erastes

*snort*

1. I think the right person got voted off on Strictly Come Dancing this week.( Read more... )

2. I have water on the knee. Or bustitis, or gout. or something. it’s red, hot and painful. No point yelling at me to see the doctor. There’s very little he can do and he’ll automatically blame my weight (which will be right) – but he has no intention of helping me with that, so what’s the point of just going for more pills to placate? If I was a drug addict or a smoker or an alcoholic, he’d HAVE to put me in a programme to help me, but fat people are still treated like pariahs. (see the “I still haven’t had an MRI despite this heart problem” issue…)

3. Just finished COLD DAYS by Jim Butcher and wow wow wow!  Enjoyed it hugely. ( Read more... )

4. Decided to put “Gentleman of Fortune” away for the moment and get on with the gardening thingy because GOFortune needs mapping out. It’s not a mystery as in “whodunnit” so much, but more of a “follow the trail” and if I need to scatter red herrings and chekov guns in, it’s going to need more than “make it up as you go along.” So I’m aiming for 1000 words on The Gardening One today. or bust.

I’ve been tagged by Fiona Glass to do this meme. Her post was on the 6th and can be found here – well worth checking out, as are all the others, so follow the chain! I was thrilled to be tagged, too!

What is the working title of your book?

Gentleman of Fortune – although I’m not won over by it. It seemed right to start with, but now I’m seeing that title might suit a medieval mercenary sleuth rather than one in the era I’ve chosen to write in. I hope something else comes to me. I doubt Gentleman of Fortune will be its published title, to be frank!

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I’m not really sure! I’ve been wanting to write something set in WW2 for a while, but the research put me off (let’s be honest, the research always puts me off and yet I still refuse to write contemporaries!) and then the character of Douglas Foster popped into my head—my books usually begin with a character rather than any idea of plot. Some say they stay that way, too. *guffaw*

What genre does your book fall under?

Er… WW2 espionage adventure?

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie?

I have NO idea about this, as frankly, only really Douglas has emerged semi-formed and I’m still nebulous as to who he’s going to find attractive, as it’s not really a romance, it’s an adventure story starring gay men in wartime so there may be relationship forming, but not hard and fast HEA.  I am not planning any more tragedy endings, though.

Hmm. *thinks* Michael Fassbender would be smashing, particularly as he is in this portrait by Barry McCall

The POSSIBLE love interest, I sort of see looking a bit like wossit.. out of you.. know… gah. *googles*

Ok – a cross between a younger Peter Wingfield than he is here…

and Michael Wincott as portrayed here!

I think you get the idea, here. Vivian, Douglas’s faithful secretary, is modelled shamelessly on Honeysuckle Week’s character Samantha in Foyles War. *loves her with a passion*

I think that will do to be going on with!

What is a one sentence synopsis of your book?

Oh dear, I suck at this, don’t I? No, no, that’s not the sentence!

*gravelly voice* Against the explosive background of the London Blitz, Douglas Foster starts his day with a seemingly routine case of blackmail, little knowing it will drag him into places even he hasn’t been before”

I think that’s suitably vague…

Will your book be self published or represented by an agency?

That’s an odd question. There is the option of having it published without an agent, you know. I do have an agent, Professor James Schiavione, and he will be handling it. I won’t self publish, not until there’s no option left on God’s Green earth. But this isn’t the place to tout my opinions of self publishing!

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
It worries me that most of my answers are “I don’t know.”  I haven’t finished it yet. I’m thinking it will get done by Spring 2013. But it’s bloody freezing right now and I can’t function well in the cold…

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre.

If you take the genre as “ WW2 espionage gay adventure?” there aren't that many to compare it with. I think Josh Lanyon’s done one, Aleksandr Voinov’s Skybound is one, I can only hope it will be as good as those.  It won’t be as popular with the m/m readers (see how good I am at promotion?) as many books because of the “not actually a romance more an adventure story” but I hope that people enjoy it anyway. When I’ve worked out what actually happens. I’d like it to be more mainstream than my previous books—after all, there are “adventure books with gay protagonists” out there, even if there are still quite rare—but if I can’t sell it to a mainstream publisher, then it doesn’t really matter.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

As usual, the answer is “my mother” for the most part – even though she’s been dead for six years (and no, don’t worry, she’s not living with me in ectoplasmic form) she still has a huge influence over my writing, she had so many ideas when I started to write, and a WW2 one was just one of them, I doubt I’ll live long enough to write out all of her themes! Gay men were a little more out in this time, not in any large way of course, but clubs were well established, although still very illegal and they still took a risk – we hadn’t quite reached the paranoiac heights of the Blackmailer’s Charter as detailed in that wonderful film “Victim.”

