Authors Electric

What did I do in March? I was smitten, hip and eye.   The Hip I'd had severe arthritis in my left hip for two or three years. I used to go to the gym and I loved walking in the countryside, but the pain was so bad, I became pretty much house-bound. My partner and friends nagged me to ask for a referral to a consultant, and after the usual delay (thank you so much, Tories),  I finally saw a Trauma and Orthopaedic consultant  in December '23.  He  glanced at my x-ray and said simply, "That hip joint is utterly destroyed. The only possible treatment here is a total hip replacement."   I was placed on the waiting list.  Friends and family immediately ganged up on me again. My younger brother and sis-in-law work within the NHS and know its little ways. My Scots partner has always been one for striding to the front and insisting (politely but very firmly, in that brogue which the English often seem to find scary) on being heard. Then there were the members o...

I’m in a delicate place. My new novel is finished, professionally edited, proofread and ready to be published. Yet, I’m undecided which route to go in terms of publishing (self or hybrid) so I’m in a season of waiting.  I don’t like this place so much, I don’t do well in silence. I’m not a very patient person when it comes to achieving my goals. It feels like I’m staring at a new baby that I want to bathe, dress up in cute outfits and show the world how beautiful she is, but I’m not allowed to touch her, she's not quite ready yet - It’s frustrating. Can anyone relate? I hear it can take many weeks and sometimes months to hear back from an agent or a publishing house and beyond that, several months or even years before the book is actually published. The thought makes me break out in a sweat. Literally! I’ve self published all the books, devotionals and journals I’ve written to date. I find the process exciting and over the years some what easy that I have started to help other new ...

My partner Francis has just emerged from a brief stay in hospital to have a hip replacement. It’s one of those blessed operations, like cataract surgery, that have become almost a rite of passage for us over-sixties. “Oh I’ve had three of those,” people say and one looks for the extra bulge that has turned them into a tripod. A successful hip replacement wipes out months of debilitating pain, sleeplessness, inability to walk up or down stairs without howling agony. Living in a country where such a major operation is relatively freely available is an absolute blessing. So thank you, fellow citizens, for continuing to fund our NHS, 70 this year ... and with aging problems of its own. As we baby-boomers move through the system that is almost our coeval, we block beds, stretch resources and look likely to show our appreciation of our lifelong free-at-the-time-of-need health care by continuing to live longer and longer. ( Sorry, everyone.)  Francis was among the increasing numbe...

Watching the world stumbling open eyed into ever increasing danger over the last couple of months has been a pretty distressing process. We all know that the only thing we learn from history is that history teaches us nothing, but this is ridiculous, surely? Boris, Brexit, Mr Donald – need I go on? Well yes. How about Theresa’s trousers? The fact that some dildo can be bothered to make rude remarks about them, finessed by the fact that she gets the sack for it… well, truly the mind boggles. Only pic I could find. Gloomy enough? But the really confusing thing, surely, is that in the midst of all this barking infantility, what politicians laughingly call normal people (how could they possibly know what normal is?) carry on being as wonderful as ever. I've just spent a week in Brighton, from where I travelled to London for the funeral of an old family friend called Gwen. I went by train, and it was not a lot of laughs.   The Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling (appoi...

I'm sorry I didn't post today. I've been writing a monthly piece for AE since October 2011 and it's become a moment to take stock in every month, to write freely about whatever's uppermost in my mind at that moment. I feel I'm among friends and it's both an unburdening and a chance to clarify my thoughts. I look forward to it.    This month I knew I was going to be late as I've had eye surgery to repair a macular hole and kept away from the computer during convalescence. Instead I enjoyed something of a reading holiday and would probably have written about it if yesterday (September 8th) had not begun shockingly early in the morning with my daughter Georgeanna collapsed in the bathroom being repeatedly sick and with "the worst headache I've ever had in my life". Her neck was stiff, she was clammy with sweat, floppy and at times barely conscious.    We thought meningitis, so many of the signs were there -- but not all. Called 999. The amb...