Janet Gogerty's Blog: Sandscript

Charles Dickens and I have one thing in common, not literary success, but we have both been to Broadstairs, Kent, on holiday. He enjoyed summer holidays in a house now called Bleak House, where you can still stay. My earliest holiday memory is of Broadstairs, two summers blended into one set of memories. There was only me at the time and Mum and Dad did not attempt to stay in a hotel again.
On one occasion I opened the wrong door, to be confronted with a lady wearing black underwear, I had never seen such an outfit. With brilliant insight she said ‘Are you looking for your Mummy and Daddy?’
The hotel boasted child minding, so one evening Mum and Dad left me; probably only for a little cliff top stroll, I’m sure they did not spend all night in the pub, but whatever the supervisory arrangements were, I had enough time to take our clothes out of the suitcase and wash them in the large washbasin in our room – this was in the days before everyone expected en suite facilities.
Apparently I never wanted to leave the beach, drawn to the sea already, and had to be dragged off screaming or bribed with a ride on the ‘Peter Pan Railway’.
Broadstairs, Ramsgate and Margate are all part of The Isle of Thanet, the easternmost part of Kent; an island formed about five thousand years ago and always a busy place, Stone Age, Bronze Age communities and then The Romans. The last ship sailed through the Wantsum Channel in 1672 and over the decades it narrowed, it is many years since Thanet was an island.
The next time I visited the Isle of Thanet was when we took our toddler, in the days when we wondered how anyone coped with more than one child on outings, on a British Rail Awayaday to Margate. It was a sunny day, but fog descended halfway down the line and never lifted. We sat on the beach, but never actually saw Margate.
When a branch of the family moved to Margate in 2015 we returned in sunshine; a great chance to explore more of the British coast. We were soon sitting in the cafe of Turner Contemporary Gallery, which had opened only four years previously, looking out over the sunny harbour. Margate claims the painter JMW Turner as one of her own, he loved the famous Margate sunsets.
May Bank Holiday Monday brought hot weather and hordes of visitors streaming out of the railway station. The Turner Gallery was gleaming white in the sun and as part of the Margate Bookie there was a book launch. Once again Dickens and I have something in common, we both have short stories in a new anthology. Shoal is a venture by Thanet Writers.
Writing is a solitary occupation; most of us are energised by meeting up with other writers in local groups or on line. To speak in public and read out your work is another skill very different from writing. Gathering people together, setting up a website, publishing and creating a book requires plenty of enthusiasm and yet another set of skills.
The launch of the anthology was very well attended and presented and the book is a delight. A varied selection, from the brief and poignant ‘The Pigeons’ to ‘Life and Times of a Zombie.’ There are flamingos in Pegwell Bay, an unhappy wife a hundred years ago and a fairy tale so much darker than Disney.
See more pictures of Margate at my website.
https://www.ccsidewriter.co.uk/chapte...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shoal-Anthol...

We have been dipping into the Commonwealth Games, literally on my part as swimming is one of the few sports with a chance of grabbing my attention; it’s easy to understand the rules and it’s mercifully short. To add interest, unlike the Olympics, Cyberspouse and I are on different teams. The United Kingdom is split asunder into England, the Kingdom of Scotland, the Principality of Wales and the Province of Northern Island.

Alongside the big names such as Canada and Australia, this year’s host, are tiny countries and islands we may never have heard of, but these are the ‘Friendly Games’ and the crowd love to cheer the valiant competitor coming in three laps behind everyone else in the relay. Also adding to the feel good factor has been the total integration of paralympians for the first time.

I like swimming, I love swimming in the sea, in rivers, lakes and heated swimming pools. In a previous incarnation we were nearing the end of a training course and waiting to see where we might be posted. For some reason I can’t recall, perhaps to do with our welfare, we were being interviewed by a person. What were my interests and hobbies, this person asked and I was stumped for an answer; competitive sport was not my thing, writing I had not taken seriously yet, dressmaking sounded boring, youth hostelling, walking vague, gardening was out of the question for a good few years to come. I heard myself say swimming. Swimming for leisure I meant and was horrified to hear a few weeks later that I had been put down for swimming races at Chrystal Palace.

