'Twas the week before Christmas ...

... and all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse ...

I don't know about your house, but most I know are rather noisy this week. Children are suffering from a toxic mix of exhaustion after a long term at school and pre-festive excitement. (I know one daughter has secret supply of chocolate for times like these - not for the children, but for herself! Good for her.) Adults are tackling the lists, of presents, and food ... and enough booze to get everyone through. Some are working and donning the Christmas jumpers to run the gauntlet of office parties. Some people love them ...

But for some this turning of the year is also a time of reflection. Politically it has been a turbulent year and many of us are deeply troubled at what might be coming. And it is impossible to ignore the millions who are suffering in wars and natural disasters - the world looks very unsafe at the moment and it can feel as if we have forgotten how to look after each other.

This dance between the frivolity of Christmas and the misery of our fellow men and women feels particularly poignant this year.

Which puts those of us who are writers in an impossible position. It is easy to join in the festive fun and pretend that the rest of the world is pottering along without a problem for a week or so. It is equally easy to drown in heartbreaking events taking place far away and ignore the joy of playing with those we love. We cannot, of course, get it right.

Maybe that's fine. These are times of great change and we cannot turn our heads in several directions at once without getting a serious headache.

And so I wish you all a peaceful holiday. I shall raise a glass to those who are near, and those who are far away. I'll be back in the New Year.

(It is also, possibly, a crazy time to launch The Planter's Daughter. Hey ho, that's when she was ready to fly.)

The rhythm of life is a wonderful thing, possibly.

For those of you curious about the photos in my previous post: the boats are Dartmouth, but taken from the castle and looking upriver. The second picture, taken into the sun, is Prawle Point, and the last is Start Point - from the west (so taking the footpath that takes you away from the path to the car park).

Here we go again - September. No more reading in the garden till gone nine in the evening. No more waking to the song of the mistle thrush. No more playing in the river or hunting for wild strawberries. Soon it will be crumpets for tea and the shops full of sparkles.

I'm not, as you know, good at winter. And I'm not good at picking up the rhythm of life in the autumn. I love the anarchy of summer, the feeling that anything can happen any time - just because it's light and the sun is shining (some of the time). Now the schools are back the term-time routines have resumed and I am, unwillingly, picking up the threads again. The writing group, the book group, the choir.

I know I need these rhythms. However much I love the freedoms of summer life can't be like that all the time. I need to wake up and know that, just because it's Tuesday, I need to get up and get out on time. I don't have to like the discipline of it. But I know that, if months stretched ahead of me without any sort of routine, I might slip into complete lethargy and become the doddery old soul in the corner drooling into my tea long before the years dictate.

Which is why, reluctantly, I am embracing September. It is an opportunity - I know that - to be more purposeful. And I do my best to see it like that. Even so, I can't help feeling as I did at the beginning of every school year as a child: do I really have to do this just because it's good for me.

Yes, I do. (At least until January, when I can go AWOL again!)

When coming home is hard.

It's not easy, coming home after a long trip.

For a few days I felt like this:

Then, when I looked at the list of all this things I needed to do, I felt like this:

And now? I'm picking up the pieces, reconnecting with friends and family, running my fingers along my (dusty) bookshelves, deciding what to cook for supper. Within days the Galapagos feels a million miles away.

Except I can't stop talking about it. About being somewhere so geologically new. About being so close to birds and animals that I'd expect to run away from me. About swimming in a sea that really is turquoise. About being so close to a snake constricting and eating an iguana. About seeing two huge tortoises squaring up for a fight. About watching a baby frigate bird feed from its mother - putting its entire head down the mother's gullet. About watching sea turtles have sex (which has its comic side as she has to come up for air from time to time, and then he falls off ...). 

It is as astonishing as everyone says it is. But, as each island is different, it's hard to write about it as a unified experience.

So will there be a book? 

I'm thinking about it. I need to find the story. Woman has great time Ecuador and the Galapagos isn't a story. Let's preserve the fragile environments isn't anything new. 

And while I'm thinking I'll leave you one last picture: this is the boat was on, travelling round the islands.

The garden needs a headache.

