Hen & Ink

Disaster struck briefly this morning when I chipped a corner off my molar on the muesli I was eating! I’ll have to enjoy my upcoming gourmand experiences on 31.75 teeth.

After a leisurely start I packed my car and glided reluctantly out of the Cotswolds, taking the back roads and skimming the top of Toddington to reach Worcestershire in no time at all.

Because I had a day before me I thought I’d explore the Malvern Hills area, little realising that my B&B for the night was right there!

I started with Little Malvern – spying what must be Little Malvern Priory amongst the trees.

It being 10am the first consideration was a coffee and so I followed my nose but found myself frustrated. I googled ‘Malvern’ and ‘coffee’ and was given directions to St Ann’s Well cafe. That looked promising!

The road grew increasingly narrower and bendier and at one stage a very tight left turn saw me propelling my small car up a dirt driveway into private property. A lengthy 20 pt turn later and I rejoined the route but it still lead me to a dirt goat track of a road that I feared my ability to return from.

So I headed downhill into the town proper:

Steep streets, a huge cathedral-type building that turned out to be a school, a priory, but no parking. I eventually found a pay and display and walked into the main street, tempted to go to the Cafe Nero.

But no! After all this effort it needed to be local – so I sweated uphill and around a corner to a place called Rebecca’s Cafe (I think).

It was certainly quirky and unique:

Dead flowers in front window, crotcheted bacon and eggs on a plate, tupperware-type containers with the blurred outlines of home made cakes. Too late to back out now – and being only the second customer – I ordered a piece of Victoria Sponge and a big latte. I listened in vain for the sound of coffee beans grinding – and was unsurprised when a latte of filtered coffee and frothed milk accompanied my cake. Sigh. I’m sure the tea and scones are excellent.

Anyhoo, I set off on a bit of an explore – into the priory grounds:

There I read some gravestones – always interesting to me – coming from a country where we don’t have any prior to early 1800s.

I then returned to the car, found a Waitrose supermarket, purchased some salads and fruit and drove towards the Little Malvern Priory to have a picnic lunch in the carpark.

Small note: Why is it so hard to find a cafe in UK that sells salads along with pastry and bread items? They do an excellent job with the salads at supermarkets but never in a sit down place.

I was the only car in the park, so after lunch I took myself across the road to peruse the priory. A line of gravestones straddled the pathway – from centuries past to the current day. The most poignant being:

Ahead the cool entrance to the 11th century priory loomed.

I made my way inside, feeling pleasantly surprised by the welcome signs, open doors, and headphones with recorded message about the building. It is an active church, an invitation to make use of the kitchen to make tea or use the toilets prominently displayed. Inside the heavy wooden door the chapel is lofty and has some splendid Medieval stained glass windows – featuring Henry V.

I thoroughly enjoyed the visit.

Then I meandered a bit more and finally wound my way to my B&B for the night. This is a comfortable room on ground floor with futon bed. My friendly host, Rumana, welcomed me in to join her and a friend with a cup of tea and homemade cake.

Still feeling the effects of jet lag I had a couple hours nap and set off for dinner at the Nag’s Head – not far away.

My pork medallion’s were tasty and I enjoyed the lively atmosphere around me. I’m now ready for bed again.

Tomorrow: Ludlow!!

I’m glad I chose to linger two nights in the same place. You can never really tell how good or quirky a place is until you get there – so it’s a risk. Most times I’m pleasantly surprised. I sure landed on my feet with this B&B.

After a scattered night’s sleep caused more by the adjustment of my body clock than by the luxurious bedroom I inhabit, I slipped down the stairs to the huge kitchen and a place setting just for me. Richard heated a croissant for me while I had muesli and fruit. Perfect.

In addition I had the endearing company of this Jack Russell – Douglas.

I set off early for Bourton-on-the-water, hoping to miss the crowds – and I DID, for a while. A lazy Sunday morning setting by the stream was all I’d hoped.