I admire the swimmers in races. I know the few minutes or less the race takes is in contrast to the hours and years spent to reach international competition. Even more I am fascinated by their elegant dives, tumble turns and sleek powering through the glittering blue water. If I was there on the starting block I would be sure to take off seconds too soon or too late. In the backstroke race, as the other swimmers let go of the rails and propel themselves into a graceful arc, I would splash water into my nose and mouth and have to cling to the side spluttering to recover. Swimming is purely for fun, to cool off on a hot day and hopefully to save oneself or someone else in an emergency. Training and competitions have never held any attraction. Luckily when I turned up at Chrystal Palace I was only reserve and never entered the water.

I did not learn to swim till I was nearly twelve. I loved the water, but my activities were confined to paddling in the sea and wading in Frensham Ponds while my parents looked on, fully clothed and with blankets over their knees if it was the seaside. When we emigrated to Australia I was too embarrassed to tell the children at school I couldn’t swim. After one experience of the beach and Indian Ocean our parents decided to stick to the river. I kept splashing up and down till one day I started floating.

My novel Quarter Acre Block is inspired by my family’s experience of emigrating to Western Australia; it is not autobiographical, but the Palmer family, like mine, arrive for their new life unable to swim.
Read about the novel and my family’s own story at my website.
https://www.ccsidewriter.co.uk/chapte...

Due to an accident of birth my parents were neither hill farmers nor sea fishing folk. Dad worked in an office, we lived on a main road; except when the River Thames flooded I was already several steps away from real life. ‘What is real life?’ is worthy of a blog in itself.
Suffice to say that when the Beast from the East hit Britain last week people were blasted out of their comfort zone to a greater or lesser degree. Hill farmers have to go and dig their sheep out of snow drifts and put new born lambs in the oven to warm up. Motorists used to flashing through real life in their heated cars, found themselves stranded all night in remote places, trains were halted high on railway banks. The army was called in.
Here at the bottom of the map we were still waiting for the excitement of snow. Wednesday brought biting winds. Thursday we looked out the window at 7am, saw snow and headed straight for the cliff top. If you have seen early black and white photographs of ships locked in ice, their search for the North West Passage halted for the winter, you will have marvelled at how they got those photos. Big cameras and big buttons presumably meant they did not need to take their gloves off. Using a smart phone requires bare hands and our fingers were quickly in pain. But I managed to send a photo off to Instagram. After descending to the beach and some quick shots of snow drifts against the groynes, we rushed home for hot porridge and put pictures on Facebook and websites in comfort. Our views were pretty, but there was not a lot of snow. Cyberspouse left his bicycle behind and took the bus into town to meet his friend for their weekly drink and cinema. I went to the local shops.
It snowed all afternoon, looking prettier and prettier. Cyberspouse phoned to say all the buses were suspended as they couldn’t get up the hills. Luckily he had his walking boots and set off along the seafront as darkness fell, he got some good photos and arrived home nearly two hour later. On the local Facebook Page came tales of people taking six hours to get home in their cars.
Thursday night brought freezing rain. Friday morning was a white delight, but the beautiful snow was frozen hard. We were not going to starve if we stayed home, would probably not get scurvy if we relied on baked beans and frozen peas. But with local shops so handy we’re used to daily shopping, more importantly I did not want to miss out on the snow experience and more pictures for Instagram. We planned a circular walk to the cliff top and down Grand Avenue to the Grove for coffee and shopping.
It was a foolish mission that could have ended in disaster; impossible to walk on the icy crust of snow, hanging on to garden walls was not an option as they were covered in ice. We weren’t the only ones who made it to the cliff top, just the only ones without dogs or children. It wasn’t as cold as Thursday, the sky was heavy laden, insulating us.
Our favourite Ludo Lounge was open and it was packed. With schools closed and parents unable or unwilling to go to work it was like summer holiday time, but with ice and slush. A waitress said they had received twenty eight phone calls before 9.30 am checking if they were open; people had their priorities right.
The greengrocers’ was closed, however Sainsburys’ was open with enough veg for a good stir fry. But something was wrong, there was no milk on the shelves. It hadn’t occurred to us that out in the real world milk tankers would be unable to get to farms or back to dairies, nor would delivery lorries be able to get to supermarkets or corner shops. We don’t use much milk, Cyberspouse likes everything black, we have a Tassimo coffee machine. With only enough milk left for me to have two cups of tea this was a First World Problem with a First World Solution.
We walked home on the slushy main road, less slippery, but not so pretty. By evening we could hear the steady drop of thaw, by Saturday morning melting was well under way and I was glad I hadn’t stayed in and missed Snow Day. At the shops there was still no milk. I posted ‘No Milk Today’ on the local FB page and unintentionally started a conversation that went on till Monday; from Utube clips of Herman’s Hermits singing ‘No Milk Today’ to arguments about veganism and regular updates of remote shops where people had found one carton of milk.
Sunday opened with sunshine and everyone was out on the cliff top, beach and pier.
But on Facebook today the First World Problems were still with us... ‘I sat in sunshine on the cliff top, but when I stopped at the Co-op on the way home; no milk or bread!'
For snowy pictures visit my website.
https://www.ccsidewriter.co.uk/chapte...

