Post Script

Just as a small post script to the Blog of 5th October about chainsaws and monster trucks pulling our trees over:

The local farmer kindly offered to put his trailer in the field for me to load all the leylandi brash into it, so that he would burn it for us, rather than having it stacked in his field for the next twenty years. (This followed one of our trees falling the wrong way into the field rather than our garden, due to an Incompetant driving the Monster Truck) I have just been trying to do a bit more loading and was finally getting to the bottom of it all, when I saw a couple of woolly little legs sticking out from under the trunk...

Little Woman

Hello!
And it's back to credit crunch battening down the hatches. I have decided that if the worst comes to the worst, then I need to get the storecupboard full. So, like a little squirrel, I have been chutneying everything that is in sight. We have tomato and apple chutney, runner bean and apple chutney, grass and gravel chutney and, my favourite, toast crust and brocoli bake chutney.

I have also been picking up the windfall apples and am boiling, drying and bottling them too. The trouble is, we are already so sick of apples in whatever form they take, that I don't think anyone will be cracking open a jar this winter. The nice bit is that the house smells of drying apples, which is slightly better than what it smelt of before. It also has an apple slick over every surface which is beginning to bring the fruit flies back out of hibernation.

So, basically, don't do me a favour of any sort for the next couple of months, as the thank you is usually a little jar of something- so far most of which I have been finding slung in the hedge a couple of hundred yards down the road.

The appearance of stigmata that I have given myself with the apple-corer have only been slightly out done by the welts that are across my palms from starting to saw up the logs from our recent chainsaw adventure and that fact that I very nearly cut off my foot with an axe this morning.

Hey ho, must go and flip those apple rings,

Lorraine.

A gentle calm..

Hello folks!

I have now sent in my tricky second novel to the publisher and feel a gentle calm over me. It is as if there is nothing else I can do and therefore there is no need to panic.

Of course, there is plenty to panic about, the credit crunch is munching at my toes...

Despite that, we spent surely the most fun day ever last weekend with a friend and his chain saw lopping our leylandii which grew in a big circle round the outside of our garden and protected us from the weather and voyeurs. Therefore, we decided to take the bu**ers down.

Best of all, our friend had a Monster Truck that I had to drive (well, inch forward) to pull the trees in the right direction. Someone else tried it and were too busy playing with the (their) gearstick and didn't listen, and the tree went the wrong way over the fence and into the field. Oh, so much fun - and now we have a house-size pile of brash to burn. Roll on bonfire night when we can smoke out the whole village with live-leylandii white smoke.

The downside is that our house is wracked by storms - we have lost slates, water has blown under the door and the early morning dog walkers are frightened by the sight of me in my pants, with morning face, making the tea.

Despite all this, my Christmas list still includes a Chainsaw and Huw's is full of Monster Trucks...

MONster truck, MONster truck - repeat to fade...

Tidy workmen and movements on the book...

Hello!
Apologies to anyone who gives a monkeys that I haven't posted a blog this week, but have had an email from my publishers, Honno, saying, "If you have anything for us, get it in NOW!" So instead of sitting on a mountain top debating whether to use neithor and nor or either and or, I have been frantically trying to finish my tricky second novel. Reading it, re-writing it, losing it on my computer, losing my notes and nigh on starting it again. I reckon with a few more sleepless nights (no, I don't work all night, it's just those damn children going through a phase) I can get it all done by the weekend.

The trouble is, nothing else kicks in to allow me to do it. The floors still have enough stuff on them to make a fair meal, the blue bottles are still taking over (although I did find a rancid courgette in the veg rack today and am hoping that that might be the beginning of the end to their rein) and toast doesn't butter itself. Saying this, the builders have finished their work and the little beauties tidied up after themselves so well, that the house has never looked so good. I am hoping that there is a leak in their plumbing so that I can legitimately ask them to come back, perhaps after the weekend…

But the good thing is that I had an email from a magazine that I sent something to saying that it has been published. If anyone wants to see a photo of me in a floppy hat with a sack of potatoes on my back, go to:
http://www.transitionsabroad.com/listings/work/volunteer/articles/volunteer-wwoofing-in-argentina.shtml

Top tip – probably time to put your paddling pools away if your family are anything like mine. We perished in it at the weekend. Costumes on, sat in the damp grass. The baby went blue and my stubble stood so erect, it ripped the side of the pool.

Best wishes…

Eight hours in a car...

Hello!
Having returned from a weekend away with the family to see my cute little nephew's christening, I realise again how lucky I am. In having Huw as a partner, there is always something new to learn. This weekend it was driving. Despite having passed my test for competancy twenty years ago, I now realise that I have been doing it all wrong all this time. Luckily I had eight hours in a car to be taught the correct way.

All is steaming ahead with book number two. My brother is reading it for continuity, mistakes and glaring No No No's and is ever so gently telling me where it doesn't sound right. Sometimes I forget that this is the same brother who used to balance piles of books on the top of doors and then call me into the room...

We've got the plumbers in to finally mend our leaking radiators. So, there is lots of singing, doors slamming and general destruction. I am freezing, sat at the kitchen table with my files stuck in the room that they are destroying. Never mind - a bit of catching up on Facebook will always be a good use of my time - a better use of it than yesterday mind when I spent most of the day trying to squash a particularly annoying blue-bottle...

PS anyone walking through WHSmith - go to October's "Writing Magazine" and see if you can recognise who is featured as this month's top new author!!