So yesterday the girls both reminded me that I’d said they could paint their bedrooms during the summer holidays (where ‘during the summer holidays’ = ‘two days before the end of the holidays’). If I’ve gone silent it’s because I’m up to my elbows in paint. Rose wants one black wall, and three a sort…
I’ve been starting to tackle the intricacies of 18th Century costume making. My brain is such that I cannot understand how to read or use patterns, so I’ve been tackling the easy stuff first. I have to make clothes for four people, but I’m starting with the children because it’s harder to get hold of…
The English Imagination This is by way of a musing on Peter Ackroyd’s book Albion: The Origins of the English imagination. In which Peter Ackroyd attempts to discover whether there is a national character when it comes to the imagination of the inhabitants of the British Isles, and if so, what it is. I’m not…
We had our first event in costume with the Mannered Mob this weekend. We went down to Gilbert White’s house in Selbourne on Friday night and camped in a field adjoining his extensive back garden in order to be able to start, bright and early, on Saturday morning. Gilbert White was an 18th Century naturalist,…
I’ve been reading a book called ‘Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination’, by Peter Ackroyd, in which he examines popular thought and literature in Britain since the Saxons in order to identify common threads. That’s a book which deserves a post of its own, but more on that later. For now, I thought it…
There’s a great discussion going on here at the ‘Romancing the Blog‘ blog about one of the reasons NY publishers have for being unwilling to risk publishing m/m romance. Namely the idea that the female reader needs a female heroine to identify with. Someone’s also raised the ‘well it won’t sell as romance, but if…
I was browsing for something to read in WHSmiths and saw issue 5 of the Torchwood Magazine. Normally I’m not one for buying the tie-in magazines for TV shows, but the front cover story of this one was the Jack/Ianto relationship. Or, as they call it, ‘Jack & Jones’. ‘Go you!’ I thought. ‘Finally an…
I spent most of the day so far in Addenbrookes hospital, where I’d been drafted to drive my husband home after he’d had his kidney stone zapped with ultrasonic rays. Something which apparently leaves the victim patient literally shaken up. Unfortunately after x-rays it turned out that the stone had moved and was now being…
I was tagged by Sheila Stuart Tell seven random and/or interesting things about myself. Get five blog buddies to play, too and link to their blogs. Don’t forget to post the rules. Of course I don’t have seven interesting things to tell! I’m a writer, all the interest in my life, thank God, goes on…
In a thrilling move, I blogged on the Britwriters blog about the necessity of getting an ITIN tax number if you’re being published in America. Possibly not everyone’s cup of tea, but of considerable importance if you’re a British writer, being paid by an American publisher: Your ITIN and You.