After having to cancel a planned mini-break in Bruges due to illness, I’m now settling down into near-hibernation mode for the winter, at least in terms of travel. Not that I have travelled much this year, with short breaks in Norfolk and Scotland. Even so, I’m glad to raise my metaphorical drawbridge and spend a few months on my home turf.
Physically, that is.
This week, another post about an aspect of my writing life, as featured in the September issue of the Tetbury Advertiser.
Tidying my study after the summer holidays, I declutter my desk, taking it down to bare essentials. There’s a pen tray and bottle of ink, a pencil pot, a shelf of project notebooks, and a stack of four in-trays, one tray for each area of my working-from-home life. This orderly setup makes me feel in control when other evidence points to the contrary.
More important, though, are four tiny talismans. Not otherwise superstitious, I regard these talismans as essential tools of my trade.
(Please note: This post replaces an earlier version that was somehow jumbled in the transmission – I’m hoping it will read in the right order this time!)
After emerging from a frantic period of activity, I’m just trying to catch up with myself, and have realized to my horror that I haven’t posted on my blog here since 8th April. So today I’ve decided to do a bit of catching up before it all gets completely out of hand.
Despite my house already being full of books, with multiple shelves in every room, I can never resist the draw of secondhand books, whether from a dedicated seller of used books or from a charity shop. Whenever I go on holiday, whether for a long or short break, there seems to be an unwritten rule that I must return with at least one book for every day spent away from home.
My recent trip to visit my aunt in London resulted in a five-book haul from charity shops, plus one volume purchased from a purveyor of new books, to salve my conscience for buying so many secondhand. It’s important to support independent booksellers too. (That’s my excuse, anyway.) Continue reading “The Fascination of Secondhand Books”
Filing my tax return just before a significant birthday last month, Benjamin Franklin’s dictum that “nothing is certain in life except death and taxes” hit home. Seeking uncertainties as an antidote, I turned to thinking about English weather. What could be more uncertain? Perhaps that’s why we talk about it so much. According to social anthropologist Kate Fox, author of Watching the English, every hour of the day at least a third of the population of England remarks on the weather.
Continue reading “WHATEVER THE WEATHER: In Praise of Temperature Blankets”
