A curious death and beating the Monday blues

I forgot to say (and I really ought to have remembered!) that, after Friday's debacle with my attempt to get Godalming Pharmacy to sell me a bottle of Carex, I was having a much-needed nap when Lord H came home from work. Well, I do like to look like a hard-working author, you know ... Anyway, I told him my Friday disaster in great and gory detail and he listened with all due sympathy. When I finally shut up grumbling (not something that happens often, really), he produced not one - not two - but three bottles of the said Carex from his briefcase, saying he'd found me a happy Friday present, as Lightwater is still living in the '50s and the news of a product's discontinuation has not yet got through to them. Hurrah! No, triple hurrahs! And Lord H is now officially a SuperSaint Husband with extra Holiness points. And very smug about it, he is too, ho ho ... The Pope is due to ratify the sanctification any day now, I'm told.

Anyway, today we have gone to church in Peper Harow and all very jolly it was. The organist played some of the tunes I love - including Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze" and Purcell's "Come Ye Sons of Art" - so what could be nicer? The hymns were okay too. At least they were low enough set for me to sing. How I hate the high notes. To cap it all, we managed to escape before having to talk to anyone, which is always a plus point in my book. At least these days. I do have to say though that I was much taken with the commemmorative plaque carving on the floor up to the communion rail, which I took the time to read whilst I was queueing for the whisky and biscuit (sorry, wine and wafer ...): it told me in great detail about Bridget, wife of someone-or-other, who'd died in 1728 (or thereabouts) from a punishing attack of The Stone, and had passed a two ounce specimen of said stone before dying in huge pain. Well, you would, wouldn't you! All hugely interesting, but I wasn't sure whether I really wanted to read about it before taking communion. It does rather take your mind off what you're supposed to be there for ...

Some good news on Maloney's Law today! PD Publishing now have it on their homepage as a forthcoming novel, and you can read a brief blurb here, and (scarily!) you can even read about me here. And if you've done all that, people, well, you deserve a lie-down and a stiff gin. Or two.

In addition (and still on the same theme), PD Publishing have also asked me for my first thoughts on cover art, so I've tried to give them something useful to work with. I must say how nice it is to be asked to do stuff - and indeed contacted so often - by my publisher. At this stage in the game, they've been so much easier to deal with than Flame ever were. Hush my mouth.

This afternoon, I've been reading an article on how to beat the Monday Blues. Something which I do suffer from, 99% of my working Mondays. I was much taken by the idea of a "Bodyclock" which is supposed to wake you gently over a period of thirty minutes by simulating the dawn so that the room gradually gets lighter. However the cost of said item is £60 and when I complained to Lord H about the price, he suggested that it would be cheaper if he simply got up earlier than me and opened the curtains very, very slowly. This would certainly be the least expensive option, but might mean that Lord H would be forced to call WifeLine to complain of maltreatment. Again ... Still, the good news is that his Sainthood continues apace!

In the book world, I have just finished reading Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night - a dark Victorian mystery. Anyone who can start a novel with the sentence: "After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an oyster supper." gets my vote. But it did rather lose its way in the middle, and the love affair (supposedly ...) was simply overblown melodrama and utterly unrealistic. By the end he'd got his act together again though (thank God) and the last few pages were ace. It's a shame, as it's so nearly a classic - but it's defeated by its own weight and pretensions. I'd say read it to see how you can indeed have the perfect idea for a novel but how easily it can fall apart in the execution. ('Tis ever thus ...). It needed a bloody good editor who knew what they were about and some serious trimming in the middle.

I've also just finished A Collection of Short Stories and Poems by Bollington Library Writing Group (edited by Nik Perring of Writewords) - I'm not normally a great fan of collections from different people, but this was a very pleasant read indeed, with some rather good dark stories. I particularly liked the offerings by Sandy Milsom and Karen Crook, and would certainly read more from them.

Later, I've planned to do more to The Bones of Summer, but I feel I'll be struggling with the bones of Sunday, so I may just give it a miss. We'll see. I also have to catch up on John Hurt in "Who Do You Think You Are?" and "Mock the Week" on the video - both unmissable, I'm sure.

This week's haiku is:

We wait for a boat.
A swan glides down the river,
charting our voyage.


Today's nice things:

1. Church
2. Maloney's Law being on the PD website - hurrah!
3. Contemplating Lord H's sainthood.

Anne Brooke
Anne's website