I wanted to share a couple of pictures I took on my iPhone on the way home from work today. The second picture captures the Old Fulling Mill (Durham University Museum of Archeology) with the reflection of Durham Cathedral in the River Wear.

Although April 1st may be another three hours away in the UK, New Zealand is already nine hours through. And if this NZ Herald blog is anything to go by there’s some ambitious trickery out there. However I’m of the opinion that the simple yet absurd April Fools are the best. The ones that actually sound plausable to your semi-unconscious brain as you hit snooze for the third time . I have to admit it wasn’t until post-shower last year that I realised that the BBC had got me good …

Writing is a scary thing. I love coming up with ideas. I love editing. But the bit in between is a huge mountain I’m right at the bottom of. Transferring those ideas onto the page is so difficult. I have a great story. I know it’s a great story. I’ve talked it through at great length with a few people and discussed the general gist and the characters with a few others. Everyone has been captivated and excited about the idea I verbalize. But putting that idea into a blank …

Faced with the dilemma of being housebound and missing out on a Cake Friday drastic measures and creativity were needed… so here it is… Jaffa Cake Friday thanks to two M&S Jaffas that had previously managed to hide and avoid consumption!

Having finally cast off the bad dreams of perpetual dehydration (so horrible I think they class as nightmares) it is finally safe to say I am on the mend. Although still resting in bed the symptoms are reducing and the headaches retreating. I thought I might speed up final recovery by thinking about things I am looking forward to in the coming weeks.
Easter weekend is a good place to start. Today is a fortnight until Good Friday. Easter weekend means many things – Bank Holidays, seeing family and friends, lots …

I don’t do being ill. This week I have no choice. Let it be stated that I am not happy about it. As you may have gathered from my blog to date I’m a get up and go person. If something brings me down I just fight it out and move on. Unfortunately physical illness doesn’t work like that. When you’re down you end up having to accept it, for a while at least.
I accepted it on Saturday. Fought it Sunday and Monday. And am now ten times worse. Lesson …

In my previous job I had to get up ridiculously early and I hated it. I am not a morning person in the slightest. So I was surprised to find that when it came to research for my novel I was willing to get up at 5.15am, having taken a days holiday from work. It is funny the affect that dreams and determination can have on you!
The first half (or so) of the book takes place around the area of Colliers Wood and Morden in South London. (Google Map). I …

This week it was Iain’s turn to bake cakes for Cake Friday in the library, and he did us proud. Cake Friday raised £50 for Sesame Workshop and Butterwick Children’s Hospice.

I decided that as I have a blog anyway, I should make the most of it and diarise the progress of writing my first novel.
In some ways this has happened out of the blue. In others it hasn’t.
I have been writing for as long as I can remember. Anything factual or opinionated I have been happy to share with an audience. I’ve been known to shove articles, blogs and reports under the noses of friends and family for them to read. But my fiction has remained something that I kept …

Sometimes I think I have premature dementia (jokes aside, with our family genes it is a very real possibility!) As I go through my day I think of so many things to blog, but when I open my laptop most of them have long gone. The most frustrating thing is I can remember that I have forgotten things! Anyway there is one thing that I want to get off my chest, so I’ll go with that as blog topic of the day!
This morning I’ve been at a marketing event and …

I have, on occasion, been accused of being slightly competitive. I just think I have a natural tendency to want to achieve. Whatever the motivation I may have taken ‘Cake Friday’ a little too seriously. For those of you familiar with Friends I may have been akin to Monica. Considering I am living in a new city where my greatest hope of nurturing friendships is in work, I perhaps shouldn’t have been flaunting my crazy credentials so openly.
However as I am new to Library Land, this was my first chance …

I now have proof that London isn’t the centre of the universe and that many exciting things happen elsewhere.
For this example I will pick the city of Durham at 9am on Tuesday 3rd March 2009. That would be when I met Bill Bryson.
For the promotion of the Bill Bryson Bag, Bill himself popped in to the uni library to do a few publicity shots. It was his first glimpse of the bag and he likes it. He is a wonderful lovely man (to quote one friend “the man has the …