Written 5 June, 2020. Days of torment about my chapter. My tormentor my editor has said it’s like a re-write of my book The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady: a Novelist Looks at Creativity and Neuroscience and he’s right, it is; a re-write; then he says it needs typo correcting and the removal of my florid novelistic… Continue reading…
Written 29 May, 2020 It takes all day to leave. The tide’s low in the morning, so we can’t leave. It’s begun to go down again by the time we at last get in the boat, turning and waving to our neighbours on their deck and Dy standing at his brazier with… Continue reading…
Written 22 May, 2020 I wake after a night of little sleep to GG telling me that my rowboat has come adrift at one end. It’s alright, he says as I jump up. You’ve got time. His voice grates against my stupor. It’s light, 6.30. I rush to the doors and see it tossing… Continue reading…
Written 21 May, 2020 A bad day. Cloudy, and the solar power crashed, so the generator roared. GG with his one good arm dragged the generator around to the tool shed in the hope it’d be quieter, but it still roared. I spent 2 hours on an email for a zoom meeting… Continue reading…
Written 20 May, 2020. A sad dream: I woke at 4.30 and after tossing and turning, got up to work on my chapter, and on the way to picking up my computer, saw chicken on a plate for the magpie. I put it out on the rail, then forgot everything but my chapter. K,… Continue reading…
Written 18 May, 2020. It’s easy to prise oysters off the rocks, though not always easy to pierce the shell when you must slurp them straight away, standing on the beach. But we managed to get about eighteen and roasted them for 5 minutes on PH S’s BBQ, What’s hard is prising… Continue reading…
Written 17 May, 2020 This morning white cotton wool felts the mountains, the river, the boats, the jetty, the boats – hiding it all, hushing it all, so you feel there’s no world anymore, only this room, Once when we had to leave to get K somewhere, after half an hour, we passed three… Continue reading…
Written 16 May, 2020 I wake up to a silvery morning. The house at the bay’s end has just been bought by T. One day I was rowing slowly across the bay, dipping my oars in deep, pulling hard but easily, and he came up behind in his motor boat and asked… Continue reading…
Written 15 May, 2020 We wait all day for promised rain for the water tanks. I desolately tap them; there’s a dull thud only a third of the way up. Then it comes in a cloud, just as we’re about to set out for our food box from Homer’s, and – joy- a cappuccino… Continue reading…
Written 11 May 2020. The long trip back, the arrival with shopping bags, the load and unload on the flying fox. Dy comes by late afternoon for a cuppa and a yarn. We tell him of a chat we had with the kind-hearted C at DB’s, who carried our bags and gas bottles – amazing… Continue reading…