It's that time of year. Everything is overgrown. The air smells wet and soggy leaves clog the lawn. The roses have have a few brave little flowers but the glories of June are behind the. I've a vine that straggles across the back of the house. The quince tries to attack me as I squeeze past it to get to the compost heap. The ornamental pear looks like it's just woken up after a night on the tiles: it needs a haircut. The mock orange was beautiful in June but now it's trying to take over the world.

I don't climb ladders any more - mainly because I live alone, and if I fell off I'd be really stuck. Nobody coming to the front door and finding me out would think, 'I know, she's fallen off a ladder in the garden so I'd better find a way to get in and rescue her.' No, off they'd trot, assuming I was out or had my head buried so deeply in a book I was refusing to answer the door.

And so I have a trusty pruning-man. He comes with his ladders and electric thingies and long-handled whatnots and whizz, snip, chop - and the lawn is thick with twigs and leaves and general debris. My job is to come behind him and sweep it all up, and lug it down the garden to the compost heap. Give us a couple of hours and the garden will have its annual headache. It will look a bit surprised for a day or two, and it might sulk for a while, but by spring all will be forgiven. (Except, maybe, the vine - which has produced just one bunch of grapes in all the years I've lived here. It hung over next door; eat them, I said. But they didn't. And so, in a fit of childishness, I chopped that end off the vine. It has never produced grapes since then.)

The garden sorted, I need to do the same for my writing. Pass it over to someone with a serious red pen. Someone who does not linger over dead wood. Someone who can spot a weak shoot or crumbling branch and not grieve for it. I, too, might sulk for a while But eventually I'll review the remains of my lovely words. It will all feel very bald for a while, but will hopefully blossom next year. For we all know that writing, like gardens, need a serious chopping from time to time.

I'm finding it hard to write today because

I'm finding it hard to write today because:

• It's too sunny. I need to be outside to soak up a ray or two before the winter sets in.
• It's too cold. My fingers are too stiff and I want to curl up by the fire.
• It's too wet. There's a line in Gabriel Garcia Marquez when he writes, 'It's raining too hard to think.' Oh yes, I know that feeling.
• I'm too tired. I had a late night and all I want to do today is flop about.
• The gas person/electrician/plumber/parcel delivery person is coming some time today. I don't want to get stuck into something and then lose my train of thought.
• I really ought to do something about the jungle that is my garden.
• I'm meeting a friend for coffee later, so there's no point in starting anything.
• Next door's dog is barking/baby crying.
• I need to so more research.

So how come, when I get passed that lot, I love it once I can settle down. All I have to do is turn the computer on, open a file - and the hours fly by. Passing delivery men - pah! A coffee stop - wonderful - but not for too long as I need to get back to it.

I tell the world that I write because I breathe - and that's true. I can't imagine living without scribbling things down. My notebook is beside me (and full of random thoughts) all the time. So why the fiddle-faddling delays to turning the wretched computer on?

(Am I the only one who does this ...?)

Ah, the salsa!

If you're looking for thoughtful - I've over at the Authors Electric blog today, writing about the dialogue between politics and culture and literature. You can find their blog here.

So, I thought we'd better have a bit of contrast here.

That's all there is to it ...

I don't know about you, but my hips didn't do that when I was twenty, and they're certainly not going to do it now. But oh, that energy, the sensuality of it.

So, next time you have an urge to read something serious, how about a quick salsa round the kitchen to recover. No one is looking!

Writing groups - in their diversity and wonderfulness!

This post has grown out of a twitter-chat: Emma Pass and I were wittering about our writing groups and it was clear that we both value them, but they are organised differently. So we decided to write this together, post it on both our blogs at the same time, and see what happened!

Which got me wondering whether it's the structure of a group that matters, or the fact that it is an opportunity to work collectively with people we trust.

I go to a group that used to call itself a Life Writing Group. It is organised by a woman who also teaches with the OU; she brings an exercise or two, gives us homework, and generally keeps us in order. A year or so ago we spent a lot of time talking about memory and how to reframe that into something literate. We laughed (and wept a little) and wrote some wonderful pieces.