I wandered around until I found coffee and nibbled my sausage roll and sipped a Flat White in meditative silence.

Going out to sit in the park and await the 10.30 opening of cycle hire shop, I watched coachload after coachload of (in this instance) mostly Asian tourist pouring in to the tranquil setting from the path from the carpark. It made for an interesting way to pass the time seeing the tight little groups rush by clicking photos and holding up their hands for selfies with the ‘v’ symbol raised.

At 10.30 I was fitted with one of the spare men’s bikes – a simple model with a seat I later discovered kept slipping down to the nub. All the women’s bikes are too small!!! Setting off with clear instructions for how to get to some good routes I found myself repeatedly lost and on what were clearly not cycleways but barely used tracks.

Now don’t laugh – this is what my Map Your Ride route looked like when I finished.

I never did make it out of town but I covered a lot more ground than if I had been on foot AND had free parking behind the shop. All for only 11 pounds.

With the bike returned I set off to celebrate by eating a Cornish pastie and lemonade.

It was only a 5 minute drive back to Lower Slaughter so I kept going through the village and checked out Upper Slaughter and some of the tiny leafy roads in the vicinity.

Before long I was re-entering Lower Slaughter from a different direction and seeing what I’d missed yesterday.

Sooo very pretty.

I headed home for a nap, feeling unaccountably queasy for some reason, and curled up on the bed for a few hours. The nausea subsided and I forced myself out to see the village on foot.

When I rounded a corner and found the Mill I was impressed.

Home again I hopped straight in the car and found the pub in Bourton that offered Sunday roasts. Sadly no tables outside, no roasts left, no real atmosphere but I settled inside to my chicken and chips, feeling the sticky table pull at my skin whenever I lifted my arms. See – it’s not all good.

Things perked up when I strolled along the stream-side afterwards, and bought an ice-cream called a Union Jack to lick on a bench in the cool evening breeze at 8pm.

Now I’m home in the living room writing this up.

Tomorrow: Worcestershire.

After a good amount of sleep I headed downstairs at Park Inn for the extensive and substantial breakfast they provide. That (I told myself) should set me up for the day.

Then it was off via two shuttle buses to Eurocar depot where my Vauxhaul Economy manual drive awaited me.

Now the hard bit: plunging on to the fast moving motorways leading out from London in a manual car. The further I went the more relaxed I felt as roads veered off and narrowed and became country lanes. Finally I diverted and decided to see Oxford. The plan was to see the Bodliean (sp) Library if poss. However, the closer my intrepid Google narrator brought me the more bicycles and teeming crowds surrounded me and I had to park so far away I changed my target.

Just down the road was the Eagle and Child, the pub where the Inklings used to gather. (C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, and friends). I slipped inside and ordered a half pint of ale and revelled in the knowledge I was in their familiar haunt.

After a walk along this street and back I set off for Bourton on the Water, to see about hiring a bike tomorrow. Once again, the main part of this picturesque town was seething with tourists and locals – some kind of fair? – and no parks. Mental note to just turn up and hope on the morrow.

I drove on to the Slaughters and was delighted to see the little hamlet of Lower Slaughter was pretty and there was parking!

A moment later I was strolling beside a shallow stream, seeing groups of people sipping tea and beverages under umbrellas on this mildly warm day.

Naturally I joined them.

As I sat there the church bells began to ring out and I captured the moment a wedding party emerged across the road.

Bliss!

I made a reservation for dinner here at Slaughter Inn and set off down the road to my B&B which is five minutes walk away.

What a pleasant house and host awaited me.

After a two hour snooze I roused and walked back for dinner: Lamb and vegies.

For the first ten minutes I had the restaurant to myself, but it filled up even as I did.

I’ve sat on the garden seat you can see through the window and then wandered home.

Perfect start to the adventure!

