Revolving Dresses and missing items

Every time I put my summer dresses away, the heatwave promptly comes back, so I got them out again yesterday and will put them back in the wardrobe on the autumn solstice, which happens to be my son’s birthday.

If you’ve seen what skin cancer can do, then you’ll know that it’s not sensible to go for long walks on a hot sunny day, especially not when the sun reflects off the water, so I will be at home more. That’s good in a way because I can work on the new Lucy Williams for next year. I hope you’re enjoying the latest one, which is ‘Death and the Curious Cyclists’, and the latest Windy Bay one, which is ‘Too good to resist.’ Both of them came out on Thursday, and the pictures today are the cover ones. I took the picture of the cyclists myself and had a lot of fun researching it, and, as always, it is based on truth. Unlike my heroines, I don’t find anything like as much trouble.

Or at least I find different trouble because in one week the Royal Mail have lost a recorded delivery letter that includes a driving licence and birth certificate. That was Monday, and no, they won’t look for it, or care, as far as I could tell. They simply said I couldn’t prove I’d posted it because I’d bought the postage online, so they won’t refund the costs. That means that today’s public service announcement is ‘if it matters, don’t buy postage online’.

On Wednesday my daughter received a physiotherapy appointment after breaking her wrist on the eighth of July and going to Accident and Emergency. Except she didn’t. She was discharged from physiotherapy on the ninth after the wrist that she broke in February had healed. I pointed this out to the receptionist, and she said she’d close the file, which puts my daughter on record as having a broken wrist that she didn’t have and not turning up for appointments. Did you know that two-thirds of people who dealt with the NHS during 2025 had to sort out admin errors? Or that if you’re a carer, then it goes up to eighty per cent? Apparently, this is hard on NHS staff because they have to deal with upset patients. (Source, the Kings Fund) Can you imagine working for a private sector firm that got away with that, but it would make getting treatment for someone who shouldn’t be here a lot easier, wouldn’t it?

That’s got me thinking about how easy identity theft is and how false information can get out there, which is feeding into this book along with my long-running troubles with parcel delivery firms, so at least nothing is wasted.

Anyway, that’s a little bit, as requested, about where my ideas come from, so I hope you have a great weekend, and we’ll catch up on Tuesday.