We've grown, over the year. While the structure of the group is the same, and some of us are still working almost entirely on memoir, others have branched out into fiction - both short stories and novels - and others into poetry. We've been submitting work all over the place, and even the sniff of success is celebrated with cake.

It is the writing highlight of my week (yes, every week, during term time.)

Emma, meanwhile, has a very different experience - and here is her bit:

As well as being an author, I have a day job in a library, where I’ve been supporting and coordinating an adult writing group for around 3 years now. The group started out as a wellbeing group, run by another writer, and I took it over when her sessions finished.

We meet monthly, and there is a wide range of ages and interests. So often, people don’t have a space in their lives where they can be creative, so this group aims to give them that. Our main focus is on having fun and trying out new things. The sessions usually consist of short exercises which members can interpret however they want, but there is no pressure to take part if a particular exercise doesn’t inspire, and you don’t have to share your work if you don’t want to.

Alongside the adult group, I run a group for 9-14 year-olds which has been going for around a year now. It follows basically the same format as the adult group, and it’s amazing how well many of the exercises we do suit both groups! And of course, we always have chocolate – it’s essential writing fuel!

Two very different experiences. So, what is yours?

Do you write to entertain? Or is there more to it than that?

I'm following on from my waffling about humour, and writing to make each other laugh - there were some really thoughtful comments, which had me taking a step beyond funny and wondering if we can pinpoint what we are hoping to do when we write - on blogs, or short stories, or poems (whatever!)

The more I thought about it, the more complex the whole thing seems. I suspect there are as many reasons for writing as there are writers, so I'm only speaking for myself here.

I'll begin by thinking why I read. Because I love it - yes, but that's not enough. I want to be entertained, but I want more than that. I want to find new ideas, to engage with new thinking, to be asked to look at the familiar from an unfamiliar angle. I want to understand how other people feel, to read about others tackling the daily challenge of getting up and edging a way through the day - it cements us sharing a common humanity, if you like, knowing that other people need a cup of tea in the morning, or enjoy of twinge of trolley rage in the aisles of Tesco's.

I write because I breathe - I can't imagine not writing. But that doesn't explain why I write on blogs, or publish the travel writing, or play about with poetry and short stories. I hope to entertain; it has to begin there. I'm not sure I claim to play with new ideas - though there may be readers who barely know where Laos is, so anything I say about it has to be new and potentially informative. I rarely share very personal, private feelings - though don't shy away from making fun of myself and my girliness when faced with rats (or tigers). I have the occasional rant, but would rather celebrate the fun we can have than waste energy whinging about things I can't change. If any of this is funny - well, that's a bonus. And then my thinking seems to degenerate into it being satisfying, this reaching out to total strangers (and many not so strange now, after blogging for a year or more), but I don't think I can be more specific than that.

Does it matter? Maybe it doesn't. But sometimes it's worth thinking about, given that I blog away regularly and hope others will read and enjoy it. Are there any other bloggers out there who have a clearer idea as to why they write?

A short post to say thank you.

Thank you - to everyone, both here and on twitter and Facebook, who took the trouble to congratulate me after my post on Monday.

It's humbling, being on the receiving end of all that. Most of you I've never met - you know me only through my words and a few pictures. Yet so many took the trouble to slip in a comment, to share my joy - just for a moment. It might feel like a little thing to you, but it gave me that lovely swimmy rosy feeling to know that so many people not only noticed but also took the trouble to comment.

I have a vague feeling that we (a generalised 'we', maybe I mean 'I') spend too much time pondering on things that go wrong, things that need changing, the dream of making everything 'better' (whatever that means). But, for a moment, all that was out of the window - and my inbox was full of uncomplicated delight. Not a 'yes but' in sight.

Thank you all. I raised a glass to each and every one of you. (Just one glass, to you all collectively - not one each, I'm afraid. Sorry about that; hic ...)

This may never happen again ...

I checked my emails the other day, as you do. Among the usual spam (your account with such-a-bank has been compromised, please tell us your inside leg measurement...) there was a comment from my website - these are normally someone asking a sensible thing - like can you buy toothpaste in Kuala Lumpur or wondering if I wouldn't like to go travelling where they are.