Descended out of clouds at lunchtime today and am now in the familiar terrain of the Park Inn, Heathrow. Have bought SIM card, showered, slept, and feeling somewhat more myself, am hunched groggily in bar downstairs partaking in soda & lime and small plates of nibbles.

THAT was a loooong journey. 12.5 hours to LA, 2.5 in transit, 10 hours to Heathrow. Still, I’m pinching myself that I am here at last.

Slainte!

I highly recommend business class if you can get upgrade. Sitting a bit the worse for wear in LA transit lounge but the first leg was bliss.

And plane landed in middle of tarmac and we bussed to customs. Now about to bus to plane for long leg to London. Not business class.

It has reached this stage in the preparation process: sorting and reassessing the clothes, drying the ones that have hung outside with the rain (we don’t own a dryer), buying gifts, and yesterday going through my itinerary and filling the gaps with all the useful information (in case I’m unable to access data!).

In the course of this process, I discovered – somewhat to my horror! – that I needed a visa for Canada. I have traveled by car into Canada in the past and don’t recall getting one, and you know, I thought being part of the same Commonwealth of nations and all that, but no, I needed one. Here’s where a state of near panic surged up and I took the first official website offering online visa processing and proceeded, finding that a sum of $100 was needed. Not til my friend in Canada stated that I needed to beware of false sites did I double check and feel my adrenalin rise again: the OFFICIAL site said I only needed to pay $7. A quick phone call late at night to my bank and the distressing news that they could not cancel payment pending, and “Did I want to cancel my credit card?”. Um, NO!! Not with only a day to go before heading out into the wild beyond.

Great has been my relief this morning to find that I have a valid visa for Canada for a princely sum, paid to an ‘immigration service’ (who pocketed the $93 for doing what I could have done), and who sent me the $7 visa. I have double-checked with the official site and it is valid. A LESSON FOR THE LESS VIGILANT.

Apart from that brief glitch, I’m feeling excited and have the leisure to ensure I have got all the details sorted. To make matters even better, I received a free upgrade to Business Class on the 12.5 hr flight to Los Angeles, so I certainly cannot complain about being diddled of that lesser sum. (My last long trip pushed my airpoints status up to silver, which gives you a free status upgrade on flights. These requests often don’t happen because of the planes being overbooked, but the miracle happened this time.)

The next time I write, I imagine it will be from the Northern Hemisphere and the diagonal opposite of where I am currently. Until then . . .

Yes, I’m reviving my poor neglected blog, in order to post my coming trip. I’m heading this time to the UK, Canada and USA, and taking two months to do it. A welcome break from mid-winter in New Zealand.

Here’s the plan:

Thursday 1 August, I’ll fly from Auckland via Los Angeles (sigh) to London, England. Then I make my way westward towards Herefordshire gradually. A fellow Outlander fan is meeting me in Worcester and taking me home to Ludlow for a few days. (Thanks Glyn Blythman).

From Ludlow, we go north to Birmingham, and the Highlander4 Starfury Convention, which will be alive with Outlander fans celebrating all things Outlander and meeting some of the actors from the show. After that excitement, I’ll hire a car and go further north, meeting friends in Burnley, and then up to Edinburgh for the Tattoo. I have a night in the Falkland hotel which was where Claire brushed her hair while the ghost of Jamie watched. Two nights in Loch Lomond. And then a meander south via Stratford-Upon-Avon and a night of Shakespeare in his birth place. I see friends in Bournemouth to finish off and then fly out towards the USA on the first day of September.

Arriving in Orlando, I have a day to prepare before going straight up to Canada, near Toronto to meet a friend there. After a few days with Nancy, we’ll fly east to Nova Scotia, and spend six days enjoying that area (where some ancestors passed through from Scotland).

Then we return and I fly south again to Orlando, spending a few days with Marcie and Penny, in Harry Potter’s world, in Avatar and other themes we know and love from Universal Studios. I go with them up to friends in Jacksonville, FL until it’s time to fly home via San Francisco.

