Who me?

Yes.  It's now official.  I will be appearing on the fringe of the Cheltenham Literary Festival, taking part in an event being staged at the Daffodil restaurant.  www.thedaffodil.com/

The Daffodil is a 1920s cinema which has been sympathetically restored.  It's not just a restaurant, it hosts other functions.  I attended a wedding there some years ago.  During the fortnight of the Literary Festival it is putting on 'Tea at the Daffodil' every afternoon, where the tea goers can meet an author.  

I'll be there on the afternoon of October 7th - reading from my book, TORN, talking about myself and answering questions.  Times and exact details to follow, when I know them.  Don't all rush at once.

Ancient Grapevine?

In 1988, when we bought Woodbine Cottage in the Cotswolds, we were told by the sellers that the gnarled old grapevine which grew up beside the old front door, fruited. But in the twenty something years we’ve lived here, the vine has never had grapes. Very annoyingly, there are other cottages in the village with outdoor grapevines growing on the old stone walls, and they do have fruit. Sometimes they are laden! I have listened to Gardeners Question Time and cross questioned my neighbours, but have never got to the bottom of why our vine is so stubborn.


Woodbine Cottage is situated near the top of the valley. I have always understood that it - in fact probably the entire village - was part of the demesne of Standish Abbey. We know that the monks made wine from grapevines cultivated in the valley. I have even heard it said that the Romans had grapevines in the valley. So it has always been a notion I have clung to that our grapevine (grapes or not) was very ancient, or was at the very least a cutting from a cutting of the medieval vines which grew here.

Recently, a man stopped beside our garden gate to chat. It turned out he’d lived in the cottage, with his mother and grandparents, in the 1940s. We asked him in. Mike was flabbergasted; of course the house has been modernised, and extended countless times, over the years since he lived here as a little boy. Then it didn’t even have running water, they collected water from the spring, which runs past the back door, and there was an outdoor earth closet. And in his day the garden was four times larger. They kept pigs and chickens, and rabbits for eating. There was an orchard and watercress beds. And of course they grew their own vegetables.

This week, Mike brought his 91 year old mother, Gladys, to see us. In a way, though grateful to us for the opportunity to revisit her old home, I think the experience saddened her. Though perfectly with-it and sprightly, she couldn’t really recognise the house she’d known as a young woman. Apart from the decor and the different layout, it’s now more than twice as big. She spoke of it as a mansion!
“It must be worth a million,” she said. (I wish!)

They had brought a few old photographs with them, which I’ve copied, but they’re family snaps and there’s little you can see of the cottage as it was then. And sadly, I forgot to take a picture of Gladys and her son Mike.  The one thing I was determined to do was show Gladys  the grapevine. I wanted to know if it had fruited in her day, and to tell her we hadn’t had grapes for all the years we've lived here....
“But look, we have grapes this year! The year you came back to visit the cottage!” My pathetic attempt to make connections, to invoke the possibility that the house had a kind of spooky prescience, fell flat.
“We didn’t have a grapevine there then. It was rose,” she said.

Still, it was a very interesting interlude and lovely to meet them. It gives us a better understanding of the history of our home. Even if I now know my grapevine isn't as ancient as I'd hoped.

Surprise surprise!

Who'd have thought it?  I've been invited to a give a reading at an event during the Cheltenham Literature festival!  I am both astounded and petrified.  So far the dates haven't been firmed-up and I guess there is still a chance of the organisers coming to their senses, but even so........!  If it's definitely going to happen I'll post about it here.

Silver lining?

Every cloud has one we are told. Well, I don’t believe that. But I do believe that it's true of some clouds, as I've just experienced a rather lovely and surprising silver lining. Before I tell you about it I must first describe the cloud.

Recently we’ve had troubles with our email delivery system. It’s too tedious to go into detail but it necessitated getting our ‘computer doctor’ in and he seemed to have resolved the problem. Then he asked, ‘anything else I can help you with?’

Here I have to backtrack a bit. My dad fancied himself as a photographer. And being serious about it he took transparencies. After his death, in 2009, we found hundreds and hundreds of photographs, large boxes of them, which he’d laboriously made up into slides, with glass and tape.

Not wanting to throw them away, and anyway wanting to see and keep the images of my growing-up through the many family holidays immortalised there, I bought a gizmo that is supposed to convert photographic transparencies into images that can be stored on the computer. I’d bought it online and hadn’t done sufficient investigation. When it arrived I realised it wouldn’t take my dad’s jumbo-sized slides.

Don’t despair, I thought, I’ve my own pictures I can copy. With my first 35mm SLR camera, I’d gone the same route as my dad, and had taken only transparencies for a period of about 5 years.  But, though my pics fitted my gizmo, I still couldn’t make it work. I spent a whole day puzzling over the instruction book and experimenting. I could capture the pictures but I couldn’t transfer them to the computer. 

So .......when our computer doc asked if there were any other computer related problems he could help with I immediately thought of the gizmo that’s been sitting unused on my desk for 18 months. He agreed the instructions were badly explained, but within moments had worked out how to use it. Hurrah!

I am now able to post pictures that even I haven’t looked at for over thirty years. Featured are my boyfriend of the time, Geoffrey - later to become my husband - and me, on our first holiday together in Minorca. My very own and very personal silver lining.

Find a new book review blog at nikkis-books4u.blogspot.com

Just to let my legions of fans know....

I am now successfully published to Kindle Amazon AND to Smashwords.  The links are here

Amazon Kindle- http://www.amazon.co.uk/TORN-ebook/dp/B004UVR81Y

Smashword- http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/61772

TORN is a contemporary novel, which faces up to the complexities, messiness and absurdities in modern relationships. Life is not a fairy tale, it can be confusing and difficult. Sex is not always awesome, it can be awkward and embarrassing , and it has consequences. You don't always fall for Mr Right, even if he falls for you. And realising you're in love is not always good news. It can make the future look daunting......