What else about your book might interest the reader?

I hope that I can pull off a book about a gay man doing a job, having an adventure, living his life without the homosexuality being the driving force behind it – that’s the sort of book I enjoy reading, so I hope I can write one, too.

I am becoming more and more disillusioned and bored with Downton Abbey. I’ll probably continue to watch it for the rest of its natural life, but I wonder, quite honestly, how much of a life it has left because the plot element is almost zero.

THE ALPHA MALE BLOGSPOT - 200 place to visit, 200 prizes to win!

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My post is over on my website so please pop over and comment there – you’ll be in the running for now only my prize but the bumper prize too.

This is actually an action shot, and she’s running quite fast but she looks like she’s standing still. I’ve been trying to get her catching the frisbee but the shutter speed is so slow that by the time i take it she’s long gone and all there is to see is grass.

The frisbee is great, it’s soft rubber and although it doesn’t fly as well as a solid one, it’s safe for her to snatch out of the air no matter what position it’s in and it won’t hurt her mouth. click on the pic to get the really cheeky expression on her face.

Been AWOL a bit recently, and I apologise for that. I really admire people who can “blog” about subjects on a regular basis. It’s as much as I can do to scrawl down a few thoughts. Guess I won’t be a famous diarist when I’m dead.

Healthwise - I’m over the anaemia, thank goodness, although it’s taken it’s time and OMG I really really don’t want to go through that again. I live in fear of another period so I need to get down the Family Planning Clinic asap. I am forcing myself to walk small distances each day, even if it’s only to the next bench in the park.

Writing wise, I’m editing Standish for re-release, and working on the WIP and looking forward to the edits on “I Knew Him.” Busy busy!

I’ve joined “m/m sprint” a nice little Facebook group where you say “hello, I’m writing, anyone want to join me,” give yourself a target and others can write or edit at the same time. I’ve long been aware that I don’t really fall into the Writer in a Garrett mode and that I prefer someone to be along for the ride – that’s my fanfic roots showing I think – plus the very telling fact that as a toddler I refused to walk unless people were applauding. So nothing much has changed. Anyway, I’ve done over 2k of “Gentleman of Fortune” this week which is now around the 14k mark, which is a nice respectable – “you can’t give up now” percentage of around 18%. Which is nearly a fifth! Doesn’t sound so daunting when you put it like that. I have absolutely NO CLUE what’s going to happen, but for me that’s all part of the fun. It’s when I know what’s going to happen that i find the process boring and want someone else to write it for me.

Haven’t spoken much about Sasha recently, but she continues to be a delight. she’s matured into a beautiful, solid dog with muscles where I don’t even have places and she’s incredibly clever. Too much so really, because when we do training she usually anticipates what I want (we are working on “crawl” at the moment) and she’ll do ALL her tricks at once just to make me happy, all at once hoping that one of them is the right one. She’s also become a bit of a “helping hands” dog recently and has learned to pick stuff up that I drop, which is quite useful. Amusing this morning as I was arranging a bookshelf and she was passing up the books from the floor!

Anyway, here’s a recent pic. She was asleep and snoring. *snort*

1. Or as near to normal as I ever am! I’m still “out of puff” but that’s a matter of stamina now, because of weight and because of being knocked off my feet for a month. I went into the shop and back to the car and I was puffing afterwards, but believe me that’s a hell of a different proposition from “I don’t have enough oxygen in my body for this shit.” and it’s hard to explain the difference unless you’ve experienced it. The out of breathness I can work on, and I will, I’m going to walk a little every day, even if it’s only around Dad’s garden a couple of times. I went (finally, after being told a sneaky place to park close to the back of the hosp) to get my blood tested yesterday and seriously it was like running a marathon even with the reduced distance. My legs were like JELLY. I need to do some walking even if it’s only marching on the spot while I’m watching the TV.