Come with me, if you like, in this virtual space. I’ll try and post regularly for those who want to share my trip. Only a week or so to go!

Peasant Girl with Embroidery by Filipp Malyavin

It doesn’t seem to matter where I look, I can’t avoid seeing the usual persuasive messages to make improving resolutions as the next year rolls around. I’ve turned the television off for now and am now sitting in the peace and quiet of my studio . . . reflecting.

I am not going to make any New Year’s Resolutions! There – I’ve said it. Year after year has gone by, and the same old resolutions rear up again and again, much like in the movie ‘Groundhog Day’, and for once I’m going to do something different. Has my life really changed that much for all the intention put into it at the beginning of each January? I think it’s time to cut myself some slack.

We watched the news tonight, and the New Year’s honours list of New Zealanders who have been awarded various orders of merit. And they probably all deserved them. But I’m a little tired of hearing about achievements, or people who have become famous for this or that, and the huge drive we seem to have for fame, fortune and the reaching of self-imposed pinnacles.

Where am I going with this?

The Angelus by Jean Francois Millet

For all that I can admire the hard work and achievement of others, there’s another part of me that is drawn to the other side of that spectrum.

The people who have been of the greatest influence in my own life, have not been the sort to be awarded medals or special honours. They have probably never sat down and contemplated how to be nicer, or kinder, or slimmer or simply more happy. It’s probably the last thing they would be thinking of.

In my early years I worked at the Government Printing Office, as a new graphic designer, and was full of the excitement and energy of the job and the potential for improving my situation. Working alongside me in the office were a number of other artists, but nearby there was a plate-making facility for transfering our designs into separated artwork for the presses, and in this area was a small non-descript desk. At this tiny table a little woman sat, bent almost double over her book of accounts. I called her Birdie, for she was as bright and cheerful as one, and she would shuffle over to speak to me first thing in the morning when she arrived. She must have been in her late forties, and her arms were twisted in upon themselves, and her feet were clubbed, and she walked bent over with slow and painful steps. Such was the condition of her twisted feet, that she made her own shoes! And she got herself in to work each day by train from Lower Hutt, and walked up from the station to the building. I visited her once at her house, and we shared a cup of tea and admired her two cats. For all the difficulty each day must have brought her, I cannot remember one complaining word out of her. Not one. She just got on with her life, recognized its limitations and adjusted her viewpoint, and looked for ways to enjoy it. That humbled me and has stayed with me since.

My own mother was a sweet and gentle woman, limited not physically but brought up to be frugal and careful with her money, and living with many more restrictions upon her than I currently enjoy. That elusive ability she had to feel joy over so little, is something I remember of her. She made occasions for us out of scant resources, and her face always lit up upon seeing any of us—even if we had only been gone an hour!

Millet by Romain Rolland

My bookshelf has books about people who have moved apart from the norm, and chose to follow a road of hardship and ignominy (in some cases), because they had seen something more important, something that acted upon them in vision or revelation. It became less about them and more about answering that ‘call’. Mother Theresa certainly is within that category, and she worked away all her life answering it not for the celebrity but because it had become as breathing to her. I mention her, because in the end she was very well known, but there are many who have come and gone without sending a ripple through the wider world. Watchman Nee was another, a Chinese man who gave up a promising career because he knew he was called to totally different path. His writings are rich and show a rare insight that is inspirational.

Most recently I came across some school children I taught at a local primary school who are now 45 yrs old. Along with them came a teacher from the neighbouring class. This teacher is now 87 years old, and I popped around to see her yesterday. Her story was amazing. She had a map of the world out and highlighted on it were all the places she has been, where she has offered her expertise as a teacher, freely. It looked like only a bit of Russia, Mongolia and upper Canada were unmarked. She has helped start schools in the most obscure places of the world, in hardship and enduring primitive conditions, and looks and sounds as she did when I worked with her forty years ago. She has an amazing faith, and I sat and soaked up her story in awe.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is how important it is to know yourself. And when you know yourself, and have taken stock of what you have and are, be grateful. I cannot look at any other person and think, ‘this year I am going to try to be more like them.’ Let’s face it, if we sat down and critiqued ourselves based upon ideals others have reached, we would have an interminable list. I will never be thin enough, funny enough, rich enough, pretty enough, loved enough—and to start at the point of measuring myself up against others will always be a disappointing and disheartening exercise.

