While there are many things and people I could credit for re-fuelling my oomph, I think one of my favourites of August was the unusual launch of an unusual book – everything about it and its author is just really inspiring.  Dance Your Way to Psychic Sex is a cracking book – everything I admire, in fact, in others’ writing.  It’s quirkily mad, wonderfully odd and utterly, utterly compulsive.  From the outset, the cast of misfits and oddities draw us into their bizarre but believable world.

But it’s not just the story that rocks – the most inspiring thing for me is the author. Alice Turing has really slogged to get this book published after it was originally published in Germany in 2009.  I know Alice in Real Life and have been in awe of her juggling a new career with a young family – the fact that her determination has finally meant that I could *actually* read her words that were deemed not commercial enough to find a UK publisher is pretty amazing.  ‘Not commercial enough’ in this case easily translates as ‘a bit too bloody interesting’. Weeks after reading Dance Your Way to Psychic Sex, I’m still fizzling with the excitement of just how fab a film it would make.  I think it’s because I like the characters so much.  And the fact that, beneath the most ordinary veneer of most people lies an extraordinary person.  Alice Turing is one of those people too.  I hope with everything I have that her hard work brings her the recognition as a writer she deserves.  You should buy the book.  You can get it here.  For ten Great British pounds, you could hold in your hand something special and make a lovely lady’s day.  (Alice, I mean, not me.)  Go on.  You won’t regret it. I promise.

Besides, with a title like that, just think how cool your friends will think you are when they spot it on your bookshelf.

‘Oh good Lord, you’re nothing but a common criminal,’ announced No. 1, brandishing A Letter from the Rozzers.

He’s sadly quite correct.  I was caught, fair and square, speeding through life.  I know.  In my defense, your honour, I was not being very boy racery at all.  I did not have my gangsta rap booming; none of my teeth were gold; my trousers were pulled up firmly over my pants.  I was, in fact, pootling along at 39mph.  On my way to the Northiam Conservation Society garden party, where I was to play a selection of English chamber music with The Orchestra of the Undead.  How middle class a criminal am I?   And  – and! – not only do I have to go on a speed awareness course, I have to take the course in Maidstone where they’re all proper ‘ard.  I am a little bit scared.

Apart from all this, I have been very quiet.  I’ve been giving myself a break.  I’ve walked instead of run; read instead of beating myself up about not writing; cooked instead of considering carb content.  I’ve – ahem – been flown to the Isle of Wight for a lobster lunch high on a sun-soaked clifftop; been whisked away to a romantic hideaway deep in the New Forest where real life ceased to exist for days.  I have, I confess, fallen in love.  I know.  This was even more unlikely than my becoming a hardened villain.  But despite my best resistance tactics, I have been hopelessly swoonified.  Oddly, though the princessy treats were dreamy, it was a field of lavender wot dunnit.  Who knew plants could be so persuasive?

I’ve loved being removed from reality these past few months but now I’m ready to get back in the groove.  I feel less manic but more determined.   I want to make The Man proud of me.  How sappy is that?  Sappy, swirly and feeling sick.  Ooh ‘eck.  It’s good when a man makes you feel sick, yes?  Oh dear.  Whatever next?  Oh yes… a sausage sarnie.  Since I’m now so easily swayed.  *Sigh*  Have I made you feel nauseous too?  Soz.  (I’m not really.  Double soz.)

Half an hour later, he phoned again to let me know he was going out on his maiden voyage.  Ten minutes after that, he phoned again.

‘Yeah, it’s me again.  Er… I was just wondering if you could get some plasters?  And maybe some bandages?  Quite a lot of bandages, yeah?’

The bike has, for the last week, been parked in the garden.  Its rear view mirror thingy is all deformed.  The indicator lies shattered on the ground.  Its body is gouged and split in despair.  I know just how it feels.

Lurching about bad-temperedly in the cupboard under the stairs looking for my first aid box, I hit my face on an upturned chair leg.  I have a hint of black eye – not enough to make me look proper tough though.  The other eye, after an immensely dusty, dirty day at Goodwood’s Festival of Speed on Saturday is splendidly swollen and bloodshot as if I’m sporting a removable eyeball following a rock bit of grit vs. contact lens incident.  Also, in my bid to get thin, I have stepped up the running and am now hobbling about like an old crone.  I swear to God, I burn more calories wrestling myself into my sports bra than I do *actually* running.  Nevertheless, I hurt everywhere but my hair.