So it took a few minutes to take this one in. It was from an editor. In America. Please would I write a piece on taking a gap year as an older person, for a book he is editing. There's no money, as it will raise money for a cancer charity.

This is a joke, I thought. Proper editors don't seek out people like me. Delete it, I told myself, before I get too excited. Then I googled him - and he is everything he says he is. He has worked for Big Publishers. This book will be a companion to another that came out last year.

Oh heck, I thought. Then, well, yes - of course I'll write something on taking a grown-up gap year. When do you want it? In ten days, he said. Oh, bloody hell. But - hey ho, what have I got to lose? Though I explained that wouldn't give me to reflect on it. He agreed to read an early draft, see if it was what he was looking for.

He has been utterly professional. And I have sat at my computer, pinching myself because he assumes I am a Proper Writer. So this is what Proper Writers do - flop about with coffee, go for a walk, write scrappy notes, and then tease them into some sort of shape? Does that look professional to you? It felt surreal to me. But it's what I did - and he likes it! Just one small suggestion to add to my first draft, and it was done.

We're into line edits next week, but he has told me to expect very few changes. The book will be out in the spring - and I'll be able to tell you more about it then; and you can feel smug buying it as it is for a good cause.

And I shall probably stare at my name in the credits in disbelief. This may never happen again - but it happened once. So I am allowed to raise a small glass of wine to celebrate?

And you - has anything wonderful dropped on you out of the blue, that made the world look a bit different for a while?

Some things are more important ...

Some things are more important than blogging, or tweeting, or writing, or travelling ...

What!!!! Surely not - I mean, I'm a writer, and traveller - they are the core of who I am.

But this week my grandson is coming to stay. I have four grandchildren. I have seen the Taj Mahal, I tell them. But do I know the difference between a tinky-winky and a ninky-nonk? (No.) I've trekked in the Himalayas, I tell them. But can I do a back-flip-thing with a football? (No.) I've written a book, I tell them. Does it have pictures? (No.) I've been close to a tiger, I tell them. Then a daughter glares with a look that says don't you dare tell them about the tiger.

My grandson is five. His world is full of the wonder of playgrounds, of football, of ice cream and toy cars and lego. So, for a week, that is what my world will be full of too.

I will be gone for a few days. There really are more important things than blogging:

For this week my grandson is coming to stay.

Digging Holes

Many years ago (it feels like another lifetime now), when I was a Probation Officer, I worked with a lad (I'll call him Tom) who had just come out of a juvenile correctional facility (posh name, dreadful place) and asked what he did all day.

   'Diggin' holes,' Tom said. 'They called it gardening, but it was diggin' holes.'

   His pulling himself together had nothing to do with hole-digging and everything to do with an imaginative youth officer who set him to help younger kids at risk of going wrong. Last heard of, he had a wife and family and he'd never seen the inside of a prison.

   Two weeks ago - I noticed a water leak in the road near my house. (There is a connection - bear with me!). A water-person came a drew blue arrows on the road, pointing to the leak. I can only assume that the leak-mending people needed help to identify water bubbling up in the middle of the road. But they came anyway, and dug a big hole - which filled up with water and spilled all over everywhere generally adding to the mud and debris scattered all over the road. Then they filled the hole in again - and even more water spilled through its cracks and crevices and the only thing we had to be grateful for was it not being icy.

   Today - they have returned, and are digging the hole up again. Will they mend the leak this time? Or will they peer into their hole and scratch their stubble (yes, they are all men - no women with beards) and agree, yes, there is a leak? Who knows?

   But it seems, from my ignorant standpoint, that this hole-digging is as pointless as Tom's 'gardening'.

Which only goes to show how little I know - because Tom worked things out in the end, my water leak will be mended eventually, and maybe they know something I don't know. Is there is treasure to be found at the bottom of their holes? There might be an intrinsic joy in hole-digging that has simply passed me by. It might be a secret, magical process, the gateway to Nirvana?

   Maybe it doesn't matter. Some processes make more sense than others. Does everything has to have a reason? Is there no space for digging holes just for the joy of it? I am sure there are many who regard the pleasure I take from cricket in the same light!