Instead, I would like it to be less about me, and more about what truly drives me. If it is family or children, wonderful! If it is writing or art or dance or gardening, then let me revel in that. If it is a ‘call’ upon me, to reach out to others and share what I have found, then I will go for it with all my heart. Personally, I have found that the more passionate I am about the things that matter to me, the less I think about myself and what I lack. I would like to be remembered, as Birdie is to me, as the one who knew real joy and gave it back in abundance. That is what I remember about her – her triumph over her straitened circumstances. It is no small thing.

Portrait by Jozsef Soproni Horvath

It is a wonderful and rare thing to be content. Not lazy, not indolent, not apathetic—content.

Oh – and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It is not enough to live, we all need to love and know we are loved. I’m going to scuff around the edges of a subject so overworked and laboured that it is almost impossible to go near. The ‘can’t see the wood for the trees’ scenario.

However—I am sitting here by myself, the day after Christmas, that one day of the year when we are most likely to see a generous and visible aspect of Love at work—and I am thinking about love, and how we/I measure it.

For we DO measure it to some degree. It is the nature of man to stand somewhere in that spectrum of a conscious awareness of how many people know us and like us, how many love us (despite our faults), how many we easily love back through to the ones we put effort into liking to a lesser or greater extent.

This puts me in mind of one of my favourite books: ‘The Four Loves’ by C. S. Lewis. In it he describes three types of love we humans are capable of expressing, and love as it truly means. Let’s look at the first three, and bear in mind that even here, many do not experience all three.

(Painting by Mitra Shadfar)

Our first source of love experienced usually comes at birth, from our mother. He calls it ‘affection’ and says it is the love ‘least different to that of the animals.’ He hastens to add that in no way does this lessen its value. It is a love born of need—the need for the child for nurture, the need for the mother to give birth or die, growing beyond that into true affection and care. It is this love that is the least discriminating, Lewis says, because it does not rely upon the beauty or cleverness or skill or similarity in the one loved. And I must agree that in my own experience, the day I found out that my mother had died, (my father having died four years earlier), I felt myself entirely lacking anyone on this earth who had known me so long, and despite my quirks and annoying traits, loved me unconditionally. My siblings know me almost as well and I hope, forgive much, but that reliance I had in my parents’ affection was suddenly gone.

I am single and childless, and so it was not, for me, a case of having children looking to me for that same sense of safety and ‘home’. And despite being a loved and familiar ‘Aunty Jenny’ to some of my nieces and nephews—something I value beyond words—it is not the same as being their parent.

(Painting by Vidal Cuglietta)

This leads me to another love C.S. Lewis talks about: Eros. This is the ‘being in love’ kind of love. This love singles out one other, and most times but not always, involves our sexuality and the satisfaction of those impulses. It is much more than that of course; it singles one other person out and when returned, each is wholly caught up in the eyes of the other. They think about each other all the time. Lewis goes into much more detail about the subtleties of this love and it does, indeed, underpin much of our human existence. It is the basis for romance—and in case you wondered, romance novels are the largest selling genre in the world of fiction. We all want to feel special to that one other person, and to feel we have someone with whom we can share our experience of life.

In my own experience, for whatever reason, I did not ‘find’ that person. And I know I speak for many others who did not either, or who now have suffered the devastation of losing their ‘other’. Without plunging more deeply into those miry depths, let me just say that it is possible to appreciate the value of this particular love, without actually experiencing it. Much as I can appreciate motherhood without having been a mother. To be frank, sometimes the idea that there are still many couples out there who are selflessly devoted to each other, and pushing through all the tragedies of life without wavering in their love, is a very heartening thing to me. Long may that be true.

