Mr and Mrs Duck

In my neighbour's wild garden this morning: the ducks who have made their home there.

They didn't want to be photographed and kept hiding round the other side of the pond's island then peeping round the corner to see if I was still there. I still was and eventually they got used to me.

Significant moments

Karma is a funny thing.

    Forty (blimey) years ago I was in my first year at Exeter university and struggling. I had spent much of my adolescence in my bedroom filling out my chart of food-and-drink-consumed, in the grip of anorexia. I was not equipped for being thrown in with several thousand of my contemporaries.

    Now my lovely niece, who spent much of her adolescence languishing at home with ME, is going through the same. And not only is she studying at Exeter, she is in the same hall of residence that I was (and the chairs in the television room haven’t changed).

    These however are kinder times. She has changed her course, she may change universities, and her family are making frequent visits to keep her spirits up. With any luck the next few years won’t degenerate for her into the disaster that they did for me.

    Yesterday my niece and I went for a walk by the sea. She borrowed my camera to take photographs. Actually, as I’ve explained before, it isn’t my camera. It was chucked out by my brother – my niece’s father – because it didn’t work, and repaired by Frog. The photograph above is one of hers.

    Trish Currie in her blog ‘What’s cooking?’ (http://www.trishcookingcurrie.blogspot.com/) writes about significant moments, the moments of each day that you remember and which in her case she turns into her exquisite almost-daily posts.

    I have many lovely memories from yesterday but one stands out from the others. Ellie playing in the waves with her new friend, a chocolate spaniel called Indie. Me talking to Indie’s ‘owners’. And my niece smiling in the sunlight.

Here goes

‘You try too hard,’ said my hairdresser Michelle as she worked something called ‘craft clay’ into my hair and mussed it all up.

    She was talking about my hair, but I haven’t been able to get her words out of my head.

    I’m terrified of doing anything to The Novel (always in capitals, note) in case nothing comes to mind. In case I can’t do it. I try to impose words on to the page. I don’t wait for them to come. I try too blxxdy hard.

    The paralysis has even extended to The Blog (as you may have noticed) – something which came so easily to start with.

    Yesterday I had my once-every-three-weeks collapse in bed – not quite a migraine this time – nausea and headache, yes, but not quite the black pall of all-over wretchedness that signals migraine – so today I feel good, back in touch with myself, liberated from the ‘to do’ list. I spent a day in bed and the world didn’t collapse. Maybe I could do more just for myself.

    Writing – when it works – gives me the same feeling. So here goes. Blog post first (good or bad) and then Novel.

My weekend

Yesterday I drove for half an hour into the wilds of Mid Devon and went for a walk along a wooded river valley protected by the National Trust.

I needed to get Ellie away from all possible sources of illicit sport so that I could have a peaceful walk for once (Ellie’s illicit sport being one neighbour’s pheasants and another’s rescue sheep and chickens, as well as all the children on bicycles who appear at the weekend).

Apart from one family also out walking their dog I saw no one all morning. The river burbled and the leaves drifted down like snow. Ellie ran free.

In the words of Van Morrison, wouldn't it be great if it was like this all the time.



The enchanted wood



My poetic aunt Annabelle has recently had her autobiography published in Norway where she lives to rave reviews. Partly at my insistence, she has now translated it into English, and Frog and I have been reading it for the last two days, riveted. It is called The Girls’ School (Pikeskolen in Norwegian).

She has so much to write about – what it’s like to live in two cultures at once (English and Norwegian), losing her mother at the age of six and her current battle with an obscure illness called myasthenia gravis to name but three of the themes.

Please, English publishers, take hold of this book and give it the attention it deserves.

Spot the dog