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!

Words. Words. Words.

In one of my favourite novels of all time, there is a character who's wardrobe is painted with the legend 'Distrust all enterprises that require new clothes.'*

I'm beginning to think my bookshelves should be daubed with the slogan, 'Distrust all enterprises which require new books.' Or actually, old books.

Not valuable old books, you understand. Just books no one else would want but which fill a valuable gap in my knowledge. (There are NO gaps in my bookcases!) Books which are so NOT valuable, that the postage and packaging comes to so much more than they are worth!

The 'new enterprise' is firmly under wraps and I'm keeping it that way for a good long while, but the parcels are flying fast and furious between Abebooks and my house, and I'm giving myself up to the intense pleasure which is pre-writing research!! The more I find out, the more I need to know and the more excited I become as parcel after parcel falls through the letterbox! And then I sit and trawl the internet for hours and find the most amazing things to download. And the knowledge gaps get smaller and smaller. And the house gets messier and messier...

Sheer heaven!

(* This is 'A Room with a View' by E.M. Forster. Just in case you didn't recognise it!)

Snow on snow...snow on, snow!

This was my front garden on New Year's Day. Ever so pretty. It was fantastic to have a white Christmas and New Year, so good that if Irving hadn't pipped me to the post, I might even have written a song about it. It should always snow at Christmas - it is right and proper.

However, I'm posting this image to try and conteract the increasingly negative feelings I have had about snow since Monday morning! It's one thing when you're on holiday and can nip out, take a couple of atmospheric snaps with your mobile phone and then retreat back to the relative warmth and comfort of the window seat to watch it drift silently down from the grey-pink clouds while you sip a Hotel Chocolat Cinnamon Cocoa (Santa was really listening this year... ) It's quite another when you are setting off at silly o'clock, trudging up to your ears in the stuff to get to work and feeling rather 'Ernest Shackleton' about the whole thing! (Have I ever mentioned the Shackleton fascination before? No? Ah well...)

I'm also feeling miserable as the decorations went away today and the tree came down. The house looks empty and drab and in need of a good dusting and I didn't feel I'd had enough of Christmas at all! This may be because I'm fighting a series of weather-induced migranes which started on Saturday (just in time for the return to work!) or may be just because I hate January with a passion!

Still, there are lots of good things on the horizon to look forward to in 2010. Once we get this wretched snow out of the way. Now, where did I leave those huskies...?