among many items of theft,stabbing and brawling. Maybe it's autumn and my view on human life has become jaded. I saw a dog fox recently at dawn and I felt privilaged. My brother hates them after he left his hen house door open and the fox got in. But, would you stand next to a known thief with a pocket full of money? I don't think he'd listen to my defence of the fox.

I love this image. Unfortunately, as reported in today's Guardian, the Russian culture minister, Alexander Sokolov, does not. He's banned it. Well, weirdly, he's banned it from being shown in Paris, although it's already appeared in Russia, at Moscow's state-owned Tretyakov gallery, no less.

His reason for not giving the kissing policemen (and 15 other artworks by Russian art collective Blue Noses ) permission to leave the country is: "If this exhibition appears [in Paris] it will bring shame on Russia. In this case, all of us will bear full responsibility."

Ah well, Mr Sokolov, I'm afraid to say that by preventing this image from appearing in one Parisian art gallery you may have provoked its dissemination to millions of computers around the world, via the power of the internet.

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Joseph McCrumble has reached a cross-roads in his life. Through a series of mis-adventures he has found himself sequestered in the smallest room of the local manor house, forced to work as a gardner, and estranged from his wife and family. He's trying to come to terms with his new situation, but the house-rules are so strict he can't even properly beak the ice with the enigmatic housekeeper, Mrs T.

Can McCrumble come to terms with having lost everything, or will it all prove too much?

Is Dolores just displaying some tough love, or has she had enough of her husband?

Who is the mysterious owner of the Manor?

Find out by reading his blog. Using nothing but the keypad of a mobile phone to post his storie, Joseph remains determined to tell the world of his struggle to survive and keep his dignity intact.

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When I was about ten, I made myself a skirt with a piece of red felt; I sewed it into a tube, hemmed the top and threaded elastic through for the waist then I hemmed the bottom with white cotton! Mum had taught me how to do a back stitch for seams, but hadn’t impressed upon me the importance of using the same colour cotton for invisible hemming. I didn’t notice the little white stitches dotted around the hem…and was out in the street, wearing my creation, in a flash. When my mother spied me posing in this MINI she dragged me inside and made me take it off…AT ONCE!

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This is new for me. I've not blogged before. Don't quite know what I should write. A story is completed. Sent off and another one started. 5.30am is the time when my mind is full of ideas Once upon a time,ideas battled with each other all day long. I carried around a note pad jotting them down. Now when an idea grows into a story, I'm like a nervous dart thrower unable to let go of the dart.

Over the summer I did some fairly serious surgery to one strand of my current novel, and was hugely relieved to get an email late last Saturday night from one of my trusted readers. She's already pointed out plenty of not-yet-right things earlier in the novel, but here she was, saying, 'The ending is brilliant!'

And, as with the bits she's not so impressed by, I know she's right. Those last scenes are at once a real surprise, and a conscious, careful, crafted pulling together of all the themes and ideas and threads. Crafting it has, I think and hope, given rise to art. I even had a lump in my throat as I wrote, and maybe readers will too. I'm not sure I did write, mind you:...


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Oooh, my friend Carrie and her man are back together again! He’s been and put an end to his past; closed down the shutters for good and the divorce is on its way. He’d been legally separated for years but recently came to the conclusion that he had to find out just how he really felt, so he went back to see if there was anything to be salvaged of the marriage.

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I don't know if anyone noticed, but in my previous post Brainy and Sexy I started with the idea of 'original and familiar' being the two poles between which a storyteller operates, moved those terms along till they became 'literary and commercial', and ended up with 'brainy and sexy'. Only of course all those pairs don't map neatly onto each other and, anyway, nothing about writing is as polarised as that. Even so-called black and white photography is almost entirely shades of grey, as you discover when you learn to print it.

I've just finished An Instance of the Fingerpost. I do see that it's not to everyone's taste (what book is?) but for me it exemplifies the fact that brainy and sexy aren't true opposites, any more than love and mathematics are.


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No. That is not me doing an impression of Dr Brunswick from the fabulous Alex and the Wigpowder Treasure though I know it could seem that it was. It's a happy coincidence though. I'd completely forgotten about buying the pirate fancy dress kit (and trying it on and being photographed in it) and only stumbled upon it yesterday, which, was about the same time as I thought I'd mention the book on here. Lucky, huh?




Alex and the Wigpowder Treasure by Adrienne Kress is brilliant. It's fun, sad, exciting, intelligent and so, so readable. It also features an Extremely Ginormous Octopus, hidden treasure, pirates, evil old ladies and... I'll stop there. Don't want to spoil it for you. But what more could you want? I doubt there are many children out there who won't enjoy it. Check it out!

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