Don’t…

… which, famously, was Auberon Waugh’s advice to anyone thinking of writing a book. And sometimes, you can’t help but agree. But I have at last finished my new book, Something of the Night. In fact, I finished it at the beginning of September, and then ran away to France for a week, to a place so magical and relatively accessible from the UK, that I don’t think I’ll mention exactly where. Not that it wouldn’t be great to see y’all there next year, you understand, but just to make sure we can get our hotel back again…

I was so exhausted by the process that I haven’t managed to complete even a blog entry since, despite lots of great stuff happening. Chief of these, I guess, was the Punkdaddy All-Dayer in Brighton, where my long lost punk/new-wave band The Airtight Garage played together for the first time since 1981. Back then we had a drummer; he couldn’t make it for the reunion because he is busy writing up his Phd. It comes to something when drummers do Phd’s. And they say educational standards aren’t dropping…

Another big don’t, of course, is don’t move house… especially when you’re trying to write a book… ho hum. But the move is done, and we now live in Presteigne’s Industrial Zone; or, rather, what was the Industrial Zone a couple of hundred years ago. I set my step-daughter a challenge, to run from our front door to England. It took her eleven seconds, which is not bad for a seven year old, and which does give an accurate measure of how close we live to the border with Lloegr.

But, anyway, here I am, back at the keyboard, starting to research and write for an exciting new project, a bit of which you should be able to hear on Radio Three next year. And, on this note, my wife is also at the keyboard, downstairs playing Bach on the piano, very beautifully, soothing me into writing again. It’s good to be back.