2. Took Sasha to the beach yesterday which was glorious a lovely azure September day with a warm breeze. She adores it, but she’s hugely embarrassing because she won’t get her paws wet. I’d like to paddle and see if I can encourage her, but I’m not fit enough for that yet. I threw the ball into the sea twice and she just ran up and down the edge getting ever more desperate until some bloke who was paddling rescued the ball. Twice. Then he laughed and said “Are you sure she’s not a cat?” Oh, the shame, particularly when the spaniels, and yorkshire terriers, and labradors all came past, sploshing around in the shallows and getting wet over their ears.

3. Bought Sasha a Kong frisbee with my Amazon US vouchers and she’s sulking that I won’t let her play with it in the house. I’m meeeeen, apparently.

4. I’m hosting the Carina Press Twitter Feed (@Carinapress) this week and there’s a competition running there until this evening in celebration of yesterday’s Talk Like A Pirate Day (my 8th I believe…) – give me your Spoof Pirate Titles and the funniest will win an ebook of either of my Carina Press Titles. Don’t do it here, do it on the twitter feed.

5. It’s COLD today. Spring to Autumn this year. I blame Spring and Autumn Watch.

How you lot? Missed me?

Why part four I hear you ask? Well, you’ll have to ask Ian that one…

Going to post a reason on a regular basis – hope you’ll share your reasons.

Batman Parodies: Brilliant and a much needed laugh http://www.empireonline.com/features/batman-parody-sketches/p11

Listen, authors. You need an agent for one thing. To get you in the doors of publishers which say “no unsolicited manscripts” or “agency representation only”. In fact the former statement does NOT, despite what people think, mean you must have an agent, it just means they don’t want you to send your book to them, either in partial or in full to them without being ASKED. What they’d like you to do with this statement is to send a QUERY LETTER – and that’s what you should do. You don’t need an agent to do that for you, believe me.( Read more... )

Someone asked me on twitter about an antiquated French word and there was a short discussion (after all it is Twitter) about whether people liked foreign words inserted into a book to “give a flavour” and remind people that the people are actually speaking a foreign language, even though the book is written in English.

What do you think about that?

Personally it irritates the hell out of me. The only way I think it works is when the object described is alien to western eyes, and there’s no translation for it. Like “obi” for example (traditional sash) or other Japanese words. As long as the explanation is given gently in context, then that word becomes the staple word for that thing.

However, what I CAN’T STAND to the extent I want to stabbity stabbity is when a person’s speech is peppered with the words of the language he’s speaking. E.g (not from anything) “Ah, bien, Louis, you are here, we must hurry to save La Reine, vite!”

I mean, the book is set in France. We are reading them in English because it’s a novel. They are speaking French. So why are they speaking double-French? Or double Spanish, or double whatever language they are “really” speaking…

The only exception to this, to my mind would be if all the characters were speaking another language apart from their own and they interspersed their sentences with words from their language. Poirot is a good example of this: “Tiens, Hastings! I have been stupid! Je suis un imbecile! Nom de Nom!”

But what do you think? Do tell!

In other news - I’m pretty anaemic, despite scarfing down iron pills—prescription strength—for a couple of days. I wish there was some way to tell in advance when this was going to happen so I could get ironed up in advance. I do take normal iron pills every day, but the super-strength ones help me get back to normal. I’m tired, gasping for air—even talking—and want to go to bed. I think that I’ll do dad’s lunch and then go home. It just makes me completely “meh” about everything. I open a word file and I just get tired looking at it. Can’t concentrate on a tv programme, can’t concentrate to read a book. I hate it.

I’ve just discovered that there’s a fucking TREATMENT for Menorrhagia: It’s called Endometrial Oblation (which sounds like something out of Philip Pulman) and it involves burning away the lining of the womb, permanently. Can’t be done at childbearing age, for obvious reasons, but why the fuck hasn’t my doctor suggested it? It can be done in outpatients for Christ's sake. Oh, I know why. Because he’s a MAN and he can’t BELIEVE that my periods are anywhere near as ghastly as I make them out to be. Yeah, that’s right. We treat our periods in the same way that men treat fishing stories.

I’ll be having a word with my doctor next week…

It’s hot. 28 degrees today, 34 yesterday and so I’m in a ranty mood. (More especially as as soon as I arrived at Dad’s I got pounced on by the owners of the house next door who are trying to sell the bungalow who accused Dad of throwing teabags up against the windows there. There’s no point trying to have that conversation with Dad, whether it’s true or not.

