Five More Days

To be honest, I love hanging out with bear, but I will be glad when the Easter Holidays are over. I'm running out of ideas. Fortunately bear has been playing football in the street, binge watching videos on violins, voluntarily practising the piano and keeping himself going with only a few bits of drama. But I need to be getting used to the new rhythm of driving him hither and yon and I need to get some stuff written and I need to be able to make plans without having to work around him.

I was out again today. I'm feeling more confident, but it's early days yet and I need to make sure I don't get too overconfident. Besides, I get nervous on the faster roads. I need to work on that, but carefully. I was looking at a trip to Bolton Abbey and the directions said it was nearly thirty miles each way. I was horrified - how could I possibly manage to drive sixty miles? Then I realised that I had driven a lot further during lessons, when I had driven for hours, and that basically a road is a road. Thank you, Eileen, I think I'm getting a little more confident, but there's room to grow.

I'm still binge-watching Lie to Me (in between bear) and I was a little disturbed to see the disclaimer that the psychologist face reader and obscure and strange plots was fiction. I'm sure that there are some very strange things out there, and that there is a lot of science behind it, but surely no-one would think that it was factual?

Mind you, people are strange and wonderful. I came across another piece about Icelandic elves on the BBC here, and I sincerely felt for the Icelandic Roads Press Officer explaining that yes, they had moved a rock out of respect for the elves. I felt that he got it. That it wasn't about whether the elves were real or not. It was about respecting other people's harmless beliefs and allowing space for a little magic and wonder. We should all do that more.

Writing stuff - I was lucky enough to host a spotlight on a character from Phoebe Darqueling's 'No Rest for the Wicked'. Phoebe is an amazing person and I consider her an authority on steampunk, and so I was thrilled to take part. The insight into one of the characters and the snippet from the book are here.

Phoebe is also working on the anthology, Cogs, Crowns and Carriages, published by Our Write Side and containing a chapter from yours truly and she does some amazing graphics for her work, so I feel incredibly grown up being in any way included. I am going off to bask in being grown up and eat chocolate.