Time flies by...

It's that time of the year again, when the summer break looms and people start to make plans to spread their wings and fly, and today, my feet feel itchy! I've tried a couple of times this year to change the course of my career but to no avail and now, watching people packing up to move on, I wish I was going somewhere too - either in reality, or metaphorically! Instead, I feel perminantly grounded! And when people say to me I should make an effort to 'do something' with my writing, I get even more wound up!

This time last year I was frantically trying to put the finishing touches to Scotch Pine - it is hard to believe it has been in print that long. Looking at the little notebook I take to writing courses and book events, I was full of enthusiasm and energy last summer: after the Writing day in Harrogate I felt ready for anything, really felt this was something I wanted. What happened? What changed? I don't really know! But I don't feel I've made a lot of progress at all. It is increasingly difficult to write in term time - hours, days and weeks fly by with terrifying speed! - and the little writing I have done this year feels rudderless. It's not like writing Grouse and Partridge!

I think maybe I'm kidding myself with all this reading and making notes that I'm doing something towards the final piece, but I'm actually conning myself - just creating another displacement activity to make up for not writing!

Maybe, like last year, I need a deadline to concentrate my mind!

Best cake? Banana and Date loaf at Shepherd's Dene retreat house in Northumberland - seriously scrumtious! (the house as well as the cake! See picture!)

When did it get to be June???

It seems to have got to the middle of the year without me really knowing how...

The picture on the left is the remains of the staircase at the fantastic Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumbria, a crumbling stately home designed by John Vanbrugh and recently bought for the nation by the National Trust. It has only been open to the public since the beginning of May and it is a photographer's delight. This is actually the underneath of the staircase, looking up... I love the Ecsher effect which just disorientates you completely so after a while you don't know if you are looking up or down.

And yes, at the moment life's a bit like that. It's reached the time of the year when I seem to be zooming around but getting nowhere fast! The half term holiday brought a weekend in York and a few ballet jaunts to Durham, a frantic dash to buy a ukulele and get it wrapped in time for a birthday brunch, a reunion with my university soul-mates which involved some very late nights and some very VERY wicked food!!! I fear I fell off the wagon most spectacularly last week- or more correctly, off the cake trolley! And the scones at the Blaksmiths' coffee shop in Blagdon remain the finest known to humanity! As for the chocolate brownie with gooseberries in Oldfields of Durham...well, let's just say it was very close to perfection!

It might be wisest, on the whole, not to ask about my writing progress...

Easter and how difficult it is when you don't want to eat chocolate...

I don't want to dwell on it. Honestly. I can do this. I can ignore the fruitbowl full of calorific diet-wrecking goodies which is just out of arm's reach on the far side of the coffee table. It isn't calling to me in a soft, seductive voice...
I've been away from 'here' a lot of late. So what's been happening?

Birmingham Royal Ballet(x6), Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake (see picture!), a second visit to London to see Waiting for Godot again (x2!) an unsuccessful job interview (all the candidates were unsuccessful - apparently none of us lived up to our applications!) a nasty repeat performance of last year's post-Venice chest infection (which handily coincided with the job interview!), taking on an extra 'job' for work and (under the influence of cough medicine!) deciding to create a new blog to support it, endless meetings of the 'going round in circles' variety, the purchase of a great many new books - naturally - and about 4,000 words on the 'new novel'.

See? You haven't missed much at all... And now all that's done, I'm on holiday, catching up with sleep and about to hide the chocolatey goodies in the back of the cupboard behind the printer ink and spare paper. Hopefully, I won't be able to hear it from there... Best cake: my own Hot Cross Bun bread and butter pudding. A diet wrecker if ever there was one... (though they were low fat h x bs!)

Save 6music!!!

It's rare I run to the barricades and wave my flag of protest. But I was aghast yesterday at the news the BBC is intending to axe 6music in the coming twelve months along with the Asian network. This seems to me to be the ultimate 'dumbing down' of radio: not only have so-called 'minority interest' programmes on Radio 2 been downgraded in favour of a repetitious and chart-driven play list, but now a dedicated music station which fosters and promotes creativity and originality is under sentence of death! What is the BBC thinking?

So I followed this link http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/m/74c05f35/2d452744/58de2fd5/4674e4dd/2552264266/VEsC/ and registered my fury. And I urge you to do the same. Or we're destined to have a musical landscape entirely populated by Cheryl Coles and Susan Boyles and JLSs... Nothing against any of them, but they're not what I want to listen to! 6music's music is!!

I don't know how I can approach the dreaded Sunday evening without Guy Garvey's show to make it better!

Half term indulgences...

It's almost Lent. This year, I can't give up gorgeous cake as I've already had to give that up in my pursuit of weight loss, so I've decided I'm giving up Abe books and Amazon. Once those last few books arrive, that is...

I'm sure I shouldn't have this much fun doing background reading. At the moment, very little is set in stone and I'm just following trails of thought and seeing where they lead. It's so exciting! And being on holiday now is perfect - this is all I've been wanting to do since Christmas. I'm spending the week on a 'writing and researching' retreat in my own home, (punctuated by little trips out to the dentist and clothes shopping and the Royal Mail Depot to pick up the book parcels they've tried to deliver!)

The first 3000 words and a synopsis of The New Book were entered last week for the CWA Debut Dagger competition. I was entry 506 apparently. As always, I was still tinkering with things up to the last minute, and I don't delude myself that this new venture is really going to appeal to many people except me, but as I had 3000 words under my belt, I thought it was worth a try! 'In it to win it' and all that...

The tree is in St James's Park, taken on a trip down to London a few weekends ago: a totally magical weekend. Pretty sure this one is an Ent...

Happy birthdays to Tom and Sam xx

If a body catch a body comin' thro' the rye...

I've just read of J.D. Salinger's death and it's brought me back to thinking about a very special group of pupils I taught a couple of years ago, the one and only time I taught 'Catcher in the Rye' for GCSE. (Generally, I teach another classic American text with a reference to Burns in the title...!)

I loved the book - partly because I'd not long returned from a trip to New York and the sights and sounds of the city seemed imprinted on its every page. I threw myself into teaching of it with a gusto I've scarcely managed since. The kids somehow 'got' the book - in a way adults often don't - and reading it with them helped me see it in a new light. The exam results at the end of it were good, but better than results to me was the fact that the book became their book, not my book or even Salinger's, because they felt they had 'discovered' it.

Six months after they'd left to go to college, a few returned from a field trip to the Big Apple and came into school to visit me. They told me they'd been on Broadway the night they dimmed the lights of for Arthur Miller. They'd stood outside the Rockerfella Centre. They'd looked at the Ceiling in Grand Central Terminus and pointed out Radio City Music Hall. And they'd taken a special detour just to see the Carousel in Central Park where they'd thought about Holden - and me!

I'm hoping to return the compliment in the not-too-distant future. If I do get there, I'll be raising a glass (or a paper Starbucks cup!) to Holden, to them and to Mr Salinger - thanks, JD!

Raise a glass and grab a haggis!

It's Burns' Night tomorrow and although you can't all come and join the fun at the annual Ceilidh in the wee village where Hamish lives (the kirk -hall's no' big enuff for all of us!), I'm sure you'll raise a glass to the bonniest of boys on his birthday ( even though he is fictional!) and yon rantin' rovin' Robin, his muse! Due to circumstances beyond my control (MY CENTRAL HEATING IS BROKEN!) my Burns' night party has been postponed until the beginning of February, but I'll be stripping the willow and knocking back the shortbread with feeling tomorrow anyway! Cheers, lads!