To top things off, as I groped blindly about the house with my falling-out eyes, I happened upon a beautiful piece of modern art.

‘OI!!’ I bellowed in a ladylike fashion befitting a bird with black eyes.  ‘What’s happened to my specs?’

‘Ah.  Yes.  Um… I’m afraid they’ve accidentally been baked in the oven,’ explained Son 2.

Plastic framed specs should not be cooked at 200 degrees for 20 mins.  At least I wasn’t wearing them at the time, I s’pose.

Do excuse me.  I’m off to bandage myself up from top to toe like the invisible man.  I shall smoke a pipe so that people know it’s me.  Hmmm.  Actually, perhaps sticking plasters over my mouth would help in the dieting department.  Why did I agree to go on a beach holiday with a beautiful, blue-eyed body-building beach bum?  WHY?

I’d shake my head in woeful despair but suspect another bit of me may drop off.  I shall simply sigh instead whilst embracing my inner spaz. Clumsy?  Useless?  Me?  Hell yeah.  You betcha.

I can’t believe we’re halfway through the year.  It’s fair to say that my world has succumbed to an attack of the rampant randoms which do tend to drag me utterly off course and leave me in a hedge somewhere.  Hedges can be tricky buggers.  They know how to look all unassuming but man!  When they finally set you free, looking twiggy and deranged (not you, Twiggy, you do not look deranged in your splendid M ‘n’ S clothing) everything has changed.  I’ve been rubbing at my eyes, looking around at my life,  with an intelligent air of ‘eh?’.

I finally hit the ‘fuck it’ button on one thing in my life that wasn’t working and you know that thing where one door closes and another one opens?  Well. I seem to have clicked one of those revolving doors that goes round in little glass segments, each one popping out something wonderfully unexpected.  I’ve met some astoundingly fab people in the last few weeks.  People who have made me smile muchly.  Bigly.  Swooningly.  I’ve marched about parts of Tunbridge Wells I’ve never seen before, taking photos on ancient, non-digital cameras with a bunch of random Twitter people.  I’ve been given, out of the blue, a pay rise and Wednesday afternoons off to write.  I’m having dinner cooked for me tonight – I will smile a little bit more and stare out at the stillness of Eastbourne Marina and perhaps play with the crazy fisheye camera which arrived too late for the TWells Twitter thingummyjig.

As the bloke with the cigar in The A Team said, ‘I love it when a plan comes together’.  I just wish I was allowed to see the plan now and again.  But perhaps it’s best when life takes us by surprise?

In other news, Son No. 1 is in the process of buying a motorbike scootery thing.  He will be combining this with massive surges of testosterone.  I will, almost certainly, never sleep again.  But, in the spirit of positivity, I will take this as a sign that extra wakefulness will enable more writing to be done.  It’ll give me the time currently lacking to work through the OU French course I did 12 years ago before embarking on the last two modules of my degree.  Yes, I know.  Having started 12 years ago with the intention of teaching French to tiddlies and then stop-start, stop-starting (I know!  I’ll renovate the house! Write a novel! Engage in some general spazzery!) I’m back to the original plan.  Oh dear.  I bet you can’t wait until this blog is full of verb conjugations.  I know a good hedge if you need to hide.  I won’t be there.  I’ll be busy getting thin for the impromptu holiday in Portugal I’ve agreed to go on in August.

I can recommend a bit of hedge-induced derangement.  Makes your hair a bit funny though.  Can you promise me one thing?  Say ‘yes’ to the next thing that presents itself.  You never know what might happen.  *Smiles cryptically and not at all menacingly*

I have, I confess, devoured the quite lovely Nik Perring’s Not So Perfect in one decadent, delicious go.  If each perfectly formed nugget were a chocolate, I would have licked it, savoured it, breathed it in.   Anticipated it and wanted it to last forever.  Each story made me gasp, or smile with closed lips turned down with an expulsion of breath.  Too lovely, I’d think.  The next just can’t be as exquisite.  I should save them.  Enjoy one at a time.  Revel in their exquisite beauty.  But I couldn’t.  My fingers touched the white space around the words on the smooth page, luxuriating in each delicate molecule.

For me, there was one moment when I had to stop.  With breathtaking bittersweetness, Where Did He Go, You Wonder left me gasping, tears welling up.  It was the one with the real gold leaf on the top, shimmering subtly with hopeless beauty.

You can buy Not So Perfect at Amazon or The Book Depository.  You must buy it though.  It’s luscious.  And it won’t make you fat. I promise.