2018 looks set to be as doom filled and gloom laden as 2017 and the actions of our leaders as silly and unbelievable as ever. Individuals feel powerless, but the beginning of a new year is the time for individuals to get their own lives in order, a more achievable goal perhaps. But what is taken seriously by one person might seem plain silly to their family or Facebook friends, the latter being the ones who will have to read ad nauseam about their lofty aims. If you became healthier and wealthier after Sober October, perhaps you will be inspired by Veganuary. While millions waste money on annual gym membership for one assessment, a few laps of the pool, a sit in the sauna and a go on the cross trainer that resulted in a pulled muscle, others might decide this is the year they train for a marathon, or seven marathons in one week across Africa...
Why don’t we just have a silly season instead, to brighten up northern winters or celebrate southern summers. What would your sillutions be? To acquire more Facebook friends in North Korea or Antarctica, to take up guerrilla knitting and dress all the lampposts in your street or why not turn your house inside out; bring the garden indoors with artificial lawn, trees in pots, house rabbits and free range parakeets.
Or you could spend January in the world of fiction and enjoy strange surroundings and events without annoying those you live with. I hope to be busy writing, finishing my latest novel, which has some very strange events and penning a few short stories. In the meantime ‘Someone Somewhere’ will take you into spring and summer with two strange novellas and other tales.

https://www.amazon.com/Someone-Somewh...

Many stories start with strangers, characters who are new in town or perhaps locals who start acting strangely. Even if we enjoy a gentle story where nothing much happens there is bound to be a stranger lurking somewhere for locals to gossip about.
Mr. Bingley arrives in Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' and there would be no story without him for he also brings his friend Mr. Darcy, another stranger.
In Charles' Dickens 'Great Expectations' young Pip meets a stranger far more fearsome, Magwitch lurking in the dark among the gravestones, an escaped convict.

Sometimes even authors are surprised by strangers walking into their novels. When I was writing ‘Brief Encounters of the Third Kind’ a nameless policeman featured briefly in one scene, then he appeared again, in a following scene I gave him a name. After some chapters he had become an important part of the plot. By the end of the novel he was demanding to tell his own story.

A man wakes up on a London park bench wearing another man's clothes and another man's watch. As he finds his bearings he realises the impossible has happened.
This is the preparallequel to 'Brief Encounters of the Third Kind' and second of the trilogy.
In the early years of the Twenty First Century a stranger arrives in Ashley. Only he knows the truth about what will happen to beautiful musician Emma Dexter in seven months time, but will he be able to save her and the others caught up in events that defy explanation?
Julie Welsh is a busy mother with plenty of problems and her life is about to get far more complicated when she stops to help a stranger.

‘Three Ages of Man’ can also be read as a stand alone novel and is now available as a paperback.
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Ages-Bri...

If you want to start reading the trilogy ‘Brief Encounters of the Third Kind’ can be downloaded for just $1.33.
https://www.amazon.com/Brief-Encounte...

