Authors Electric

 As our worlds have shrunk during the pandemic, the new experiences on which I rely for material is dwindling. The sight of a kingfisher on the river I now know like my back garden, an altercastion in Lidl, hunting down parasol mushrooms on the common, collecting sweet chestnuts from the downs. Biggest parasol mushroom this year All within walking distance, all things I have experienced before. Lidl doesn't change much, other than the designs on the face masks, and the altercations over trolleys - but the common does, the trees are going from green to gold and then to bare branches. Foraging has become more important as anything you can get that avoids the shops is a good idea. It was an excellent blackberry season; fortunately, I still have several tubs of them in the freezer. I made elderflower chanpagne this summer, but that didn't last very long... It's been a good year for sweet chestnuts, too, and they make a great snack whilst watching re-runs of things you last saw ...

Sunday lunch — someone I know (in real as well as virtual form) posted a photo of her daughter under this heading (or hashtag) a few weeks back. Reminded me of when our daughter was that age and stage: long hair, beautiful smile… and preteen angst in spades! Yesterday, someone I (hardly and virtually) know, responded to my describing my novels as “contemporary”, and then proposing that maybe, since today’s kids (such as that daughter above, at Sunday lunch) are taught the 1980s and 1990s as “history”, I maybe qualify as writing “historical” fiction. This fellow writer even indicated that I would need to do plenty of research! Time flies (and as my great aunt, born in 1876, used to say with a smile, you can’t, they fly too fast! in true Victorian and Edwardian humour style). Sunday lunch — for an example of 1980s living: first, off to the (organic) butcher’s to buy the joint on Saturday. Then on Sunday morning, prepare the veg and the batter, put joint into hot oven, disappear t...

When I was thirteen, I was off school with flu. I had quite a high temperature, but otherwise I didn’t feel too bad. I spent the time painting, and I did a picture of a cat which won a competition. (This one was done several decades later!) I'm firmly of the opinion that the fever had  interesting effects on my imagination, and I experimented with techniques that would not otherwise have occurred to me.             Unfortunately, not all illnesses are so productive, and although writing is one of the best professions to pursue under difficult circumstances the indispositions that fell you aren’t always the obvious ones. Writing is good because it doesn’t require the constitution of an ox in all weathers out of doors. You don’t need perfect hearing, or perfect sight. Terry Pratchett now dictates everything, as he can no longer see the screen properly. You don’t have to appear in public if you don’t want to, so disfigureme...