Authors Electric

In an effort to forget that April 2022 ever existed, I’m going to try to find something upbeat and positive to fill my blank screen today. Last month was stressful, dealing with elderly parents, emergency hospitalisations and Alzheimer's. I’d like to thank our very own Julia Jones, without whose help and advice on John’s Campaign , I’d never have had the knowledge and mental fortitude to stand-up to NHS bureaucracy, and my dad would have been left alone in hospital for over a week with no visitors … Julia – you have my eternal gratitude.  Moving onwards to May and I sit here looking out of my dining room window to a large blank space where the conservatory used to be ... Well I say conservatory - it was more of a lean-to with a polycarbonate roof, blown double-glazed windows and single-skin leaky, rotten wood base panels. A room that was impossible to heat in winter as it lost heat faster than it warmed up! So we took it down last week. Or rather Andy did. Then - while we had the ...

We are in the process of major renovation/remodelling works to our home. They have been a very long time coming. We bought this ‘dream house’ twelve years ago, and very soon realised that although it occupied a dream position, with stunning sea views all around, the fabric of the house was far more nightmare than dream. I used to joke that I would live in a shed on our plot; but as the years have gone on, and we have not got any younger, the need to do something drastic to avoid that very scenario has become finally necessary. So what’s that got to do with writing you may well ask? Well, it has definitely had an affect on mine. Living in temporary accommodation for four months, and now back home with the renovations going on around us, I have found it difficult to concentrate for long periods of time. Or indeed find the space, physically or mentally, to continue work on my second full-length book. I have satisfied the writing urge with short stories, flash fiction pieces, and blog post...

So this is the front our house as of February 2017. They put the scaffolding up a few weeks ago, but a combination of bad weather and our roofer needing to buy a new van has prevented anything actually happening yet. The latest date we've been given is Monday for the guys turning up to strip off the entire roof, re-batten, re-felt and replace all the unbroken slates. There's a stack of new slates around the side to replace the many that are cracked and broken. The view from the top is amazing - so I'm told! You'd never get me up there in a million years. I don't do heights (a bad experience playing in derelict houses as a child - 4 storeys up and out on the roof when I put my foot through a rafter...), so I leave it to Andy to climb up these things and take the photographs! That's the Intercity West Coast mainline service you can see across the fields - we're about 10 minutes out of Crewe towards Liverpool. Both storeys and stories need structure. A...