Diverting us from matters of World importance, such as ongoing genocide and the survival of the planet itself, we on either side of the Atlantic have been subjected to endless news items about Harvey Weinstein. Without belittling the suffering of women who experienced serious assaults, there has been a jumping on the bandwagon of unprecedented proportions. People in show business on both sides of the ocean have expressed utter disbelief, shock and righteous indignation when most of them surely knew about him for years. Others in various public walks of life are innocent of hiding the truth because they know absolutely nothing about or anybody in the film world; so what right do they have to express an opinion?
Meanwhile we can all jump on the bandwagon; that is every woman on the planet plus chaps who have been the object of unwarranted attention from women or gay men, just type in ‘Me Too’ somewhere on line.
I know a doctor who worked in a sexual assault referral centre; date rape really happens, people you thought you knew well harm you, but fortunately for most of us ‘sexual harassment’ has been of the laugh about it with your friends variety and the total pathos of the men involved. We probably did not even realise we were supposed to ‘speak up’, first dates or the work place can pose threats to the unwary.
On my first school summer holiday job at Joe’s shop I lied about my age, I was 14 not 15 like my friend, but both of us were warned by one of the older ladies to be wary when Joe’s old dad was around ‘Don’t bend over or he’ll look up your skirt!’. If you are expecting a salacious tale of what happened in the stock room – nothing, the six weeks passed without incident.
A real incident did occur when I was about thirteen; school holidays and a day time visit to the cinema to see a Disney film with my younger and more naive friend and her younger sister. Full house, we could only get two seats together and one separate, so I naturally volunteered for the lone seat. I was not enjoying the outing stuck by myself, but worse was to come when the man next to me put his hand on my knee; that was all, but I knew it should not be happening. What to do? If I got up and left my seat, then what and how to explain to my innocent friends was my main worry. Luckily the man got up and left... but what was he doing at a children’s film by himself?
Legs seem to have featured in my teen years. Dad taught me to drive when I was seventeen, on the understanding I had a few lessons to polish up for the test. My first instructor was a woman, a real bitch too. At this point I should mention that I have never been of the opinion ‘all men are beasts’ and with a good father, brother, husband and sons why would I be? What has been forgotten in all the fervent discussion lately is that many girls and women prefer men teachers and men bosses, they are often much nicer and do not pierce your confidence with the icicle of bitchiness. Back to the driving lessons; I decided to change instructors, no more women. The new chap was old with brown teeth, nicotined hands and the inevitable stale tobacco smell, but he was a patient teacher. Arriving back in the driveway of my house after the first lesson he squeezed my knee and chuckled ‘Janet in her mini skirt.’ It never occurred to me to complain, I just never wore a mini skirt again and he never touched me inappropriately again.
‘Always wear trousers to the Drive-In’ we teenagers warned each other in Perth, Western Australia. I believe there is only one drive in cinema left there now, they were ideal for families and couples, but dicey for first dates.
But it wasn’t until I was on a train out of Waterloo one night long ago that I experienced my first indecent exposure. My friend and I had been to the cinema after work, separating only when it was time to get on our different trains. Sitting in a compartment reading my book I had a feeling all was not well and looked up to see the bizarre sight of an old chap with a walking stick exposing himself; and it was pretty pathetic. I quickly moved to another compartment. It was hardly a drama, but I still wondered what I would do in the unlikely event he got off at the same lonely station. I could run up the steps and elude him, but I had this image of myself pushing him back down the very long flight of concrete stairs to his death... I never saw him again, told the relatives I was staying with, uncle threatening to kill him, but none of us thought of actually reporting it to the police.
My college friend who was well endowed, but a respectable Christian girl, complained that men assumed moral character or lack of it corresponded with the size of one’s breasts. Perhaps not looking like a sex siren and having neither the looks or desire to be a model or film star helped me steer clear of more serious sexual harassment, verbal or physical, but I think it would be rare to find a girl or woman who hasn’t experienced something that made her feel uncomfortable.
Will women’s lives always be spent on the alert? Where or when you can walk alone, which bloke on the bus or tube looks a bit creepy? Our state of constant alert has been superceded only by modern terrorism when we are more worried that the bloke opposite us is going to blow himself up.
But to end on a positive note, how about all the men out there who are not actually waiting for your car to break down so they can rape you, who go to work to earn a living and enjoy nothing but camaraderie with their colleagues.
When I was twenty, I once ran out of petrol on a pretty deserted Australian country road; brought up on the idea that if you didn’t take money out with you, it wouldn’t get spent, I had no money on me. Obviously the no money theory was a pretty stupid idea for some circumstances. But a nice young man on his way to a pop festival, fetched petrol, paid for it and I took him back to my landlady’s for dinner. Landlady and her family were't too impressed with the episode. All sorts of things could have happened, but nothing untoward did. How many of us have been out and about with people we don’t know to strange places and all has been well, first dates where you have been bored out of your mind, but safe.
Commentators on Harveygate have claimed this is a watershed moment, let’s hope it is, but without work and social life turning into a bland world where men and women hardly dare talk to each other.