(Painting by Leonid Afremov)

The third kind of love C.S. Lewis talked about was friendship love. He was clear that although this was not usually regarded by us as important as affection (parent-child-family) or eros (lovers), it was no less important. Here is where you meet someone else with whom you go “What? You too?” in delight at a shared interest or understanding. Here is where you do not just stare like lovers into each other’s eyes, but shoulder to shoulder move forward and gather others of like mind to join you. Here, you love each other by choice and shared experience, out of any range of age or gender, eagerly enlarging your shared experiences and broadening your bounds. This kind of love can be enjoyed and experienced by anyone, and is the one I am most familiar with. Real friendship is something held lightly and carefully, requiring nothing of the other that they do not want to give, and allowing them the freedom to engage as they will. Some friendships run so deep that long absence does not affect them, and a return to their company is as simple as starting the next conversation. Other friendships are truly just for a season, and by mutual consent drift apart (whether they are truly friendship as a love, is doubtful).

At this point Lewis brings up the last Love, and it is here that I struggle to find words to express my thoughts. You see, all of the other loves mentioned are to some degree or other, flawed. We humans don’t have a good track record at reaching our ideals, and the loves already mentioned are ideals—something we know just enough about to value them, but dissatisfying-ly elusive in nature.

As I mentioned at the start, at Christmas we experience a situation that requires of us the need to express that love we feel—in any or all of the ways described above—through the giving and receiving gifts and sharing a meal together. With all the commercialism associated with the season, it’s a lot of pressure on any one person, and even more difficult if you are one of the many who do not have a wealth of those three loves in your life. I truly do feel for you.

Lewis calls this last love Charity. It is an old-fashioned word which has been subsumed to mean many other things, but at its heart it means unconditional, unearned, overflowing acceptance, nay—Love—from One who knows you better than you know yourself. Nothing humbled me more, nor changed my perception of life more, than my realization that this love not only existed but that it was personal and intimate. And I cannot let Christmas go by—with all its reliance on our weak human love—without pointing out that it was in fact, a celebration of the birth of this fourth Love upon our world. I speak from my own personal experience when I say that I know this Love exists. It is not political. It has no human agenda. It is not there to right the wrongs you perceive about the situation around you. Those are all too lowly and small to encompass a Love that is much more than that. (This is another whole discussion I don’t have blog enough to go into here.)

It is the sort of Love you can only surrender yourself to, without conditions.

Honestly, at one of my lowest ebbs when I was a teenager, when all hope felt gone and despair clutched at my heart, having heard (but hardly believing) that I had but to ask and God would reveal himself, I cast myself down by my bed and did just that. As I knelt hardly knowing what I was doing, but waiting, I felt a growing presence behind me. It was personal. It wasn’t a thing (the universe, mother earth, a weird extra-terrestrial). It was Love personified, and I felt for the first time unconditionally loved. So much light filled me and seemed poised just behind me, that I feared if I turned around and saw that much love, I would die. I was answered in ways I had never dreamed, and I have never been the same since then. I cannot ‘unsee’ Love as he exists.

You would think that I would have looked different from that day on, wouldn’t you? In fact, the glory is that I fail and fail again, I know disappointment, and singleness, and childlessness, and health issues, and yet, despite or because of it, I can never, ever shake the deep unswerving knowledge that I am Loved. And it makes all the difference.

And if it is true of me, believe me, it is true of you.

Jenny

Two things involving words that I have not done for a while: I haven’t written a blog and I certainly have not sent off any Christmas cards. So here I sit on a Friday night, deciding to kill two birds with one stone.

Looking back at this last year, I must say it is a vast improvement on some of the recent previous. We lost Mum in 2016, and it took a while to get used to not having her wonderful presence around. Last year I wrote my longest self-published book ‘Auckland to Orkney’ after spending weeks roaming Scotland. I figured I’ll have a go at jotting down the significant events of this year, which (unbelievably) is nearly over.