Daytime is worse.  Ooh, wow, gorgeous day I think, looking out of my office window. I might take the dog down to St Ouen’s Bay for a run later.  And I smile to myself, joyfully, thinking how nice it is that I can do that after work.  But I can’t.  I don’t live in Jersey anymore.  I haven’t done for 8 years or so.  It’s as if someone is carving jigsaw-shaped holes in my thoughts.  They are all jumbled up.  More than usual, I mean.  I am, quite honestly, beginning to fear for my sanity.

We won’t mention the headaches.  Nurofen-ed up and snuggled down beneath my famous orange blanky on Saturday, I engaged in The Thing That Should Never Be Done.  Yep, I googled my symptoms.  And then I had a go at NHS Direct.  Good Lord.  Why does such a thing exist?  Far better one just orders a Dictionary of Death from Amazon, pick a fate then lie down waiting to die.

Brains are like boomerangs.  Aren’t they?  Or bananas.  Or perhaps I’m simply going bananas.  Apples.  Pears.  Cor blimey, Mary Poppins.  Now I’ll be talking like Dick van Dyke all day.  Help.  HELP!

‘Don’t forget, Horrid Teens, that I’ll be expecting luxurious treats to demonstrate your love for me,’ I hinted helpfully over the weekend.  ‘That means presents.  Ok?’

‘Oh, I’m sure I can sort something out,’ No. 2 Son smiled confidently.  ‘Is there anything you’d particularly like that I can find around the house?’

Why yes, actually.  There’s nothing I’ve yearned for more than than some pre-worn rubber gloves and an out-of-date lime jelly.

Somehow, the conversation quickly turned to my being dead.

Son No. 1 looked grave.  ‘Your headstone will have to bear the words “In her short life…”

‘A short life? How do you know I won’t live to be a hundred?’

He gave me that look.  You know the one.  The look that says How I despise you for your stupidity, Mother…

‘Even if you live forever, dear mama, you’ll still have had a short life on account of the fact that your legs’ (demonstrates approx. 2 inches with his chewed grubby fingers) ‘are only this long…’

Rotten sods.  Here, have a fine joke:

What do you call a mother with very short legs?

.

.

.

A minimum.

Oh yeah.  I’ve still got it.  Just not very much of it.  Thank God for my tall thoughts.  Jelly and ice cream, anyone?

On the bright side, this means you’ve been spared the sorrows of my world – the terrible tale of the rat risotto being one such stomach churning highlight of the last few weeks.   The other highlights?  Well, that would be telling.  But there hasn’t been much writing going on – I have succumbed to a fit of RSI and, despite my best urges, clicking, clunking and shooting pains in the wrists, along with numbness of fingers (and brain – possibly unrelated) are not conducive to writing.  I have, however, been plotting the novel.  The rather super DJ Kirby put me onto the The Snowflake Method of expanding on one’s initial idea and it has been rather exciting to sit down with pens and pads, scribbling away as the later mornings wander in.

I have, dear reader, been trying not to be such an early bird – getting to work at 9 with a smug sense of satisfaction that I’ve spent 2 hours writing, packed the lunchboxes and been for a run is waning after 3 years.  I’m trying to train myself to stay awake past 9pm and be *just* like a normal person.  I like the idea of dancing ‘til dawn as Sinatra croons in a corner.  I like the idea of the snooze button.  I have an inbuilt one, apparently.

April began today.  The frost is glistening under a more enthusiastic sun and summer’s on the way.  I have Easter to myself, eased into with style with a trip to The Foragers in Hove this evening.  It will be fun.  No, even funner than that.  I’m going to stay up late and everything.  My head is ever so slightly cloudy at the mo and the lack of actual writing does have the awful side effect of making all the random pop out of my mouth in a rather alarming way, according to innocent bystanders.  But my smiling department is fully functional.  It doesn’t matter about the mentalism.  Does it?

Easter weekend means chocolate is calorie free, right?  That’s good.  I’ll have my free calories in wine if that’s ok.  Thankyouverymuch.

Excuses excuses.  I know.  I have, however, managed to produce yet another short story.  I struggle and struggle with them though no one in my lovely writing group has laughed yet.  Well, not in a mean fashion.  All I need to do now is summon up the courage to start subbing them. Voices rumble in my head.  All aboard the nine-eleven fast train to Rejection City.  Mind the gap, you clumsy berk. Eek.  Editors should be like the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang child-catcher.  Not that my stories should be caged, or even tied up.  I’m just not convinced they’re ready to be free?  But I will.  Oh yes, I will for it is written on the blog.