Words v pictures.

Last week I posted a blog entitled 'Do blogs need pictures?' (You can read it here, if you weren't around last week.)

And it caused a little stir. (Only a little one, nothing to frighten the horses.) Comments - on the blog and on facebook - ranged from 'Pictures are wonderful, and essential to break up pages of text' to 'Words are the point of blogs; too many pictures can get in the way.'

So - what is the blogger to do, if she wishes to keep her readers happy and enjoy the whole blogging thing? Alternate? Jump down on one side or the other and hope enough followers will hang in there?

Surely it's about the nature of each post, what you are hoping to achieve, and how you want to communicate. I wonder how many of you found this post on Trish Nicholson's blog. Here are photographs with no words - and I didn't miss them. The images are simply beautiful, all on their own.

Then there are the posts (like most of mine) with no pictures at all. I take the point made in one comment, that pictures can break up very long blogposts. Speaking personally, I am put off by blogposts that take half an hour to read - they have to grab me in the first paragraph to make that time investment. I prefer posts that are short and to the point. In contrast, someone suggested that too many pictures get in the way, meaning you have to scroll on down to find the point the writer is actually trying to make.

So - given that I can't please all the people all of the time, I shall take each post as it comes, and if it needs an illustration I shall try to find one (bearing in mind I'm no photographer). And the rest of the time I'll chunter along, playing with words in my usual haphazard fashion. (Because if I'm not enjoying myself the whole thing is pointless anyway!)

Interestingly (and this is an aside) there are no pictures in Over the Hill and Far Away, even though it is a travel book. And not one critic has suggested that illustrations would have improved it, which hopefully means that the words were enough on their own.

There are brownie points for anyone who can think of a suitable image to illustrate this post!!

Writing about people you know.

As some of you know, I've just come back from Ireland - my last post included some photos.

You might conclude, from that post, that I was on my own. Yet I was with a group of friends - ten of us, trooping along the cliff path and rewarding ourselves with guinness at the walk's end. And I haven't mentioned them.

Why not? Because I haven't talked with them about this blog, about the possibility of writing about them, about saying who was the muddiest after the climb up a landslip and who had the greatest capacity for alcohol (no, that wasn't me!). They are friends; the purpose of our being together was not to gather material for a blog, or a short story, or research their histories to weave them into a travel piece. We were together to have fun - it is a good enough reason.

Yes, there are some great characters among us - characters who would be fun to play with in a short story. But I won't use them - that feels, to me, like an abuse of our friendship, taking something from our private relations and waving it at the world for all to see. When I wrote about people in Over the Hill, I either had permission to write about them or - if I couldn't contact them - changed names.

I know - I've read the 'how to create a character' books. Find a friend or member of the family and change her gender, her shoes, her occupation. Then throw a storm at her.

I'm sure it's effective. But I won't do it - my friends and family are precious. I love to write - and I love them even more. Even Anna (some of you will have met my daughter - she pops up from time to time) knows if I'm going to mention her.

Maybe I'm being too precious. Maybe it would be fine to reassemble a friendship in fiction. What do you think?

What if . . .

Is this a game you play?

What if I were not in this place, with these people, what would I really want to do? It's a cheats' game really, because you are, for whatever reason, in this place with these people - and you must have made some choices along the way for it to be so.

But play it for a moment - if you could choose anything at all, right now, what would you choose to do?

That is what solo travelling is like. For a start, it's scary. There is no-one helping you to make any decisions - there's just you and your Lonely Planet (or whatever guidebook you are using) and your imagination. What do I want to see? Where do I want to go? How shall I get there? With a world-full of choices and no-one but yourself to fall back on (or blame if it all goes wrong) it can feel terrifying. Every day, every decision, is full of risk - simply by being unknown.

But - once you unpick that general terror, that 'I can't' feeling (left over from childhood, when even crossing the road on your own was an adventure), you will realise that you can. You can walk this street, that street, visit this museum, that palace, or simply sit in the other cafe and watch people.

