Authors Electric

I booked a New Year’s hotel break for myself and my husband in the Lake District, somewhere I’d never been before. I didn’t realise I’d chosen a hotel that caters mainly for the partially-sighted, and it was a revelation. The staff were the nicest, most caring people I have ever met, without exception, and the building, although elderly, was designed with the blind in mind. The notices were all in Braille, as well as conventional script, and the paths outside all had handrails. There were guide dogs galore, the best-behaved dogs you will ever see, who frequently knew one another but never let anything distract them when they were at work. The exception, I was told, was when people stayed for Christmas, and the dogs had their own presents which arrived in a sack that they instantly recognised. They were allowed to go mad for half an hour, after which they all went straight back on duty. I was surprised by the upbeat atmosphere – and boy, did everyone know how to party when it came ...

I love my garden, and I find gardening is a very good way of mulling over ideas whilst doing something worthwhile. There are so many parallels – weeding out irrelevant characters. Cutting plotlines. Pruning language. Planting the seed of an idea. I know my garden very well, but even so something unexpected can appear, presumably the result of a nut buried by a squirrel, or a seed stuck to the foot of a bird. But it’s when I visit other gardens that I really get the ideas. I’m lucky, in that I live close enough to the RHS gardens at Wisley to be able to visit them quite frequently. Last year they had exotic butterflies in the huge tropical glasshouse. Just before Christmas they had an event they called ‘Glow’, which consisted of enormous lighted sculptures of flowers.  As these beautiful creations towered over you, you felt your sense of scale go haywire, and it was easy to imagine yourself as one of The Borrowers. This spring, they’ve had a Lego safari. I didn’t expect ...