Anyway, my novel is fermenting.  Festering.  Whatever.  This weekend will see a tumble of words.  No really, it will!  If not, you are permitted to chase me round Tescos with a pointy stick while I stuff weak platitudes into my trolley along with some Bicarb of Soda and a bunch of tulips.  The tulips are to make me happy (they will be purple) and the Bicarb of Soda is to sparkle up the words wot I have writted already.  I’m not sure they have the right flavour.  They don’t taste of string though, which is a good thing.  I’m just not sure what they should taste of?  Strong black coffee?  No… vanilla cheesecake?  Nope, too sweet… oh, I’ve got it.  Space Dust.  Sweet but bitter with a lingering fizzle on the tongue.  Yes, that will do nicely. Or Flying Saucers – the orange ones.  Ah, those were the days.

What d’you mean I haven’t told you about meeting Man from the Past?  What can I say?  It was better than a Wham bar.  Even better than Gold Nuggets bubble gum.  ‘Go easy on me on the blog,’ he pleaded.  This means he may read what I say.  I’m saying nothing.  First rule of theatre, darlings, always leave them wanting more.  Leave you wanting more, I mean.  Not him.  But actually… oh dear.  Perhaps it will another 22 years until we meet again.  (Him, not you.) I do hope not. *Blushes*

Must dash, she said, changing the subject.  My aubergines are griddled.  This is not a euphemism. What flavour will your day be today?

It’s shrugging off its rejection with a Gallic shrug.  ‘So ziss ees it?  You believe you will do wizzout me now?’ it asks, like a character from ‘Allo ‘Allo.

My grandfather was French.  I can shrug with the best of ‘em.  ‘Sorry love.  It’s been fun, yeah?’

I wanted to write about the pain, torment and wranglings of avoiding the wine department in the supermarket.  The utter hopelessness that has previously been the case when I’ve tried to give up.  Stuff like that.  But I can’t.  It hasn’t happened.  I even went to a party last weekend and enjoyed a single glass of champagne without crumbling out of control.

What I have learned though is that I like being a control freak even more than I like a glass of wine.

So.  The writing?  I’ve been struggling with shorts (the stories, not the clothes).  I find them harder than novelling, since each word needs to perform properly.  With the novel, well, I sort of think that churning out 500 words before work is good, since they can be polished up at the distant end.  So long as I’ve produced something, I’m achieving something positive.  Control-freak me has gone off this approach now.  It’s a bit like when you walk around the office wearing an earnest expression and holding a piece of paper.  It looks good but doesn’t *actually* achieve anything.  (Carrying a torch when halfheartedly looking for something is another top tip.  Even if it’s not dark, the torch makes the whole process just that little bit searchier somehow?)

I’ll have to carry on with the fiction in my bid for fame, won’t I?  Channel 4 will have to stick with their plans to serialise some out-of-work soap actor battling the booze.  Having me wander about with a cuppa, shrugging, however Frenchly, that I’m not really that fussed isn’t going to get the ratings.

My inner drama queen’s having a huff.  ‘It’s all so utterly dull,’ she wails.  She has even stamped her foot.

Right then.  Things to do.  Like deciding what to wear to The London tomorrow. I’m meeting someone for, ahem, drinks.  Someone I went on a date with, er, 22 years ago?  Today, I shall be practising holding my tummy in.  I expect he’s busy with his comb-over.  It’s not a date but, still, it’s never good when people think we’ve gone to seed, is it?   Even 2 weeks on the wagon haven’t made me look 18 again.  Oh dear.  Pass the blue sherry.

Also, I used to smoke.  A lot.  I started when I was 15 – I thought it would make me cool.  It didn’t.  It made me cough.  Trying to give up the fags after 40 a day for 5 years was a killer. Especially when combined with endless nights out.  The new gregarious me took socialising to Olympic competitive levels.  I did give up the ciggies though, not by ‘trying’ but getting up one day and telling anyone who’d listen that I didn’t smoke anymore.  Instead of a cajoling ‘oh, go on’ they looked impressed and put their packets away.  That was another new me.  A me who was a non-smoker.

