Well, it’s not quite New Year, when I was planning to start writing this blog. But I’ve just got back from the RNA Winter Party and I’m feeling enthused and raring to go. So this seems like a good a time as any.

This is me all dressed up and ready to go to the ball!

It was great to meet up with old friends. Writing is such a solitary business, and I do try not to bore my friends with my absolute 100% obsession with my current book (as you do), so it was great to sit and chat with fellow writers again. And the champagne was pretty nifty, too.

Because of the uncertainties of a train strike, I also ended up with an extra day in London. Which meant I had a chance to visit my old stamping grounds once more, like this in Hammersmith, where I first lived in London.

The day before this day of winter sunshine, I found myself on the South Bank in the rain, just minutes before curtain up of Ena Lamont Stewart’s ‘Men Should Weep’. It was the rain that settled it.

I thought the play might be all worthy gloom and doom, but instead it was funny, touching and uplifting all in one. It was great to see a play with a woman’s point of view right at the heart of it. And women of all ages. Women as survivors, with the ability to pull together to make a life in the direst of conditions. I remember those working-class women from my childhood. The ones who keep the world turning without anyone noticing. And can settle down to a right bitch over a cup of tea. Wonderful stuff. I’d definitely go and see it again like a shot. And I want to know more about Ena Lamont Steward …..

http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2471:men-should-weep-nt&Itemid=27

So now I’m back in my little cottage, hastily catching up with all the work I should have done last week.

But it wasn’t half worth it! Work is work. But inspiration is forever.

Hyde Park, still with autumn colours