Living, as I do, in a non-English speaking country, one which just doesn't have the bookshop culture that is what makes New York or London far more bearable places to spend time in, I had assumed that I wouldn't really be seeing my book on any shelves around here. Then yesterday I was on my way to a new pottery class (is there no end to this woman's talents? I hear you cry. I am pretty crap at it, but love that Zen feeling of sitting at the wheel with my hands on wet clay) and I was early. So I thought I would pop into the little bookshop next door, which had an interesting bargain bin.

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So I'm drinking prosecco and admiring the cover of Karen Macleod's Betty Trask-winning novel In Search of the Missing Eyelash at one of my local independent bookshops, the small but perfectly formed and this evening packed-out Review, and thinking that I'd never been to a book launch until shortly before The Mathematics of Love came out. Karen gives good reading - she's a performance artist in another life, when she's not being long-haul cabin crew for British Airways - and I'm now I'm looking forward to getting into the book. I've even (almost) forgiven her for being young enough to be eligible for the Betty Trask in the first place. (I've never understood age limits on writing competitions. It's not the young who need encouraging with prizes, a bit of starving-in-a-garret never did them any harm. It's the older ones with dependents and commitments who need help to make the brave, frightening jump.)

It's not just book launches, either, that are new to me. I'd never been to a reading till I fell among the poets at the University of Glamorgan, never taken any notice of literary prizes, and I'd never been to a literary festival till Headline sent me as far as possible round the world - to Christchurch, NZ, and then Brisbane - to be an author at one.

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Any celebrity I once possessed at Harper Collins has long since dissipated and the receptionist has fallen back to asking for my name when I approach her desk. It is just an act. Often I only mumble and she still states it clearly over the phone to whoever I am visiting. Perhaps it is a deliberate ploy to maintain the company hierarchy, but if so, how does anyone remember the receptionist’s name?

Pauline and Mavis have broken out their summer dresses and when I see their cotton hems fluttering in the breeze of an electric fan and threatening to billow upwards and reveal their legs I pretend I’m cold and ask for it to be switched off. The PR girls are looking happy today and they comply without comment.

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Much amusement last night when, as usual, I was doing a million other things whilst cooking dinner. Which resulted in my chips being rather on the flambéd side of flambé. Not for the first time, I apologised to Lord H for my appalling catering skills and, again not for the first time, he insisted that everything was wonderful. Just as he was spinning these usual lies, he speared an errant chip with his fork but it was so … um … crispy that it careered off the plate and bounced against his glass with a distinctly loud crack. Ah well. If the Government ever wanted to find Weapons of Mass Destruction, my advice is to look in Godalming first ...

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This is the newest member of my fountain pen family. It's a 1950's Pelikan Stenonib, and it's come all the way from Germany. I like it. I'm thinking the thin nib'll be great for mss alterations.

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… dammit. Managed to break one of our nice glasses in the kitchen today – why can’t I ever break one of the horrid ones?? I then spent some minutes looking for the dustpan and brush to clear up the glass, but then realised that Lord H had left it in the loft whilst working on the watertank over the weekend. As I don’t do the loft – too spidery – I then had to get Lord H out of the bath and into the loft to retrieve it. My, the excitement we have in the mornings here in the shires. And we came here for the peace and quiet, don’t you know ...

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Heatwave! Where did that come from? We went to Bournemouth on Saturday. A long haul but worth it to remind myself how simple life can be when you're jumping real waves instead of imaginary ones. Or just paddling.


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In 'Wanting, needing, yearning, dreaming' I said that thinking about a piece of writing after you've written it can teach you much more about how writing works than reading a textbook before you start. The more formalised insitutions of academic creative writing seem to divide into two kinds: the departments and degrees which discuss ideas and theories of writing, and then write to explore them, and the places where the writing comes first and the analysis afterwards. A piece in Times Higher Education argues that creative writing is reviving the sort of liberal humanism in English departments that Theory banished, but the piece and the comments didn't rule out the theory-first approach to CW from which I instinctively recoil. So why do I recoil from it?...

And finally, the row about age-banding children's books rumbles on. I think the attempt by publishers to guide parents in choosing the right books for their children is well-meaning, but...

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Ye gods, but I'm feeling slightly stronger today. Almost like being a real human being, you know, rather than a mass of misery and shifting complexes. No idea how long it will last, and I can only think it's my double dose of Vitamin B pills kicking in finally. I wouldn't say I was dancing a jig, but at least I've stopped whimpering. Thank God.

Talking of which, Lord H and I dragged ourselves to Shackleford Church this morning. The priest was curiously dressed in red and may - as Lord H suggested - have been taking the concept of being clothed in the blood of the lamb rather to extremes ...

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They came on Friday, a 145-page PDF file of the proofs of my book, The White Road and Other Stories! As I was printing it out, I nearly cried. Just looking at the title page, and that wonderful page that asserts my rights and has the ISBN number... Very emotional. I have an ISBN number, I join the ranks of thousands, millions, of writers, I join them on shelves, I join them in bookshops, I join them on Amazon. I join them.........


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