Some days, being flippant and cheerful is just too much of an ask. Some days, I am so, so grateful for the quiet early morning hours when the rest of the world and my family are asleep and my only company is a sympathetic cat. Or three. Or four. Technically, I am owned by two and a half cats, because Lucy spends a lot of her time with the girl next door who is in need of a sympathetic cat. This morning she is with me though and so is Ginger from across the road. Or bored Ginger as we first called him. He’s here because his pet human is away for the week. I suppose most people would go round to the cat’s house to feed him. He’s decided to come round here and snuggle up with the gang. I know better than to try to photograph them because they don’t like the flash, so they’d move. Instead, I watch 2 black cats, 1 big black and white cat and one beautiful ginger tabby curled up on a caramel covered pouffe and think what a jigsaw puzzle that’d make.
It’s raining hard so my plans to plant the last of my spring bulbs while my husband is over at the hospital for his PET scan have had to be replaced with a plan to baste my last Christmas quilt ready for quilting. He can't have breakfast beforehand but I shall make his favourite lunch, which is a massive sausage and stuffing roll with buttery shortcrust pastry. And I shall keep telling myself that I am lucky that they are monitoring him and that these weeks of fear are the price I pay for knowing that if the cancer has started to grow again then they will know in time to tackle it so I ought to be paying them willingly even if happily seems too much to ask for. I will remind myself that he has now had stage 4 cancer for so long that he has reached the point when he is statistically more likely to die from something else. I shall tell myself to be grateful for the nine years we’ve lived under this shadow since the day when we were told that he wouldn’t live to see Christmas 2015.
And you know what? Not one bloody bit of it will help, any more than it will help anyone else who is on this journey,. All I know is that I am not alone, no matter what it feels like right now. I have friends in real life, on line and in books. Is it daft to think of books as friends? Well fine then, I’m daft because all my life I’ve had my heroines and when times were hard I channelled them and faked the confidence and competence I wasn’t feeling. I’m still here so it must have worked.
So now that I write, who shall I take with me today? Kim Kinsella, from the Shadows series, who doesn’t know how to give up. Amy Hammond, for her constant kindness and conviction that people matter. Lucy Williams who lost her husband to cancer. Esther Graham who lives with death and air raids and war, much as far too many people have to now. Any or all of the Ladies of Windy Bay who simply get on and do stuff. All the people I wish I was more like. For the next few weeks I shall make myself be more like them and that started with making the tiny effort to turn on my LED candles. Yes, I was that down when I started typing this, but I’m better now. Not exactly okay, but better, and oops… Willow my big black and white cat has just stretched and little Ginger who’s a teenager cat, or a Catling as I call them, has slid down the side of the pouffe and landed with hurt dignity so excuse me while I make a fuss of him and reassure him that I knew he wanted to make a fuss of me and I did not see that!
He’s happier now, so here we are at this weeks special offers because life does go on and the odds are in my favour. As ever, these books are 99p in the UK and 99c in the US.
A very different kind of war, A very private invasion and A very private war are the current three Esther Graham World War 2 novels. I’m happily researching number four for next year at the moment.
Echoes is the Covid-set Amy Hammond book. I know some people don’t want to remember that time, but it was so intense that to me it made a perfect setting. That's how I cope with life which is why I wrote the Crafty Sew and Sews with a heroine who is dealing with what I am now, and also has a character who lives with rheumatoid arthritis and a permanent lock down.
Finally, Away with the Faeries and No place like Gnome are the current last two Christians Cross paranormal crime. I felt like turning someone into a garden gnome. What can I say? No one should be expected to be nice all the time, should they?
But this view is nice, so let me share my peace with you. I’ll be cheerful again by Sunday, promise. Or at least I’ll seem to be anyway, and that’ll have to do. Till then, you’re welcome to walk beside me if you’re in dark times. If we each bring a candle then it won’t be quite as dark, will it? Just a little light is all we need to get us started.
It's a stranded ship after a storm. But look, it's a beautiful day and it's now off the rocks and back in the water to sail on adventures with all the damage repaired. Fingers crossed, we'll all be able to say that soon.
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