Best chocolate to fall back on, inexplicable research and Old Mills...

When times are hard, I fall back on chocolate.  In fact, I've fallen back on chocolate so many times lately that I have a permanent Walnut Whip impression on my left buttock.  Despite their outwardly benign appearance, Walnut Whips can be surprisingly knobbly, don't let that fluffy marshmallow inside fool you - oh no!  If you're really going to have to land on confectionary, can I recommend something a little softer, possibly a Flake, which will spread the weight nicely if you work it right.  Of course, you're picking the bits out of your underwear for a week, and finding little bits of melted chocolate in your M&S knee-to-ankle gusset will cause you to believe that you are going quietly rusty, but I still recommend them over Walnut Whips.  Or bars of Fruit and Nut, because a badly-placed hazelnut can leave you walking in a strange way for a week.

I'm still looking for the walnut.  But, to be fair, I did land on it with some force.

I don't know why I digressed in such fashion, for times have been far from hard lately.  No, in fact they've been decidedly squashy, not to say splashy in their unhardness. Flaccid, in fact.  So to commemorate these decidedly unturgid times, I have been starting research for another novel.  Now, bear in mind, if you would, that I still have the vampires bubbling for release this summer, a novel about amateur witches in its second (or is it third?) reworking, and the anti-social astrophysicist awaiting some kind of resolution to his septic-tank debacle...  So why am I even thinking about another book?

That, my comfortably-seated dears, is a very good question.  And it all revolves around a corn mill, a Co-Op, a filled in ditch and gravestones. I have become ever-so-lightly obsessed with the fate of this mill, the filling in of the ditch and erasure of the mill-site, also the epitaphs carved on some local gravestones.  And the Co-Op does have some remarkably good bargains.  And so, I'm doing research!  See me doing research!  Now go away and let me go on with it.  Oh, and pass me those Walnut Whips on your way out...

Like this, only not, because it's not there now.  But when it was, it might have looked like this.  Or not.  Er, that's the Mill, not the Co-Op, obviously.

Tired as a newt. Plus inadvisability of nailing on tin whilst....

It occurred to me the other day that being drunk and being tired are pretty much the same thing.  I’m sure you understand what I mean – particularly you, there, at the back.  Both are the result of long evenings packed so full of enjoyment that there is little room left for sense or discrimination, both incline one towards slurring one’s words and sliding sideways in high heels and both tend to incline one (particularly when one is wearing high heels, where the plane of incline and the decline of morals tend to be of inverse proportions after a long evening) towards lying on the sofa eating rubbish and maintaining that Jaffa cakes should be one of your Five a Day.

Just say 'no'.  When you've stopped saying 'want want want', obviously...

And why, you cry, should such a thing occur to me?  Surely, Jane, you also cry, for your sympathy for my plight is only exceeded by your taste in blog post reading and your desire to throw fifty pound notes at me whenever I am in your vicinity – surely you have never experienced either of these states?  Your sobriety is a watchword whenever authors are gathered together, murmuring in hushed tones about your ability to turn down at least fifteen different types of cocktail, including the ones served with umbrellas by slippity-hipped young men in waistcoats.  And, with your troupe of willing helpers, only a few of whom are working under the influence of chloroform and hallucinogens and therefore believe themselves to be aiding the Empire against the evil Darth Vader, surely you know not of the travails of tiredness?

I leave you to decide whether these are cocktail mixing slippety-hipped young men, or part of my chloroformed troup.  And no, he is not peeing in the corner.

Well, my tender young trooplings, let my imperviosity to such human failings remain the stuff of legend, for indeed this week I have been subject to both tiredness and, ahem... something of an overindulgence in fermented fruit substances.  And I am here to tell you that there are certain tasks that one should not attempt to perform whilst under the influence of either.

Painting a ceiling

Nailing sheets of galvanised tin to any surface, particularly in a high wind

Attempting to stroke, pet or otherwise lay hands upon a feline

Writing, be it books, blog posts or merely a letter to the milkman.

So, if anyone knows suitable treatments for Artex-head, the curious banging sound that comes from the roof of the outhouse, severe wounds to face and neck (some which may require stitches) and forty seven pints of full cream milk, please let me know.  But I should wait for me to sober up first, if I were you....

 It may take some time.

New cover... no, really! VAMPIRE STATE OF MIND -here it is!

This is possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.  I want to eat it.

Or, at least, roll naked over its glossy colours...  Premise is - vampires are here.  In Britain.  No sparkles, just a lot of arguing... And, before you ask, of course they are gorgeous!