So I'm stuck indoors, which is fine because I’m up to my ears in researching crime in World War Two England, so you can think of me snuggled under my new heated fleece that I got for Christmas, deep in a book and discovering all sorts of fascinating things, not just about crime but about social attitudes. As always, it brings home to me how much life has changed for women in the last eighty years since the end of World War Two and how constrained women were then.
Little things, like being able to leave school at 14, and how bad conditions could be and yet be taken for granted and the assumptions made about certain types of girls all add up to a very different war from the one Esther’s been fighting till now.
But that’s for 2026 because this is at its very beginnings and the next book in the Esther and the Professor series ‘A Darker Kind of War’ is out at the start of May, which is why I’ve gone straight from that last edit to this first draft while their world is fresh in my mind.
Sometime soon, surely, the weather will steadily improve and I’ll be back out and about again. Till then, if it rains I’ll go to see an exhibition about Poole’s last foundry and realise yet again how different the Harbour was. Even knowing I’m going has interested me enough to trigger parts of this new book, which is how I tend to work.
Till then, it’s time for tea and biscuits and to settle down in my cosy twenty-first century and be grateful for so many things. See you on Wednesday and take care. To finish on a lighter note, Amy has discovered crewel embroidery in honour of the Regency month and I’ve rediscovered it. Here’s my first attempt for years on a canvas bag.

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