Was it South Norfolk or North Suffolk we went to...?

The easy answer is - BOTH! And they were seriously lovely. I'm back now, wondering where my August is slipping to, but it was a lovely week. And the East Anglia Transport Mueum was the place to be on Sunday August 8th because a rather large number of fantastic vintage cycles arrived halfway through the afternoon - including Nancy's Bonnie! I recognised it by the sound of the engine! I didn't actually see Nancy herself - I suspect she was sampling the Victoria Sponge in the tea rooms - but I got some lovely photos of the bike with my new camera! (Attentive followers may recall that my other camera had a nasty accident with a very large cup of coffee last summer...!)

Cake recommendations? Couldn't possibly choose one we ate so many...but the mixed berry scones in Norwich Cathedral Refectory would have given Mary's a run for their money, and the Coffee and Walnut Cake at Wroxham Barnes was a serious contender...

The most lovely word in the English Language?

HOLIDAYS!!!!

Here we go again...

Spotted this fella in Manchester outside the astoundingly beautiful John Rylands Library - a cathedral for bookworms! We visited it last Sunday while making a pilgrimage to Salford for BRB's 'Romeo and Juliet'. An amazing weekend - only slightly marred by the fact that somewhere on Piccadilly station I left a Harvey Nichols foodhall bag...!

Two weeks to go until the summer break and instead of winding down, I seem to be powering up! My research for the 'new project' has stepped up several notches and I'm planning how to make the best use of the summer and the university libraries near by - none of them, it must be admitted, as beautiful as JR's but all well stocked
I've also booked a flying visit to the Edinburgh book festival where I'm going to do a crime writing workshop and then see Ian Rankin again: once was not enough!

Perhaps, most bizarrely, I've set the wheels in motion to direct a musical at school: it's five years since I last did one, and that was such a fantastic experience that I said 'never again' : I didn't think it could be bettered! Now, almost at the anniversary of the first night, I still don't think it can be bettered, but I'm curious to see whether it can be matched! The school I work in has changed enormously over the past few years and I think a show may be exactly what it needs.

It's certainly what I need: last time we did a show I was writing 'Scotch Mist' at the same time - and I quickly discovered that the more creative I am forced to be, the more creative I become! So, as well as everything else this summer, I'm going to be planning and plotting a production in my head! That, and working out exactly where I'm going to be able to store all these books I'm still buying. Now, if only I could get someone to build me a gothic revival Library...




Whoops! Forgot about the cake!!! Two this time - i) an Eccles cake at the above Library's lovely coffee shop - so curranty!! - in honour of the Eccles tram we took to Salford and ii) half a huge slice of chocolate cake at Gibside Hall this afternoon - it was the black cherry conserve and the proper butter icing that made it so wicked! I feel the waistline expanding already...

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!