Authors Electric

It's early Autumn, or, if you prefer, late summer, and in my very peaceful part of North London, there's a kind of golden silence which seeps into my head. The very last of my huge crop of tomatoes remains to be picked, and this morning I gathered an unexpectedly large bunch of runner beans - all this richness from a small suburban garden. This time of year feels like a kind of dream time through which I wander almost mindlessly. Soon there will be the first breaths of the winter to come, and I love that - it's thrilling. I am not a summer person. Recently I found myself picking lawn daisies just before their decapitation by lawn mower - these lovely little things always come back. I haven't picked daisies since making daisy chains with my kids and my grandchildren, and I suddenly wanted to - they are so sweet. The movie based on one of my books has now progressed to the stage of location and actually filming, and I will be shown the first images in ten days time...

Every Monday morning I go to a class at my local Health club. The class is called Chi-Balls, and is a very satisfying combination of T'ai Chi, Yoga and Pilates. It's performed against a background mix of someone's idea of other-worldly and meditative music, which certainly works for me. One of the pieces it uses is the very-well-known "Gymnopedie No 1" by Erik Satie. If that sounds a bit obscure, google it and listen - the chances are slim that you won't know it, as it's used - over-used - in so many TV dramas, especially the mystical, atmospheric, and deeply psychological kind. We used to have an Erik Satie CD, but I seem to have lost it, so I thought I'd try looking for him in my local libraries and music shop with - astonishingly - no luck. I turned to the Web, where there is, of course, masses of information about him. I was grabbed by a performance of the ballet "PARADE" - a collaboration between Satie and Picasso. I knew nothing at ...