Now the holidays are over......

First of all, many, many thanks to author Freda Lightfoot and the Romantic Novelists Association for interviewing me on their blog - just type this address in to access it http://romanticnovelistsassociationblog.blogspot.com/.

Now the holidays are over, boohoo. But, aren't they marvellous for our writing. I always go away with good intentions and take all my writing stuff, notebooks, ipad, keyboard, files for keeping bits and pieces so that I can remember locations. Sometimes I write like a demon. At other times I just gather info and photos. This holiday was spent at a very generous friend's tiny house in Spain they have just bought near Roses and El Bulli the once famous restaurant now temporarily closed. They bought it from an elderly couple and it hasn't been refurbished in years. Imagine our dismay to get there to find that not only did we have to negotiate very narrow, windy, hilltop roads with sheer drops into the sea but..... there was no water. I say no water but actually there was water in the well, but the level had fallen below the pump. For the first few days, in temperatures in the high 30's we managed with bottled water and humping huge bottles of seawater the ten minutes' walk from the sea so that we at least had water to flush the loo. Once however we had got hold of a couple of buckets, we started drawing water up from the well. Boy, was that hard work! I have never sweated so much and never appreciated a running tap so much. We also ran out one evening and I was concentrating so much on not spilling any, and not slipping I didn't realise how dark it was getting. I suppose my imagination ran wild, particularly as I had just read a very gruesome Stephen King story about a man who chucks his wife down the well. When I heard a noise behind me, I nearly had a heart attack. It could have been one of the wild boars who will reputedly sometimes fall down wells if the covers are left open.

We survived in the end and in fact it was a rural and out of the way idyll overlooking a beautiful bay where the swimming was superb. It would be a superb setting for a novel and I know I'll use it one day. I might however go at the beginning of the summer when the well is full, rather than at the end of it!