As it was sunny Charmaine brought the Rolls round to the front of the house in preparation for a trip to the seaside; after a buff and polish with Mr Sheen the old girl was ready for her first outing of the season. The sun shone, birds pooped on the windscreen, whilst Charmaine crunched gears, narrowly missed hitting small children and got her flip-flop caught on the accelerator. Finally we arrived at our destination in time for our first lesson in stone balancing…..

Well balanced…

Sadly, after believing I had a natural talent for this sort of thing I was expelled from the workshop. Apparently the use of superglue was not considered to be a viable option.

I returned to the Rolls to read my book, leaving Charmaine to frolic in the surf and hopefully dislodge the pebble that had balanced itself on her forehead.
After 5 hours of solid reading in variable light with no interruptions for ice cream, fish’n’chips, or anything cheerful, I finished the damn book. And it was a damn book. This one…

The Visitors

The Visitors by Sally Beauman. 540 words of misery; death; more misery; a bit of tragedy chucked in just to make it even more miserable; only one miserly paragraph alluding to sex; grumpy men looking for treasure; posh people stealing from Egyptian tombs; death; more death; typhoid; TB; DEATH. I think the book might have been about death. Set in the valley of the kings it was hardly going to be about the life and soul of the party [she was murdered early on]. Good grief. On the plus side it was extremely well written.

SO…. after finishing the book Charmaine drove me home, sans pebble but with an unsightly weeping wound on her forehead, where I decided that I should photograph this piece of work that has been gathering dust in my studio for the past two weeks begging to be finished….

Gold witterings…

I am slapping this picture in this post with the promise that I will finish this piece for next week’s blog post. AND THERE WILL BE A BLOG POST NEXT WEEK.

I thank you.