You realise how much you love someone…

When you happily prune shrubs at five o’clock in the morning (without electronic tools, because I’m not mean.) Somehow, I can’t imagine that finding its way into any of my books, but it’s both true and nothing like as daft as it sounds. It was simply that I wanted to let any pollen or mould spores that got into the air settle before I put the washing out at around half past seven.

Besides, there’s a stillness about the early morning that I love. I can’t say silence, because I’m being serenaded by 3 seagull chicks, because it’s turned out that Bratling the seagull has two siblings. He’s the baby seagull who lives on the chimney pot on top of the house opposite mine, and their parents are already starting to look decidedly frazzled. They’ve also brought back nesting materials from my pruning to build themselves a nest on the next chimney pot down for those times when you love your children but you desperately need five minutes' peace.

By getting up early, I get two and a half precious hours of peace. Once, it was the only time I could write. Life’s settled down a lot since then, but there’s a part of me that thinks of it as either a temporary lull between storms or just mine. So I sneak downstairs, finish making the loaf or rolls I started the night before if it's a bread day, get the washing machine running and the washing out if I can, mop floors if they need it and set the table as prettily as I can so that when it’s time for breakfast, I (imagine a drumroll here) have a prettily set table.

Again, this isn’t as daft as it sounds because it lets me pretend that I am staying in a beautiful Victorian bed and breakfast, with pretty bone china on the table, and who knew it was so tough. It goes through on the glass cycle too, so I have lots of sets of 4 cups, saucers, side plates and milk jugs. Today I’m using a lovely duck egg blue set that was from Habitat somewhere in the late 1990’s which doesn’t seem all that long ago till I realise that it is. You can still buy the modern version of it, but mine cost me a whole £5-00 for eight dinner plates and bowls and 7 side plates. Add to that Poole pottery bone china mugs with seaside scenes on that came from a charity shop for £3.00 for 6, and a yellow gingham checked oilcloth tablecloth, and I feel quite proud of my shabby chic. It also inspires me to vary the menu, so today it’s slow-made porridge, which is incredibly creamy.

It’s the little details that make life more fun, isn’t it? Like the milk frother that my husband looked dubiously at when I ordered it, then took over as his particular toy and got into so much that we have little plastic tubs full of stencils for each season so he can make pretty pictures on top of the foam with chocolate powder. I feel so grand and smug when I settle down to my pretty mug of posh coffee and think about how much I’d have paid for it if I’d bought it in a cafe.

While I’m confessing, I also have one of those binders with the plastic sleeves in them full of menus from local restaurants, because they give me ideas about what I want to cook and inspire my family, too. I think of it as stealth cookery lessons, because when they fancy something, I get them to help me to make it, and then set the table and choose appropriate music. Then we eat and put the world to rights before my husband loads the dishwasher. According to him, there is a special sort of magic about doing this just right, and obviously, I’d never dream of arguing with him, especially since it means I don’t have to do it!

They’re all simple pleasures that make me happy, and I like being happy. I’ve never understood people who don’t, so my characters mostly are.

Which leads me neatly on to this week’s special offers at 99p in the UK and 99c in the US. As always, there are also anthologies at £2.99 for 3 books for anyone who can’t get those or simply likes a bargain.

This week, we have 3 more books from the Amy Hammond series, which are The Ghosts of Christmas Past, The Past is Always With Us and Sweet Revenge. They come from the period where Amy is realising more and more about the complicated man she’s fallen in love with, and they’re happily living side by side in 2 semi-detached houses while they share custody of Fluffy the cat.

There are also 2 stories in my Shadows series, which I write as Eleanor Neville, because they’re a little bit darker and sexier. These are The Warrior’s Way and The Cynic’s Way, and are romantic, with complicated heroes and heroines who are a long way out of their depths but determinedly not sinking. Which, to be honest, pretty much sums up a lot of my life, so no wonder I need simple pleasures and peace. So here, to finish, is the peace of what I think of as my beach. Most of the time, I have it and the amazing place to myself, and it resets something deep inside me and lets me find peace and feel I can cope with whatever life throws at me. I hope you find the same peace and have fun with your own simple pleasures till we meet again on Sunday, when I’ll be able to tell you about a Spanish galleon sailing into Poole Harbour without setting light to the town which is always good, isn't it?