Writing frenzy

Now that I am a published writer (!!) I have to keep up the impetus. Also, I seem to have at least one devoted fan of my blog so I can't risk disappointing her, especially as she is possibly right now holed up in a Beijing hotel with jetlag. Hi Sarah! I am writing to report that today I submitted my Orkney travel story to the travel editor of News Ltd whose email address I got via totally reputable methods. He did ask for a cull down to 1000 words straight off and I did this, although it was brutal. Now I will sit tight and see what happens. Spud is making us a River Cottage soda bread for our dinner. How lucky am I? He loves his dough, that man. And I don't mean money. Speaking of which, I received a US $ cheque from my American uncle today. It was my portion of the proceeds of a failed auction of my great-aunt Gussie's vintage Chinese furniture. Bonham's had auctioned the furniture in San Francisco about six weeks ago and a Chinese gentleman won and put down a very substantial deposit but then never paid the balance, thereby forfeiting his huge deposit, which has now been split six ways. How bizarre that you would bid, put a deposit down and then never come back….. Might be good fodder for a story.

In my usual style, it is now a few days later and I have been running in the forest this morning with my run buds.  It was so gorgeous in the bush. The smells, the sound of the birds, the cool, still air…  The hills.  Really was a brilliant way to start the day. I am going to have to carry my camera with me all the time now when running so that I can take photos of things to include in my articles for R4YL.  My run buds will soon hate me I suspect….

To be honest, when there are nasty hills, I think my run buds are more than happy to STOP for a photo op!  And Spring is here, which makes everything so much better too.  The smell of all those flowers in blossom is sensational and makes up for all the bad things going on courtesy of the news.

Being Sunday, it's a great day to do all those things I have been procrastinating about all week but, as you can see, I am not really doing them, preferring to blog instead. I need to work on my next R4YL story.  AND finish up my last uni assignment…  After mowing the lawn, Spud decided to bake cookies but when he saw the amount of butter involved, he went into meltdown (ha, ha, get it?) and couldn't bring himself to cook as he is trying to trim down for our wedding.  So, I was compelled to step in and take control.  It's only a little bit of butter, in the grand scheme of butter-ness.  The French LIVE on butter and look at them!  Now that the oatmal raisin biscuits are made, I have had to hide them from Spud, and also give some to the neighbours, much to his disgust.  It's for his own benefit.  

Time to do the things I should be doing.  Cheerio!