Collections and contracts

Book News:

I've very happy to say that Untreed Reads has produced my first short story collection which you can buy at the Sony Bookstore at a very reasonable price. And what a marvellous book title it is too, tee hee.

Meanwhile, one of the stories in the collection, A Woman like The Sea, was briefly at No 15 in the Amazon UK Kindle charts this week, but has dropped its placing since then. And The Delaneys and Me was at No 68 in the same charts, again briefly.

Other book news this week relates to Vulpes Libris, where you can find (a) a fabulous article about growing up in a bookish family which seems to have seriously keyed in to people's experiences; and (b) my review of Maeve Binchy's The Return Journey - in honour of St Patrick's Day.


Life News:

The middle neighbours are again being difficult, or rather their solicitors are, deep deep sigh. They've sent us the contract to sign our agreement to transfer the middle flat to the new buyer as we're all part of a shared freehold but they've (a) failed to provide us with his current address, simply stating that he already lives in the flat he wants to buy (which he doesn't as he doesn't legally own it); and (b) stating that the internal stairs are not ours but theirs. Which is untrue according to the lease - they own the external stairs, not the internal ones. To be fair, I'm assuming that Point B is simply a typing error but we'd like it cleared up before we sign anything as our own buyer is entitled to those stairs! In addition, if we sign the dang agreement, yet we don't actually know where the new middle neighbour lives now, that messes us up for our own flat transfer as we can't get anyone to sign the shared freehold contract to let our buyer in if we don't know where the new neighbour  is - and who's to say that he might not take months to actually move in? We've never even met the guy ...

Anyway (sorry it's confusing, but the law is alas never simple), the middle neighbours' solicitors are now getting very snippety and demanding that we sign "urgently", as well as contacting our own solicitor (who has nothing to do with their case) asking her to hurry us up. The laughable thing is that we are more than happy to sign anything (anything!!) that will get the ruddy awkward neighbours out of the middle flat and out of our lives, but we'd darned if we're doing it when it puts us in a very tricky legal position. Some people have no sense, my dears. All they have to do is answer our questions ...

With all this going on, and still no exchange date on the house we are so very desperate now to move to, it's a relief that the new anti-depressants appear to be working. I had a lovely chat with the nice doctor this week, and she tells me that I'll be on these for nine months. Then I'll come off them. If I have a relapse then I'll go back on them for 3-5 years, then they'll try to come off them again. If that doesn't work, then I'm on them for life. Seems a reasonable rule of thumb to me, and nice to have an aim, and I'll see how I get on. But I do definitely feel more like myself, and more hopeful. Gosh. Whilst there, the doctor and I were also chatting about family medical history - which in my case is crammed full with diabetes (I'm regularly tested for that) and bowel cancer. Ah, the trick is which of these will get me first! She suggested that it would be a good idea to get an early screening for the bowel cancer possibility via GUTS who are of course local to here - which makes perfect sense to me even though, rest assured, I am symptom-free, so we're arranging for that. Lord knows what exactly they'll do to me but I suspect I won't be able to sit down for a week, remembering what other members of the family have had to go through - ah the fun and games of it all indeed.

Today, I've had a lovely relaxing morning having tea and chocolate biscuits with Jane H (hello, Jane - great to see you!) and we've put the world to rights again, hurrah, and now - well now I'm about to go for a well-deserved nap. How I do love a busy day.

Anne Brooke