I don’t know why I’ve suddenly started thinking about all this stuff.  It was, after all, twenty-odd years ago.  I’ve been thinking about life too much lately.  Making decisions.  Mostly wrong ones, it seems, since I’m not that keen on them. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.  Being a practiced procrastinator, of course, tomorrow always marks the start of the rest of my life.  But it’s time now.  I decided on Sunday that tomorrow would indeed be the start of the rest of my life.  If I could become a braver me, a non-smoking me by pretending and adopting those facades, then I can become a writer by doing the same.  6 weeks.  That’s long enough for new habits to become traits.  That’s how long I’ve given myself.  There are other departments of myself I want to change too.  There will be no wine, for a start.  Oi! Stop laughing!  There won’t.  I mean, there isn’t.

Reinventing yourself in 6 weeks?  Can it be done?  Who knows?  I’m doing it though.  It appeals to my obsessive nature.  And, best of all, it’s vital research into Novel II.  I can’t tell you more than that or I’d have to kill you.  And that would be a shame, wouldn’t it? Murderous urges weren’t on the list of ingredients for the new flavour of ‘me’.

I’d like to inform you, dear reader, that I have spent the last month immersed in my writing.  Sadly, I can’t do that, ‘cos it’s not true.  Bugger.

I don’t think it’s *actually* possible to drop off the edge of reality.  Reality isn’t flat, for a start – if it is, you’re doing it wrong.  My reality, it seems, is a deep, dark well.  The drips of real life are fermenting, becoming viscous in the gloom.  The droplets stick to me and smell a little bit manky.  I can’t describe the smell.  It’s sort of the opposite of Jelly Tots, if that helps?

There has been children stuff to contend with, amongst other things.  Son No. 2 must choose his GCSE preferences by Friday.  ‘I’ll have to take the higher level ICT course if I’m gonna be a games designer,’ he informed me wisely.  ‘But if I’m no good at that, I might be an archaeologist instead.’  Er… what?  Yes, that’s great, Son 2.  I’d like to be a lion tamer and a hot air balloonist.  I’m not though.  Here, have a go in the Well of Reality.  I do realise, of course, that lobbing your offspring into the pit of dashed dreams isn’t in the parental job description.  Hmmm again.

Son 1 is choosing his A Levels.  He is being very sensible, drawing up lists and combinations of amazing academic cleverness.  In between these moments, he is studying hard for his GCSE’s.  People of Sussex, if you hear the demented screams of ‘You’re not going to get an A-star in MSN chatting you know,’ that might be me.  Oh, good God.  When did I become that person?

Novel 2 is… well, I like the idea so much, I actually want to live the main character’s life.  That’s a bit sad, isn’t it?  This means one of two things: I’m just terribly excited about writing Novel 2 OR I’m sooooooo on the verge of a mid-life crisis.

*Goes off to weave daisies into her plaited hair…*

Yes, my brain is in a pickle.  Oh dear.  So long as the good and exciting bits at least manage to make a dent in the ‘reality’ and ‘plain daft’, it’s probably going ok though.  Isn’t it?

Bizarrely, as I read an early email today from An Unassuming Artist which mentioned Scott’s Antarctic adventures, I clicked on a song in iTunes that I’d never heard before.  I’ve no idea where it even came from. The song is now adopted as the theme song for when the novel becomes a film.  Here you go… a song about Columbus and following your dreams… it’s pretty much what the novel’s about.  I think.  Er… sort of.    Fictional adventures will be better than the real ones I’m currently craving.  Plus I won’t have to go outside ever again.  Anyway, the song has inspired me.  So there.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In other serendipitous news, one of my New Year resolutions, since you were probably wondering, is to spend less money on food.  Ok, we do like to eat well and love our treats and I do have two teens but, between the three of us, we’re munching through one hundred and fifty Great British pounds a week.  I mentioned the new economy drive to Son 1.

‘I’m assuming there’ll be less buying of wine,’ he replied, employing the use of sardonic eyebrow positioning. Bloody sod.

The weather, however, has meant that we’ve had to exist for a week now on what we already had in store.  There has been no M&S indulgency.  Instead, I’ve thanked my lucky stars that I bought a whole lamb from my lovely boss last year which went from farm to my freezer in less than a day.  I felt like a proper hardcore country girl that day, I tell you.  I won’t confess of course that I *had* to check with him that it would be ‘chopped up’.  I had visions of it crammed into the chest freezer like a stuffed toy, its legs poking out and its gentle eyes staring up at me in surprise.  Instead of giving the dog the remains of a leg of lamb, I’m positively yearning for Leftover Lamb Biryani.  Balti paste has changed my life forever.  Who knew?

The barmy weather has also hooked me out of routine.  I read in one of my hippy books, several years ago, that it’s important not to do the same things in the same way every day.  If you have to take the same dog-walking route, walk it from finish to start instead.  It’s amazing how different the world looks the other way round.  Seriously, you should try it.