Anyway. THE ARCHERS.

We have an established gay couple in the show, but no lesbians that I can recall – it’s a comfortable gay relationship, accepted by simply everyone and they are married and until recently very happily settled.

However, something came out of left field this week, that has made me wave my Bisexual button with a vengeance. Harry has been in the show a while, and hasn’t really had any role to play other than getting a job as a milkman and competing for all the local girls with his flatmate. He has been shown as positively aggressively heterosexual, and even followed one of the Polish temporary workers back to Poland before coming home empty handed.

This week, he’d gone on holiday with Fallon (the young woman whose mother owns the pub, keep up do) and Jazzer and today I found out he never made it back because he’d met up with an old flame and they have trotted off into the sunset. And the old flame was a man.

It was SO FUCKING LAME. And hugely git-like on the behalf of the writers, because they probably thought “oh, how can we write Harry out of the show and give him an interesting end, as his life in Ambridge has been so tedious up to now?” and so they gave us this.. duhn duhn duhn…. disappearance to spice it all up and to give the residents of Ambridge something to talk about for another five minutes. They seem to have gone all coy in their language recently as the dialogue was much like this:

“You mean to say that…”

“What?”

“Well, you know… he’s…”

“Yes, exactly.”

“But he was all over that Polish girl!”

The conversation then goes on to say how the “Polish girl” had never been right for him and how lovely it was he had found his true love.

Not a MENTION of his obvious bisexuality. Once again the red-headed stepchild of the GL(B)T “family” (although it is very like a family, the Simpsons, the Borgias, the Corleones…) is invisible and sitting in a corner Not Being Named. It was a cop-out and although there was a massive opportunity to raise the awareness of bisexuality, the writers just went with “oh, he was gay all along.”

Pah.

Pah, I say. And double Pah.

And also: Speak its Name is running their interview spot again, thanks to the lovely Elin Gregory who is mirroring her Comfy Chair posts there. If you want a spot, slip either me or Elin an email. however, authors, I would be grateful if you were 1. at least a little familiar with the blog before applying and 2. Don’t start preaching to me me on the policy of the site and saying how limiting it is. There are plenty of other places that do interviews, but at Speak Its Name we do gay historicals. That’s all.

Had a horrible temperature last night of about 102  (all gone now, these things only last about 12 hours) and my mind was amusing me as I tossed and turned by giving me re-runs of The Big Bang Theory. Suddenly I thought “This is stupid, I don’t want to watch ones I’ve seen before, I’m a writer, invent some new episodes!” So my mind obliged and promptly had Haroun and Tanweer (the gay indian couple mentioned in The Grasshopper Experiment) who came to stay on holiday with Leonard and Sheldon – and Leonard was talking to Haroun about their relationship, and Haroun said “oh, we have an open relationship – but Tanweer doesn’t know that, of course.” I spent the rest of the horrible night worrying about Tanweer!

Stupid brain.

Firstly, I think publishers underuse the promotional capability of ebooks, but that’s up to them. It seems an ideal place to link to books and videos and goodness knows what, it surprises me how many don’t.

Secondly, I get sick and tired of chapters not being put at the beginning of an ebook, and if they are – they aren’t LINKED – what’s with that?  Who wants to hit “page forward” sixty times, looking for the last place you were at, or if you want to read a particular chapter again?

Thirdly, PUBLISHERS. PLEASE PUT YOUR PROMO NEWSLETTERS and letters of thanks and letters regarding piracy and gawd knows what fucking else AT THE END OF THE BOOK. The amount of persiflage I have to get through to find the start of books sometimes reminds me of this wonderful Danny Kaye moment.

As you may know, I’ve been trying to get Standish into ebook form for some time, and I’ve been having discussions about PD Publishing regarding this. We’ve decided—on a purely mutual agreement—that the rights will now revert to me, for all formats.

I’m really excited because Lethe Press have made me an offer for it, which I’ve accepted and I’ll be able to rework the book completely, give it a much-needed overhaul (particularly in relation to the POV switches *grin*) and take out the major mistake that must not be named. Then I’ll get a spiffy new cover, a relaunch and it’ll finally be available not only as a pretty paperback, but also as an ebook. There was an illustrator interested at some point, but she never followed through. *sadness*

I know that SOME PEOPLE have probably already got an e-version of Standish on their readers and smack wrist if you have, as it wasn’t ever available in that form!