My days always have a rhythm. I stop three times a day, for food - almost always sitting down. That gives me pausing time - time to reflect on how the day is going, maybe rethink what I'm going to do next. It also gives days a structure, which I need (not everyone does). Plus I need little encouragement to stop for tea or coffee.

But, even then, every day has hours when I face the 'what now?' question. What is it that I want to do, with this time of mine, when all I have to fall back on is my guidebook. It is, truly, liberating. I am free to see what I need to see, hear what I need to hear, write what I need to write, talk to whoever I want to talk to, smell what I don't always want to smell . . .

Indulgent? In some ways, yes. And a privilege.

And it sounds hugely self-absorbing. Yet it isn't. For the only way, really, to make sense of this big world we are in is to talk with other people who live in it. To discover that they have different ways of exploring, and explaining, the world to themselves - and will share that with you if you make time to listen.

Of course there are parallels with writing fiction. We throw our characters into the world and try to walk alongside them through all the challenges we hurl their way. But it's not always so easy to do it for ourselves.

So what if ... you were free to do whatever you wanted, right now? Play along, just for five minutes. Scary? Exhilarating? Who, maybe, is the one person you'd love to have a conversation with? And what might he or she teach you?

Diaries.

Do you ever reread old diaries? Not the writing notebooks - those are full of ideas (or snippets, or general passing thoughts-that-might-be-stories-one-day). But diaries, where you write about things you did that day, and maybe how you felt about them.

I keep a diary at home - and never read it. As I've no-one to turn to and say, 'you'll never guess what happened today,' my diary is where those thoughts and general daily rubbish get dumped. And no - I don't reread them; once they are on the page they are gone. My head can move on.

But the travel-diaries are different. I'm beginning to go through the diaries from Nepal - firstly, to think about whether they can be shaped into a short ebook, and if so, then how. But almost immediately I am caught up with something I'd forgotten - generally little things that feel unimportant in context of a wider story. Such as the man in leather jacket and trousers, at the domestic airport in Kathmandu, taking his baby daughter (about 4 months I think) to look at the planes. The boys playing football outside a temple in Tansen. The sign outside a health spa in Pokhara that offers a back, neck and ear massage (no, that's not a typo!).

These details feel as important as the big stories (like the tiger). They are what makes each day different, and special. I can't imagine how tedious my day-to-day diaries are at home - and nothing would induce me to go over those. But the travel diaries excite me every time I open them. They take me back to the people and the smells, the mayhem of the city streets and the glorious silence of the mountians (and yes, they scratch my itchy feet, just a little.)

And you - do you keep a diary? And do you ever reread it?

While I'm away.

I'm off again - for a month, this time. To the mountains of Nepal.

I could have written blogs to cover my absence, organised them to come out regularly, so you'd barely notice I was away. Twice a week you could read my passing thoughts on writing, and reading, and general observations about plumbers.

But I haven't. Why - because it seems a bit disingenuous to be blogging as if I were here when I fact I'm up a mountain somewhere. The reality is - I will not here. I will not even pretend to be here. I've gone walkabout, because that's what I want to do.

Plus - I hope to connect from time to time. Tell you what I'm up to. Remind you how beautiful Nepal is, how wonderful her people. After all, blogging is my way of keeping in touch with everyone at home.

So there will be unreliable posts, from expected places. I understand from my Lonely Planet that wi-fi is easily available in Kathmandu and Pokhara now, but I suspect I shall still be at the mercy of power cuts. And I might just creep off the beaten track occasionally and be out of wi-fi range.

So - I'll blog when I can. Though probably without photographs - those will wait until I get home and I can organise them on the website. So you'll have to take my word for it that the Himalayas are huge - and stunningly beautiful. With snow on the top that turns purple at sunset. That the lake in Pokhara shimmers in the slightest breeze. That the temples of Lumbini are mysteriously peaceful. And the elephants ...

My head is already there. It's time for my body to follow.

An orchestra of white goods.

I have a new washing machine - no, don't rush off. This isn't a diatribe about white goods, nor a writing exercise just to prove I can write about laundry for an entire paragraph without sending you all to sleep.

