Instead of blogging…

…I have been:
1. Entertaining relatives. Barely was my mother out the door when my father-in-law and his wife arrived for the weekend. Yesterday we gave them a very personal tour of London, starting with a ferry trip to Greenwich (where the observatory was visited); then heading past the lovely riverside flat we used to share with a friend, stopping for a drink at what was then our local, the oldest riverside pub in London; and from there walking to St Katharine Docks (picking out the yachts we wouldn’t mind owning), over Tower Bridge and along the South Bank. This route covers a lot of our favourite places, and is a wonderful way to spend a day.
2. Working. Eh, never mind.
3. Ravelling. Oh! The distraction that is Ravelry! It was bad enough before they started groups. Now, I know it seems mean to go on about Ravelry when maybe some of you are still on the waiting list, but it won’t be long;* and just think what you have to look forward to!
If you are on Ravelry, and if you liked Storytellers, please join the new Storytellers group; I would dearly love to see some project pictures showing up as people work on their Cinders Secret Stockings, and so on.
4. Not teknikly instead of blogging, since I read on the train, but: reading The King’s Shadow (by Elizabeth Alder) from my lovely book swap pal. Who put a lovely note in the book, giving her name and blog and email and everything, which I promptly lost. And then found… and apparently lost again. Um. Yes. I’m hopeless. I have no doubt that this useful information will show up any minute now – as I wade through the chaos of my in-trays – but meanwhile, I am utterly unable to thank her. So, lovely book pal, if you’re reading? Thank you! I didn’t mean to ignore you for so long, honest.
The book itself was a treat, but the annotations even more so – insertions of “dun dun dun” at dramatic moments, f’rinstance. And a little binary on the title page (not intended for me), which made me feel dumb, as binary always does. (Nono, please don’t start explaining it. I get the theory, I do. I just can’t seem to internalise it.) It’s a YA historical novel, set around 1066, and I really enjoyed it. (I seem to be on a young adult kick right now, pretty much by accident as these books keep falling into my hands; just before this I read City of Bones, by Cassandra Claire of Very Secret Diaries fame.) The great delight of reading YA fiction, of course, is that they’re simply stories – no pretensions at literature – and you can just lose yourself in it. Mahvellous.
Now, back to work…
(PS – thank you so much for all the great comments on Gecko Ridge! I’m much happier with it now, having heard from so many people who like it. Including my lovely husband. It’ll be worth dragging to Cape Town, then.)
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* Wanna know how long? They’ve added a nifty page so you can check your position in line (and rescue your invite if it’s gotten lost in spam blockers), and are estimating at least 4-5 weeks till the doors open to the public.