Home again...

Oops.

My last post was on the 6th of August. The 6th of August?!

How come I feel as guilty about not writing this blog as I would about not writing a book? It's absurd. But it's hard. It's like writing a diary. (The classic problem, apart from guilt, of course, is that the more you do the less time you have to write a diary. Which is why diaries are always so self-indulgent - or mine are, anyway. When I have anything worth recounting I'm out actually doing it.) And the only time I've ever managed to keep a diary going for more than a couple of weeks, it was partly fictional, complete with imaginary love affair and secret identity. Don't ask, OK?

But at last I feel guilty enough actually to post something, which is probably a good thing. So: my life in brief...

Well, I've been on holiday. To Avignon, since you ask, which was wonderful, complete with candelit dinners on our terrace, the best tapenade I've ever eaten, wine-tasting in the Popes' Palace, and carnivorous ants dragging a wasp carcase out of the bathroom window. All of which made for a good time. And I wrote a chapter - that's 10,000 words, not to be sneezed at - of my new novel while I was there. Hurrah.

And got back to find that all the things which were making me angry before I left (Tories, public service cuts, corruption and stupidity in local government, IDIOTS on the Today programme saying things like borrowers paying "two or three pounds per book" is a sensible way to fund public libraries, and still no contract - or money - from Bloomsbury for the latest book, despite my having returned the edits before I left) were still here and still had the capacity to make me angry. Welcome home.

Oh well. I'll just have to start saving for next year.