Authors Electric

  You can look at any number of books, watch any number of films, but if you want a real taste of what mediaeval England was like there’s nothing better than a re-enactment. I have been to a reconstruction of the Battle of Hastings, which was really educational. I always assumed that, as in films such as Henry V, the opposing sides just went at one another until one side had killed all the rest, or the opposition had surrendered. Not so – both sides had rest periods, and then they’d start fighting again. War was a far more gentlemanly pursuit in those days, although the slaughter and the life-changing injuries were real enough, and no antibiotics or pain relief. I have been to the Loxwood Joust twice now, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Each time it was absolutely terrific. The food was pretty authentic the first time I went, too – I remember the venison stew. These days they still have the hog roast, but there was also Vietnamese food, fish and chips, hot dogs and burgers...

--At last, I'd exhausted all my excuses! And I'd had some great ones for not returning to the WIP I'd orphaned after a knee replacement last June. Check these out: --The post-surgical pain was extreme and I was stoned on meds for most of the first month. --PT offered worse pain with discouraging results.: my  lack of flexion seemed hopeless. At home, when I wasn't force-flexing or icing the knee, I brooded on the strong chance that I'd end up a cripple after FIVE procedures on the same right knee. since 2021. --I could neither stand or sit long enough to write. --Worse, I lost track of the two plot lines meant to fuse in this new book--one rooted in a novel I'd abandoned years ago. And along with losing track I found myself losing my creative  nerve as three months, four months, five months passed. But wait. As I wrote in last month's post, I decided the first thing I needed to do was regain my confidence in every way I could. With luck, I could transfer unr...

 Take two. If this blog came up blank put it down to the best laid plans going wrong yet again.  Last month, for the first time since I started posting on this blog, I missed my spot. We were in the middle of a somewhat stressful house move when we didn't know whether we'd sold our house till the removal men were loading the van. Due to the buyers insistence that we move a week earlier than we wanted we were also effectively homeless, though thanks to my son and daughter-in-love we did have somewhere to stay until we could move into our new home in Somerset.  Now that we're here and some of our 79 boxes have been unpacked my office was set up and this afternoon I thought I was ready to go. Not so. Switched on the PC displayed not even the blue screen of death but the Megaton message of despair. I was to press F1 to restart the machine, but the computer had frozen and no pressing was possible.  Back in Stoke I would know who to call. Here I need to find a computer per...

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 Just before the pandemic (the 2020s, to clarify for when I beocme nothing but a blip in history), we sought a better situation for our daughter and enrolled her in a private school. Moving from a class of 30 to one of 12 transformed her academics, though it strained our finances. Among her new classmates was an unexpected addition—a guinea pig named Miss Addie. The school asked for volunteers to care for Addie over Christmas break, and we eagerly stepped in. Addie and I bonded instantly (I’m a self-proclaimed pet whisperer), and when it came time to return her, I delayed by almost a week, because I just couldn't! I mean, look at those lovely, soulful, pink eyes! Pink! When the pandemic closed the school in March, they asked me to take her in again. By May, the school announced its closure (lack of funds... and at 1500/month, in a rural farm area, I understood why), and Addie became a permanent part of our family. During lockdown, my daughter discovered, through taking a guinea pig...

There was a moment, last autumn, when I was rummaging through old storage boxes and came across a container I’d never seen before. This happens periodically. It’s as if the layers of softening cardboard boxes, plastic crates and vintage suitcases convulse and shift to throw up unexpected treasure. Metal detectorists would understand the breath-stopping moments of surprise, the quickening excitement with which one picks out the unfamiliar item, brushes off the dirt, peers at the possible treasure.  This trouvaille  is a cuboid cardboard box, 8 ½” square and 6” deep. I’ve no idea what it had have held originally. A teapot perhaps? It was tied with string and marked LETTERS / Old Letters (Family). I prepared myself for disappointment: business correspondence, school Sunday letters kept out of duty.   Inside there was a mass of letters, hundreds of them, many on blue airmail forms  – I haven’t counted them all yet. I felt a thrill when the first letters I glimpsed w...