It’s an area redolent with the notion of the ‘English gentleman’, and shops which provide the accessories, from fine wines to country house clothes. Woolworths may go to the wall, but here it’s Floreat Asser and Turnbull.


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Christmas is finally over and the kids are back at school. I managed to get to my gym yesterday and a good pounding on the punch bag did me the world of good, leaving me refreshed and ready to take on the world... Well almost. I wonder, in today's society, what is classed as a 'dangerous' person? 2009 should be an excellent year for me but I have managed to recruit one of these who's main purpose in life seems to be destroying mine - or at least making it as miserable as possible. On a lighter note I think I have finally plucked up the courage to have a tattoo. I shake at the thought but in two days I am visiting the tattooist to discuss a simple and dainty daisy chain for around my right wrist. Am I mad? Probably and at 37 years old I am still worried about what my dad will say when he sees it!

I am not very well. It's been several weeks of virtual hibernation, not really going out of the house because that raises anxiety levels. It's a combination of stress and hormonal imbalance, and I am now taking stuff and seeing people who are helping, as well as helping myself by laying off the coffee (shame) and sugar (hmm...chocolate?) and, well, not doing very much. I haven't felt well enough to concentrate on any writing, although stories are forming themselves in my head so I hope something might emerge soon, but I have, as always, been reading. So, here are a few recommendations for some wonderful sources of lit I have been enjoying:

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The cat is finally out of the bag, and the news that I have had to sit on for some time now has been officially released: Changeling is one of eight books to have made it onto this year's Waterstone's Children's Book Prize shortlist.




The other books on the list are:


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Here’s an image that took me by surprise - never seen gold bin bags before - or since. I took the photo in the summer so it’s not a Christmas thing, but it got me thinking … if it does the same to you, I’d love you to share …

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When I tell people I work from home and then – reluctantly, because I know what’s coming next, add that actually I’m a writer - the response is always the same. How do you get motivated when you haven’t got anyone standing over you and telling you what to do?
(By the way, what’s coming next is inevitably a) Are you famous? b) How much money do you make? and c) I’ve often thought about writing a novel myself, you know. To which the only reply is one as pithy as Beryl Bainbridge’s to the brain surgeon who remarked on his own literary ambitions once he’d laid down his scalpel for the last time. Really? she said. Actually, I’m thinking of becoming a brain surgeon when I retire. )
Will my interrogators really only do their jobs if someone’s standing over them? Hard to imagine. Unless they’re employed to hew coal for twelve hours a day by an unscrupulous flint-face miser whose only concern is the comfort and prosperity of himself and his horse-faced wife and daughters. Or forced to dig up turnips, gut fish or wash scummy dishes in a restaurant till well into the night?


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Never mind the Brrr... At Asda we're lining up for the Next Big Thing.

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To lose one haggis may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness.

Or at least looks as if somebody somewhere in the postal chain between Edinburgh and Sheerness has a serious haggis fixation. Two dispatches of the warm-reekin great chieftain o the puddin'-race had disappeared en route, my mother whispered, as Rhona and I arrived at the Burns Supper this evening. How else could we otherwise explain by what mystery a collective weight of ninety pounds of haggis (sheep's ‘pluck’ - heart, liver and lungs - mixed with oatmeal and spices) had vanished into the ether?


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It crops up on loads of writing websites and author blogs – the advice that if you want to be a published writer, you must never give up. I used to think it was all very well for people to say that - I mean, most of them just happened to have a book deal, right? It was easy for them to look down with a beatific smile from the heights of publication to patronise the folks treading water in the slush pile. They were right not to give up because they were talented – but if you’re an aspiring writer who has just received her fortieth wonkily photocopied rejection slip, how can you be sure it still applies to you?

I’ve never really liked the term ‘aspiring writer,’ but it makes me even more uncomfortable now I’m supposedly not one any more. It suggests that even if you’ve written ten complete novels but haven’t got any of them published, your efforts aren’t really valid. You’re just some wannabe; some deluded schmuck scribbling in green ink...


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As things sometimes do, it all started with a funeral.

That Billy was dead in the first place seemed most out of character. There are some people who are, well, so full of life, so much part of a place, that death must surely not apply to them. But it does and did, and Billy had died suddenly and unexpectedly, having only recently survived a serious illness.

Squashed into the last seat of the last pew at the back of the church, I’d glimpsed Jeremy as he carried his father’s coffin on his shoulder. And now, as we trickled out of the door, there he was, in front of me.

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