Sandscript Skyping

Once upon a time the future was a Telly Phone. We would sit at our phone table, the earpiece and mouthpiece still connected to the phone by a curly wire, the phone still attached by a cable which eventually led out of the house and to the telegraph pole. But also on the table was a small screen on which we could see who we were talking to. Most of us wondered if we would like such an invention; you would have to get dressed before you phoned someone, you couldn’t leap out of the bath and wrap a towel round if the phone rang.
It has come to pass, but like most predictions of the future not in the way we imagined. At first we wondered what people were talking about when they asked if we Skyped Australia or the USA. It started with desk top computers, a time was prearranged by email or perhaps the real telephone, because it would not work if the other person was not on line when you called.
Now we use a variety of devices to Skype, Facetime and WhatsApp video; most people are on line most of the time with their smart phones. We are still chatting on the phone. In universal scenes, several generations may be peering at their ipad and greeting Great Grandma on the other side of the world, marvelling at the clear picture. Using a mobile phone enables the caller to take you on a tour of their new house or make you jealous as they broadcast live scenes of their holiday to your lap top.
It is not always perfect, the feeling of being in the same room can be marred by your loved one’s face becoming pixillated or their voices taking on an underwater timbre. Is it the weather conditions or the fact that they have Apple and you do not? We grumble, but it is a miracle that we are seeing each other at all.
In my novel ‘Quarter Acre Block', the Palmer family emigrate to Australia in 1964. Their friends and family have no idea how they are getting on until they write an aerogramme, then comes the wait for a reply. Phone calls back to England were possible for migrants, via cable laid under the oceans, a wonder of technology itself, but very expensive, with fathers standing by with a stop watch to make sure three minutes was not exceeded...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quarter-Acre...

Leaving home is never easy, even if you’re just popping round to the greengrocers; you never know what may happen while you’re away. Don’t forget to make the beds and leave the kitchen tidy; after all, if you have the misfortune to be murdered while you are out, the forensics team will be round scrutinising every dusty corner of your home. If it is somebody else’s unlucky day you may return to find your road under siege, the whole area in lock down because a neighbour is being held hostage or that quiet house across the road is a bomb factory. At such times you will be glad you have your purse, credit cards and smart phone with you so you can shelter in a local hostelry, and most importantly, tell everyone on Facebook about your plight.
An Englishwoman’s home is her castle and preparing for the worst has the upside of the great joy and relief when you turn the key in the door and enter your own private sanctuary. Most of us have been lodgers, enjoyed institutional living, house shares etc, but most of us have not been refugees; fire, floods and gas explosions leading to a few nights in the local sports centre would give us only a small taste of what it is like to be a refugee.
But apart from life’s real dramas many of us do find our homes under siege; a first world problem, but stressful. If you read Sandscript on the Scaffold back in June you will know we have been surrounded by scaffold and building projects in our little road. Our own contribution to dust and noise started straight after Easter and is finally finished, the man den complete and brickwork re-pointed after years of being blasted by salty south westerly winds. Our local builders were polite and hard working, the finished product just as we imagined, the boss came frequently to check on the slow progress; we had happily agreed to them getting started rather than booking a block of exclusive time in the distant future. Ninety days of remembering to get dressed, not opening the bedroom curtains in case a builder is up on the scaffold, making sure you have enough milk for the endless teas and coffees.
In our various homes we have had windows ripped out in the middle of winter, houses rewired and repiped, new bathrooms, internal flood damage repaired. However polite and considerate the workmen, you still feel under siege, your home is no longer your own. You find yourself whispering, you can’t yell at the family or listen to the radio in case you miss them calling out with a query. The power gets turned off when you are in the middle of doing the ironing or writing your blog. You can’t get out to the shops or your zumba class because you are waiting in for the carpenter or painter.
Now all is quiet in our road; for the first time in ages no one is having any work done and there haven’t been any house fires recently. I miss the clink of scaffold and the procession of lorries swinging dangerous loads onto driveways. Never mind, perhaps next week our street will be involved in a real life crime drama and I will be able to write a blog about it.
In my latest collection of stories Someone Somewhere, Selina Harris finds herself under siege with a strange visitor in the novella ‘Someone For The Weekend’ and in the short story 'Recycling', the residents of a quiet cul-de-sac are shocked to find themselves being evacuated by the police.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Someone-Some...

