It’s been busy here by the sea coping with our strange weather patterns.
One day it snowed so much that it settled…
and then the next day it was all gone and things went back to normal.
The garden doesn’t know what to do – keep hibernating or burst into spring. But the goldfinches, which live in the hedges, know the season is turning as they are out and about building nests and getting food ready for new life.
It’s been busy retiring from 40+ years of work – finishing off the last reports, saying goodbye to all and deleting emails. I’ve got 30,000+ to be sifted, archived, or deleted. My friends want to organise a mass delete event with champagne to ease the task. I’ve got an office that has over the last 20 years become a slum. I have not seen the carpet in years as it has been covered in pending files, piles of paper, boxes, books waiting to be read and my collection of PhD chapter drafts.
As a retirement treat, I’m having a new office so it all has to go. The builders are coming after Easter to clear the room and turn this ugly duckling site into a swan – a very cool scandi-style room.
This will be my new novelist den. Ah, those goldfinches have lessons for us.
And of the book? The research is going well but it’s all too enjoyable and I’m in danger of never writing the novels. To add to my time-burning, I’ve been to a pizza-making workshop to learn to use my new garden oven. It’s going to be great once I’ve worked out how to keep the fire going.
And then there are new hobbies to nurture with a trip to Madrid to see the big game: Real Madrid vs Athletico Bilbao, and the collections in the Prado and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Galleries.
Don’t you just love it when the sun comes back and the days get longer?
Old Lady by the Sea 