Right then.  Back to the novel writing.  Buying a camper van for storyline research purposes and inadvertent adventures?  No, I’m not even thinking about that.  Honest.  Not much, anyway.  Ahem.

‘What happened to the blog post?’ I was asked last night.

‘Oh, I’ll just write it tomorrow instead,’ I replied, in a carefree Bucks Fizz kinda way.  The cocktail, I mean.  Not a Eurovision ripping-flimsy-skirts-off  kinda way.  ‘It’ll just be a different post, looking forward, not back.’

Ten years ago, I don’t think it occurred to me to look forward.  I slept through midnight fireworks and began the new millennium walking along Jersey’s St Catherine’s breakwater as dawn broke, the lights in French houses flickering on behind somnolent fishing boats off the coast way, way in the distance.  I remember thinking that there was another world, going on without me but that was fine.  I looked at my husband; my two children, one excited and the other strapped into a buggy.  I thought about that past year and about cooking a huge, extravagant roast later that day.  And that was it.  It never occurred to me for one moment that ten years on, I’d be living alone in a Sussex village with two teenagers.  In fact, No. 2 son turned 16 last week.  He’s a proper man, bursting with insatiable appetites for food and life and with a decent dose of sarcasm.  Oh yes, I’ve trained him well.  But I honestly never thought my life would be like this.

I didn’t know I’d see 2010 in with fireworks scattering over distant Brighton as I stood quietly at midnight with An Unassuming Artist.  I never knew that a huge blue moon would hang obstinately in an opaque sky whiled I sipped early New Year tea.  There are lots of things I didn’t know then.  But now that I’m looking forward, I realise that I have no idea what will happen over the next decade.  I like the way it’s started though.  As I took down the 2009 calendar and hung up the new one  I wondered… come the start of the next decade, how many of the amazing things in my life then will have begun in 2009?  I’ve met wonderful people; made amazing new friends, dreamt new dreams and let new people into my heart.  I’ve also rekindled love for the ‘old’ people in my life, which I didn’t expect.  I’ve no idea how any of those things will pan out but I do know that I’ll always look back on 2009 with great joy.  It just couldn’t quite make its mind up, though, could it?

I won’t bore you with my resolutions.  I’m sure you know what they are.  But I’m smiling and sending out those smiles bigly to you. There will be stories aplenty this year, that’s all I will say on the matter.  Oh, yes indeed.  In another 10 years, I’ll be 50.  It’s time to get on with it now.  All of it.

If I could have one wish, it would be that we all find, in 2010, the beginning of our individual Happily Ever Afters.

(are you the same person? I have doubts that there could be two tubby dudes with the whole beard and robes thing going on? Your secret’s safe with me)

Hello whiskery one, how are you?  All set for your busy night?  Have you figured out an alternative to reindeer power for the sleigh yet?  Reindeer have rights you know.  There are rules now, written down by very important people who make rules for a living.  Have you thought about solar power?  Perhaps not so good since your jolly jaunts are generally made at night.  Powered by starlight, how about that?  They’d love it on Dragon’s Den though they’d probably say the idea was patented by Neil Gaiman or something and then they’d heckle you until you cried.  It’s a tough gig.

Anyhow, just thought I’d drop you a quick line with this year’s wishlist.  And yes, I’ve been a good girl.  Quite good, anyway.  Good enough.  Hmm.

I would like:

• Sparkly writing oomph in a golden bucket that I can ladle over my laptop so as to avoid reading gossip on the Daily Mail Online.  I obviously don’t *actually* read gossip online, and certainly not on the Daily Mail, but you know what I mean.  (You can’t see everything, can you?  Oh, bugger.  I won’t do it any more, ok?)

• A purple velveteen chaise longue upon which I will lounge while having terribly writerly thoughts.  Sometimes I will have to think for extended periods (with my eyes closed) and it will be a special chaise longue which wakes serenades me with Elizabethan madrigals floating on magical rays of sunlight which will bathe me in warmth and deliciousness and make me thin while I write fabulous novels with plots that glisten potently and make people cry a little bit.

• Peace and harmony to all mankind, except the really horrid ones like the old bag in the Co-op who banged her trolley really hard into my bottom and then gave me quite a mean look.

If you have trouble with that stuff, some Hotel Chocolat rum truffles would be nice.  I’ve been good enough to deserve those, surely?

Cheers mate.

Lots of love

Jen X