If you are lucky enough to mostly enjoy good health it comes as a shock when your body lets you down. When you pull a muscle in your back, ‘do’ something to your knee or you are struck down with a stomach upset so dire you think you have Ebola, life as you know it ceases. Lying in a darkened room with a massive headache or trying to open a tin of food when you have got your arm in plaster is guaranteed to make you feel a part of the disabled community. Suddenly, walking the dog, getting the shopping or the planned trip to the theatre you were so looking forward to become as unachievable as climbing Mount Everest.
A builder with a broken leg, an actor who’s lost his voice, might envy writers and imagine them lying recumbent in comfort, still able to put pen to paper like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. We might just feel like scribbling in a note book on the same lap tray we are now using for meals, if we are lucky enough not to live alone, lovers, relatives or house mates now forced into the role of carer; but actually sitting at a computer is impossible.
A whole summer weekend with three local festivals to choose from, the garden in full bloom and the beach hut calling, was lost to me when I had raging toothache. There are some conditions that are not going to go away by themselves and a dental abscess is one of them. Whatever pain or medical disaster one has, we are all likely to feel that IT is much worse than anything else one could have, but in the case of toothache I think it is up there along with children’s earache, migraines and cystitis! Suddenly Ibuprofen is your best friend.
Those of us generally healthy can retreat, abandon normal tasks and take it easy till we feel back to normal and can catch up with life. Being off sick is a mere glimpse of what life must be like for the chronically ill who have to battle on regardless. Authors like to think our books offer some distraction for the ill or injured. A friend who read the first manuscript of my longest novel said it kept her going through a long bout of winter 'flu, but another friend said her elderly mother read to take her mind off her pains; no wonder it later transpired she was very confused over the plot of my novel!

Sandscript on the Scaffold

What wakes you up in the morning? Crows at 3.30 am, seagulls at 4am, seagulls pattering feet at 4.30am, or perhaps the sweeter dawn chorus if the blackbirds have not been drowned out by their larger neighbours. If you’re not already awake before the alarm goes off you could be woken by the merry clink of scaffold. When I looked out of the bedroom window last Monday a scaffold truck had appeared; the next door neighbours were having a new roof. We elicited this information from the scaffold chaps as the neighbours were unusually quiet; it later transpired they were on holiday in Vienna, as we discovered when Mr. Next Door finally came round on Friday. The erection of the scaffold was not fully complete till this Tuesday and envelopes part of our land; platforms, lifts, nets to catch falling old tiles, though falling debris has already broken a couple of our tiles.
This hive of activity is merely the latest to occur near our house. At the beginning of April we got up one Saturday morning to see a scaffold tower arising ever higher on the other side of our back fence; by the afternoon it was covered in white plastic, an art installation? I posted pictures on our local Facebook Page, there was much amused discussion including comments from the owner of the house; he too had been taken aback by the height of the structure needed just to build a small side extension to his little house. The plastic was part of a new trend to keep builders dry; for the next few weeks there was not a drop of rain until the great white landmark was dismantled; within an hour a deluge of rain fell on our grateful gardens.
All around us houses are being extended upwards, outwards or being remodelled inside and if you want to be nosey go on Rightmove.co.uk and see what has happened to the interior of some dwellings. No wonder roads are frequently blocked with huge delivery trucks, mini cranes swinging over passers by as they deposit blocks of bricks and tiles, bags of sand, rubbish skips and portaloos. But we shouldn’t complain, our young neighbour has an app on his phone keeping him constantly updated on local house prices, so he can dwell with satisfaction on the increasing value of his totally remodelled house. Once the builders have gone, the outlook for the neighbours is usually brighter. The house opposite us was once drab pebble dash, privet hedges, an even drabber garage and little sign of life. After a year of work and constant fascination for passers by, it is transformed into a gleaming white mansion of interesting angles for three generations and a dog. The corner plot is evolving into a designer garden backdrop for lively family life.
In the meantime it is our turn to annoy the neighbours, our small integral garage is to be turned into a man den. We spent the weekend moving all my plant pots, now we walk past a portaloo to get to our front door.
The downside? In pleasant weather the garden is no longer a private, peaceful sanctuary. For writers, whether scribbling in the garden or typing on the computer, bangs, shouts and the penetrating shrieks of drills and saws are fatal for concentration. But for authors there are always new ideas for story lines, there is a certain house nearby that is not participating in this feast of refurbishment. My other half says it is not a crime to never open your curtains and blinds or wash your net curtains. No the owner is not dead; Mr. and Mrs. Strangehouse walk, cycle, motor bike and drive to and from their house, say hello and look normal. The theory that they have another property and are sitting on this one to make money does not prove there is nothing suspicious going on inside.

Visit my website to read a garden blog in words and pictures.
https://www.ccsidewriter.co.uk/chapte...

The new collection Times and Tides contains several very different stories about houses and gardens.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Times-Tides-...