It’s Monday as I type this and I’ve finished the first draft of a new Harbourside book that’s been great fun to write because, like the others in this series, life gets so much more wonderfully complicated the older you get. As one of my characters points out, it leaves Romeo and Juliet standing, because it becomes Romeo falls in love with Juliet. Romeo’s children can’t stand Juliet (or the other way round) and think they’re money grabbing evil witches. Or Romeo has lost his Juliet and is rebuilding his life. Or Juliet is exhausted after caring for her parents and she and Romeo broke up, but might just get back together if a second chance came along. Or Juliet lost her job and is at an age where it isn’t easy to get another. Or all of those things at once, because, you see, old age isn’t what it used to be… and aren’t we lucky to have the chance live longer and more active lives as long as we look after ourselves?
Anyway, it’s also grey and just about drying up after a wet start so I’m glad that I bought all those LED candles because they add a warmth to the room. And, not having totally grown up yet, and never intending to either, I can happily aim the remote controls at them and say ‘fiat lux’ or ‘fiat obscura’ as I turn them on and off and work a little bit of magic.
I can also nip outside and get some washing on the line. Then, because we’ve just had the central heating boiler serviced and it lives in the old outside loo which is more of a dumping ground than it should be, as well as functional and great if you’re out in the garden, I’ve been taking out the five sets of those things that hang on the line with lots of little pegs on them for underwear that I’ve accumulated over the years and put in there because I actually prefer the metal versions that look like coat hangers. I’ve sat there and taken off all the clip on pegs and stored them in a plastic box so I can use them when the pegs fall off my nice new metal ones, so those will keep going for much longer and I can recycle what’s left of the cheap ones that were what I could afford back then. So that is a job I’ve been meaning to do done.
Moving on with those jobs, cos I’m busily nesting for autumn, I’ve gone through the oilcloth table cloths that protect my grandmother’s lovely table along with two layers of heat proof fabric. I’ve sorted them into ‘still good, and I still love them’ and ‘these are ideal to cut up to line the inside of my not so young kitchen units to make them bright and wipe clean when I take everything out and make sure I actually need it and it’s still in good working order.'
So yes, I am feeling summer end and autumn draw in faster and faster as we head for the solstice, which also involves buying daffodils and crocuses and white dwarf hyacinths because I do tend to go the tiniest bit overboard with spring colours. I think it’s because winter tends to be a miserable time pain-wise and I hate the lack of sun and colour in the world so much.
Therefore, I buy bulbs each year and plant them round the deciduous plants in my planters and in small planters to go on the windowsills where I can watch greedily for the first green shoots. I plant them in layers, with daffodils at the bottom and then crocuses or grape hyacinths on top and then naturalise them in the garden wherever there are gaps, which is a lot easier than planting them in the ground and then thinking ‘oh, I wish I’d put them over there.’
I don’t want to be a wet wuss though, so I’m reminding myself that autumn has its compensations, a big one of which is snuggling indoors with a good book. So there are no special offers this week because there are two books out on Thursday.
One is an Amy Hammond, Crazy for Death, some of which is set around Poole. Today’s picture is the book cover, and I took the picture myself and am rather pleased with it. I’m going to take the picture for the Harbourside one too, because it’s largely set around my beloved Harbourside Park. It’s about a crazy quilt that hides a secret and the power of sewing to unite people and how little stories of little people are, in the end, vitally important.
The other one is a Windy Bay one and the start of a trilogy following the building of a school in the village. Marnie Salter badly needs a new start and A Place to Call Home. Paul Hallowell is working on his first big building project and has found the home he never expected to have. I expect you can guess what happens, but the fun is in the journey and the catching up with old friends from Windy Bay.
Next week there’ll be more special offers on other books, but till then, I hope that you enjoy the end of summer or the beginning of spring according to where they are, and please, let me know what you think?
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