Just a word about PD Publishing, in case people think I left them for any acrimonious reasons, I absolutely had no problem with them. They have never missed a royalty payment, their statements have always been spot on, and I’ve always found them to be prompt in replying, courteous and professional.  It was a ten year contract, and in this fast moving world, within the m/m genre, that’s a bit too long. It’s been out in print with PD for six years now, so it had a good run. The cover (although I shall always be fond of it, and it’s sort of iconic for me) looks a bit old, and as I said, the book badly needs a rewrite.

So! Watch this space! I need to get reversion letters signed, and new contracts signed and I’ll let you know when you can expect the Lethe version to be out. I’m really excited about it. 

The opening ceremony for the Olympics was Just AMAZING. Boyle was right that he could never deliver the kind of WOW that China did, that was something else entirely, but what Boyle did was to garner all the best and the worst of the British, going from an agricultural feudal society to Dark Satanic Mills (in spectacular fashion, sort of like going from Hobbiton to Isengard in five minutes), and a sense of FUN (the Queen even had an acting cameo with James Bond) and a very broad sense of Humour. The highlight for me was Mr Bean playing the one note in the Chariot of Fire theme, and dropping into a doze to dream of those hunky runners on the beach.

But there were so many great moments. I was dreading it, to be honest, because our segment at the closing ceremony of the Beijing games was buttock curlingly embarrassing, and I thought it might all be like that, but somehow it encapsulated so very much that was great about England, and some of the Not So Great. One error though, they had a section on children’s literature and The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang—although invented by Roald Dahl—was NOT in Ian Fleming’s book, he was purely a film creation.

I wish I’d been there, but I’m sure I got a better view from my sofa. If you haven’t seen it—then it’s really worth watching.

As for Noble Publishing—the temptation to call them Ig-Noble is quite strong. within the newly formed authors group we have a mole, one of the authors who feels that she is loyal to Noble. She (for ease, could be male for all I know) is passing all the emails from the group up to Jill and/or Jill’s daughter Natasha Noble/Lopez and said Natasha, who styles herself as and “executive assistant” has been emailing some of the authors personally and haranguing them and threatening them with legal actions. I have no idea if this is with Jim Noble’s or Jill Noble’s permission. I won’t say “without their knowledge” because they’d have to have their heads stuck up their bums not to have noticed the broo-ha ha going on, as more and more people post about it.

However, the latest in the saga is that Natasha states that “royalties will be paid” and that Jim is unlikely to return anyone’s rights.  And there will be a statement sometime today. Considering we were promised a statement on Friday, I admit to not taking this terribly seriously. However, we will see.

I’m just glad I’m only in with them for one novella, and not 8 or 12 like some of the authors. More news when I have it.

Read out today by Denise Lewis because of the Olympics, but I think it works for all things, and particularly writing. Particularly the bit about “You’ve got to think high to rise.”

If you think you are beaten, you are
If you think you dare not, you don't,
If you like to win, but you think you can't
It is almost certain you won't.

If you think you'll lose, you're lost
For out of the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow's will
It's all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are
You've got to think high to rise,
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.

Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!

(from something that doesn’t exist at the moment)

Sam has just made love to a boy on the beach. A golden, long, and languid boy with lazy lips and hair curled to his shoulders; too long hair, ending in golden tips. A sand-dusted boy, warm to the touch, as though he’d been buried in white sand for a thousand years and had been delicately brushed and uncovered by experts.

Not a boy at all, though. Sam was a boy at that age, elbows, knees and unable to string a sentence together. This was a young man, man enough to smile, man enough to know what he wanted, man enough to pat the sand beside him; and to smile, smile.

So, I Knew Him is finished, bar the tidying up—I should be sending it off to the agent tomorrow with luck, or the weekend, anyway. And I’m sort of on the horns of a dilemma as to what to write next. (Those of you who have spotted this post for a big fat lump of procrastination, well done.)