February: The week long camping trip up at Kai Iwi lakes. This is a wonderful summer tenting holiday–usually–and although my sis and I got a few days of swimming in the clear fresh water and reading, the winds began to howl around us, and the rain threatened, so we packed up and went North instead. Visited a few places I haven’t been in a while and stayed in motels or B&Bs.

April saw the weather more settled and a small but heartwarming gathering of our small church to see the sun rise for Easter morning.

May and June: Helen (sis) and I headed off for six weeks to the UK. We hung out for a few days with our dear friends in Bournemouth visiting some of the local sites.

We flew from London to Tirana, Albania, to meet up with some folk from small house church gatherings along with other women from the UK, USA, Canada and the Netherlands. It was glorious.

Then we went to Paris for a couple of days, staying in Montmartre.

We took the fast train to the south of France, and stayed in St. Remy, Provence, going out each day to visit various of the many quaint picturesque spots nearby. Every day was full of glory, from a clear green river that poured out of a mountainside, to the Van Gogh sanitarium where he spent many years, to the Roman ruins just outside St Remy. Two weeks of enjoying Provence- and we even found an early field of lavender.

We flew direct from Marseilles to Dublin, where Helen experienced Ireland for the first time, and I saw how much it had changed since I saw it thirty years ago. Our trip to Ireland finished with a trip out to County Wicklow.

July, and we were well and truly back in wintery Auckland, both of us at new jobs. Mine was as a PhD Administrator for the School of Engineering, Computer & Maths Sciences at AUT University. I am working three days a week there, but it is busy, and the other two days are spent even busier at home. I had found out the day before we left to go to the UK that my first fiction book – An Unexpected Highlander – was accepted by a publisher, and so I came home and began my second historical romantic fiction (of course!). Somewhat surprisingly, my strongest supporters turned out to be a group of engineering tutors and supervisors who I got to know going up to level 6 to make my coffee in the morning. I became known as ‘Enid’ in honour of Enid Blyton. But of course, truly, my largest band of encouragers are the many friends I have made through the Outlander fandom, who all love well – Scotland, history, adventure, romance, and a good yarn.

And so the long winter months progressed:

By September, I completed the final edits on my new book, and in October it was published and for sale through Boroughs Publishing Group (LA) or Amazon. Needless to say, I was and still am, excited and thrilled.

Also this month, I received an intriguing request from someone I didn’t know. Initially I ignored it until the person identified themselves as a child who I had taught back in 1980, in my third year teaching. They had organised a meet up at a local pub, and to my delight and surprise, a small group of ex-pupils from Edendale Primary School were there, and one of the teachers I had taught with. A happy reunion indeed!

Mid-October I flew to Brisbane, and was picked up by a fellow Outlander fan and her husband, and stayed the night with them before Amanda drove us on a lengthy day-long journey down to Glen Innes in NSW for a ‘Through the Stones’ Outlander Gathering. Here I met up with a wonderful boisterous bunch of mainly women from the ANZOFs group (Australian and New Zealand Outlander Fans), and we spent three days delighting in all things Scottish and Outlander, even meeting David Berry, who plays Lord John in the show.

In November, I sent my second novel to the publisher and am currently awaiting the response. I am halfway through my teen novel about a boy who is transformed by a magical pearl and can breathe underwater.

It is now December. Endless functions rounding up the year have happened at work. I have taken to cycling the three days I work in town, to try and improve my exercise – if the weather is not too bad. Have even managed to cycle a couple of times with my older brother and younger sister, which was great. We are all looking forward to summer, which has only hinted at being here. Christmas is a couple of weeks away, and then the true holidays begin.

I hope you who are reading this, have a peaceful, festive, fun season, and can face 2019 with hope and cheerful anticipation, as I am.