summer song

.
Summer has reappeared and taken me by surprise. After a wonderful Romantic Novelists' Association Conference - of which more anon, since I have no photos of my own and will have to borrow from my pals, I have a poem for you...


SUMMER SONG by Jan Jones

Warm breeze on my skin
watering the garden in the last slow light
of evening

a dog barks
a child cries
the stallion in the field tempts the mares
still watching long-legged, awkwardly adolescent foals

and I am slow
and warm
and stupid from working through the haze of the day
half in my created world
half in summers long past
when I was invincible and laughing and willing
and the stallions came whistling

.

A Sense of Perspective

.

This was my birthday loot - gorgeous, eh? A whacking great crate of booze.

Except it isn't, of course. When seen in perspective, it is an elegant small crate of liqueur chocolates.

Which made me think - there are times when everything happens at once. I feel a bit off-colour, perhaps, or a piece of writing has taken longer than I expected, and all of a sudden the small jobs are all bumping into each other and spilling off the To Do list and events seem to spiral out of control.

But today I heard some grim news about a friend that made all my clicketty, fidgetty worries fall silent.

So this year I'm going to keep things in perspective. I'm going to widen my field of vision and decide what is important at any one time.

And I'll start with a liqueur chocolate, that pencil and the next scene in the serial-in-progress.

Happy balancing act to you all.
.

Birthday roses and ginger brack

.

When my mother was alive, she used to give me flowers every week. Partly this was to say thank you for taking her shopping and running her around. Mostly it was because she thought they brightened a place up and besides, she liked buying flowers.

Since she died, I've tended not to buy flowers for myself. Not sure why, it just felt slightly wrong. Now and again, though, when I see some particularly pretty ones, I feel a sharp prod in my back and a voice in my head telling me to stop messing about and for goodness sake put them in the trolley.

Which is why I bought these today for my birthday. I could feel the approval as I went through the checkout.

And because it is my birthday, I am also eating Ginger Brack and drinking tea. She would have approved of that too.

[Ginger brack from the wonderful Bothams of Whitby]

Lunch

.
Today I will be mostly having lunch in Cambridge with my pal Elaine. I will feel extremely miffed if I do not get to see lots of photos of her gorgeous new granddaughter.

Sadly, I do not think eating at a table on the balcony in the sun will be involved.

But sticky toffee pudding or Chocolate Boxes might be.
.

Warning - electrical fault

.
My car has one of those delightful intermittent faults which brings up a scary orange light right in the middle of the dashboard. Every time this happens the car and I go into the garage where they clear the fault, speculate interestedly about what might be causing it and tell me to come back next time it occurs. A couple of times it has been a real fault entailing the changing of various expensive parts. Even if it doesn't cost money - it always involves loss of time.

This time, however, the garage decided Action Was Needed (possibly they were getting fed up with me plugging Nymph into their power supply, using their free wifi and drinking all their tea). They stripped the engine down ("No cost, Mrs Jones") and found - a broken wire.

Sadly, it seems wires don't get mended any more, they get replaced. The entire wire loom gets replaced. At a cost of £150+.

While my car was being investigated, the garage driver ran me into Bury St Edmunds for an excellent lecture at the Theatre Royal on the Georgian playwright Thomas Holcroft and picked me up again afterwards. Then (as my car was in pieces) he took me home. Tomorrow he is going to collect me, drop me off at the Records Office for a lecture on the Georgian Gentleman's Library and pick me up after a matinee of He's Much To Blame by the said Thomas Holcroft at the theatre.

"There," said the service receptionist. "At least we've saved you the parking fee."

To park in Bury St Edmunds all day costs £1.80 !!!
.