You see, I like writing for Carina; the editing is fabulous—Deb Nemeth “gets me” and she pushes hard to make me better. But I’ve been staggeringly disappointed in the sales. What baffles me is that my two books with Carina have done markedly less well than Frost Fair & Speak Its Name with the smallest of publishers. In fact, the latest royalties for FF and SIN for JUST THE EBOOK SALES with Bristlecone (Bristlecone handled the ebooks, whilst Cheyenne pubbed the paper) were twice as high as with Carina. And that’s pretty thought-provoking. Of course Carina’s royalty rate is very low, but I think I thought that it would have much higher sales, so it would even out. Wrong.

I’m sure there are people making good money at Carina, but I suspect they are mostly writers of het.

No, of course I’m not in it just for the money (I’d be mad if I was, seeing as how little I actually make) but money has to be a factor. I rely on royalties to help pay the bills, because my Carer’s allowance only covers the mortgage. I can’t go spending six months of my life and writing something like Tributary (which personally I think was one of my best) only to find, as I have with that book, that it’s making about a dollar a month. Literally – the royalty for the Last Gasp anthology was FOUR DOLLARS AND EIGHTY FOUR CENTS and that’s between four of us. $1.21 each.

I mean – that’s just mad. I would do better self-publishing and I'm definitely not going there. I know I would make more writing het, but I’m even more definitely not going there, because I believe you should write what you feel the passion for, and it’s not het romance for me.

By the way, this is not some plea for a whip-round or anything like that. It’s a serious talking to myself about What To Do Next. Sometimes just writing it down helps. (Or I tend to shove it to the back of my mind along with all the other “I won’t think about that today, I’ll think about that tomorrow” thoughts.

Where’s a set of green velvet curtains when you really need ‘em?

How – HOW – did I miss the news about leni_jess?

Short discussion of 50 shades of grey on my twitter feed and someone said:

“There are also different forms of fanfic and some are more derivative than others” (for those who didn’t know, a good few I’ve spoken to over the past weeks, it was originally Twilight fanfic)

What do you think about that? I’m rather confused by the idea. either something is derivative or it isn’t. You wrie other people’s characters – and it doesn’t matter whether it’s Harry Potter on the Moon, it’s still Harry Potter, you write him because you like the character and find fun putting him in different situations than he’s been in in the books. You keep his innate characteristics (pompous gittyness, but then i’m biased and in the camp of “should’ve pushed him under a bus when he was 11, Voldie”).

If you then take that character and keep his characteristics and rename him – even though it’s still set on the moon, then there’s an ethical (if not a legal) question there?

I don’t know. All I know is that if—for example, never gonna happen—someone wrote a fanfiction novel about Rafe and Ambrose even if was set in Australia or something, and then changed their names and published it as “original” and made squillions I’d not be best pleased.

Interesting.

37. Anything worth saying is worth saying twice.

"Come on," he said. "We'd better go down there," he said.

*waving hands madly*

Yesterday I finished “I Knew Him” – or at least the first draft. I am soo bloody relieved I can’t tell you how I feel. I seriously thought that I’d never get it done, that I couldn’t write any more, that writing was just another nine minute wonder as so many of my “hobbies” are. (competition entering, knitting, crafts, blah blah)

It was purely down to my internet mates prodding me on a regular basis that kept me going, in particular Erin Gregory and Gehayi.

It’s been two years since I started it – June 2010, although I haven’t been writing it for 2 years (despite me sitting with the laptop open every day….) I think I’ve been resting on my laurels because I had three books out last year but I’ve shot myself in the foot because other than “A Brush with Darkness” it’s unlikely in the extreme that this one will come out this year, maybe not even next.

No more murders for me, not ones that need to be solved, at any rate. Crime writers get my deepest respects and the next time I kill off a character I hope it’s in some Regency alley with no witnesses. Murder must have been so easy back then!

I need to add some detail in, and of course edit it like mad, because as Gehayi can attest my relationship with punctuation—whilst better than it was—could still be called “casual” at best. Commas are other people’s worries, to be honest. :D

Weatherwise, we are still deep in the grip of drought here in Norfolk, with a hosepipe ban, but as it’s been raining non-stop for weeks, it’s handy that we don’t need to use the hosepipes.

I’m on day two of “eating sensibly” because I am going to kill myself if I carry on the way I am.

If, by any stretch of the imagination you wish to be included in the filter and listen to me sound off about losing weight then comment below. It’s likely to be a long haul, but I think the process will be cathartic and helpful.

Ok – that’s it, back to our regular scheduling.