I met my agent in the summer who wanted suggested various tweakings to the new novel. I saw the point of them all, but ‘make it a bit more exciting’ is easier said than done. I mean, if you’re Jane Austen, you can get more real excitement out of someone delivering a piano than a […]
The other day I came back from Aberdeen on the bus, to be met by the Professor in a small Ford. What I then discovered was that he’d taken the car back to from whence it came so that they could deal with a couple of trivial problems; a slight adjustment of a windscreen wiper, […]
We got back from work today to find that we have acquired an Ancestor. He is mighty fine, and bigger than we remembered. With the sterling assistance of Miss T’s Dad, he and his oak frame have been installed over the front fireplace in the drawing-room. It was the Tropical Godfather who decided he was […]
There has been quite a lot of this week: I’ve had ten lectures to give, there was a PhD viva to organise, the Northern Professor is even now at Edzell castle talking to art historians about planetary deities, and we have a cultivated and arboricultural friend staying. He was supposed to be bringing up […]
We’ve become something of a Dark Corner ourselves, I’m sorry to say. This is partly the Collections Book, which goes to the printer in five week’s time. Currently the Good Ship CB is leaking from every orifice; and much tar and oakum, not to say hokum, need to be applied either to the project itself […]
Friday was a day of gale force winds and black rain. It was also a day on which the Council saw fit to dig up almost every road intersection in Buchan. The gales had blown all the diversion signs away. Sketchy directions from a friendly farmer took me onto a cobweb of tarred cart-tracks, the […]