Sorry - wake up there. No, my washing machine - sparkling white, undented, efficient, with clever programmes - sings to me when it has finished washing . . .

A merry tinkly tune - far too high to join in with; in fact, it is pitched so high it is almost at that point where only dogs can hear it. So high that only a toddler stung by a bee can reach it - that first, terrified cry before they take a deep breath and let out a proper bellow.

Which leaves me wondering - who thought this was a good idea? I don't want to appear all sexist about this, but somewhere a group of people (men? in suits?) sat round a table and brainstormed ideas.

'We need to find a way to make our washing machines more exciting. It's not enough that people have clean clothes. They need a complete laundry experience.'

Cue for enthusiastic clapping. 'Laundry experience,' they agree, 'is a great phrase. We must remember that.'

'How about we have different coloured machines - yellow, or stripes, or dots like Pudsey.'

'I'm not so sure. We need machines to fit in with the whole kitchen/utility room experience. So it has to be sleek and modern, and minimalistic.'

'I thought colours might be rather fun.'

Cue scowls.

'How about . . . well, I'm thinking, just brainstorming here, the washing is finished, and someone is busy with other things - cooking, looking after the baby - how will they know to sort their clothes? A little ping, perhaps? A bell chime?'

'No - a tune!!! A little song!!! That would be cheerful, and make the whole laundry experience more, well, enjoyable?'

'Hurrah, a tune, what a wonderful idea!!! Then laundry can really be fun!!!'

'Then people can have a little dance to celebrate the laundry etc.!!!'

'And let's be really clever and pitch the tune so high that they want to rip their own ears off each time it plays!!!'

I simply don't believe a woman would have done this. Nor would she condone hiding the instructions to turn it off so deep within all the little booklets that come with machines these days that anyone who with washing/cooking/cleaning to do (and some writing, or even travelling) would lose the will to live before she found it.

So, if anyone else has a new LG washing machine - any ideas? Other than soundproofing a room to hide it in?

And please - warn me of any other kitchen gadgets to avoid. I really don't need an orchestra of white goods.

Holidays - don't you just love them.

Well, I do - love holidays. And I make a distinction between holidays and travelling. My book is about travelling. This week I'm on holiday. (Well, I'm not actually on holiday as I write this - but I'm drafting it at home so that I can spend my holiday doing, well holiday things. But if I can pretend I'm away, I'm sure you can.)

I'm in Devon. Which is not far, and not hugely different from Wiltshire - except Devon has the sea, and the moor, and cream teas. I've not come here for difference; rather to be away from my own washing up, the grass that needs cutting, remembering which week they collect the recycling. I need an interruption to those realities.

For the joy of holidays, for me, lies in its being just that - an interruption. When I'm at home my days have a rhythm. I live alone and so the rhythm is mine to control. I don't have to think about the shape of days. I can even get a little tetchy if there are major challenges to that rhythm. But comfortable rhythms can lead to complacency.

And so I come on holiday. To surprise myself by doing things differently. I might take a boat trip up the Dart. I might tramp across the moor and pretend to be a brigand. (I am alone; nobody will know.)  I might eat a cream tea at coffee-time. I will eat unexpected food, at unexpected times. I will not listen to The Archers, nor organise my evenings to watch the News. I will ask myself new questions.

(Not so different from travelling, then? Yes - it is very different. Travelling is an expedition, and requires significantly more planning. It needs me to interact with my surroundings all the time if I am to keep myself safe, meet great people, catch the right bus. And it doesn't stop at the end of a week.)

But how much of an interruption will this week be to the writing? I can't imagine a day of writing nothing. Of keeping all those words locked away. So I'll write - I expect my journal to be the dumping ground for far more sentences than it handles at home. And I shall read, of course. So - you are saying - this holiday is no interruption to the writing. Surely it's like taking your work away with you? But writing doesn't feel like work. It feels like breathing. I can no more stop writing than I can will my heart not to pump. I am even ready for the holiday to throw up short story ideas, thoughts for this blog, or even snippets of inspiration that will ferment for a while until I find the right home for them.

Why do you go on holiday? What do you hope to find there? And does being away tilt your world at all?