Don’t worry, I haven’t broken a habit of a life time and turned to drugs…far too busy trying to fit my writing life in with the full-time need to make a living. The fact is the writer’s life doesn’t just mean sitting back and waiting for fluffy little clouds of inspiration to come your way and then typing them up. And it doesn’t just mean doing that marketing thing either. Somewhere along the line a writer has to find some time just to be – not in a Hamlet sense, you understand – but what some might describe as “soaking up the atmosphere”.

For instance, I just had to visit the William Tillyer exhibition yesterday at MIMA If you haven’t been, it’s something of a must-see. There is quality art and culture outside London, and this guy really makes you think. Hurry, though, the exhibition finishes on 9th February.

Then there was the walk along the Cleveland Way, and time to pop into Musicport’s open mic Sunday afternoon music session at Whitby Pavilion. Some wonderful young talent there.

Now I’m in my writer’s head, and not my work head, I can stop to consider the recent small triumphs on the writing front, such as the inclusion of my short story The Boy Who Hid Beneath the Piano in Mardibooks exciting anthology The Clock Struck War

Then, of course, the wonderful Prole magazine, kind enough to take two poems, The Invention of Drawing and Deterring Pigeons in Issue 12

One or two other things in the pipeline, too, still under raps.  And, as some of you may know, following encouragement from Miss Labels of The Review Board, who has posted a review of the original Flambard publication Vermin on Goodreads , I have now published the novella Vermin as an e-book, here. Which, as it happens, is also, on amazon.com.

Sunday night, and there’s still a short story to write, and the character for my new novel to develop…. who’s got time to go to work? I think I’d better start doing the lottery…

Something’s gone awry with the bread-making. My dough, like my unwieldy imagination, has turned into a large and unmanageable child which will not behave. It sucks and reels inside the mixing bowl, and when I dig my hands in to try to knead it ready for the tins, it becomes a clingy, amorphous lump that pulls at my fingers and looks set to take over the world. If not the universe.

“Help!” I yelp.

Of course, there is no-one to help. While I am busy trying to be Mother Earth and produce my own wonderful culinary delights, The Other One is trying to be Father Earth and is fiddling about with the electrics in the front room. Not a good recipe, if you get my drift.

“Don’t worry,” says my inner friend ( a hangover from childhood, or too much Pinot Grigio, I’m not sure which), “Add some more flour.”

I extricate my hands from the goo and sprinkle a little flour onto the blob, turn the mixer back on. Because, yes, I don’t have a bread-maker, I possess an old-fashioned mixer with a dough hook, which was given me by my mother in the year dot. So why, I hear you saying, did you have your hands in the dough at all? Because I like to feel if the dough is the right consistency, and then… Look, that’s just how it is. OK?

After a minute or two, I feel the dough. Still sticky. I followed the recipe. Almost. But, well…I wasn’t exactly wearing my glasses when I weighed out the flour. Not at all wearing them, in fact.

“Idiot!” says my inner friend. Or should that be enemy?

It doesn’t help that I am completing this operation in the half-light. I trot along the corridor and gaze into the sitting room. Father Earth is swaying at the top of a pair of decrepit steps playing with the Earth wires (plus, needless to say, the live and the neutral) of the central ceiling light.

“What’s happened to the lights?” I ask.

“They’re off,” he says. Helpfully.

I return to the Large Child and beat it into submission, forcing it into the bread tins. More goo on the hands, and I’m beginning to wonder if anyone has yet developed a phobia of bread dough. There’s always a first, I guess.

I carry the tins upstairs to fester in the warmth of the airing cupboard and return to make a well-deserved cup of coffee. The Other One is searching for an Edison screw light-bulb to test out the new light fitting. He wants to know if I have one.

“About my person?” I ask. Helpfully.

I haven’t seen an Edison screw light-bulb since almost as long ago as the year I acquired the mixer. But his eyes are lighting up even as I shake my head. Or they would be if there was any light to reflect in them. He wanders off in the gloaming and returns to fit the bulb.

“Hey presto!”

I stand and stare. The light bulb is a pre-dot remnant from the days when The Other One graced the stages of bars and clubs in his capacity as musician and Dee-Jay. The red light makes our sitting room like Amsterdam’s Canal Strasse. And the light isn’t exactly bright.

The next time I peep in (having gone off to place the saggy children in the oven) he is sitting reading the paper with a head-torch on. I think we might have to go shopping for bulbs and bread…

…or maybe not…

All’s well that ends well, as they say.

I guess I’d better get back to the yarn about the house-move. Where was I? I know I covered the fish tank, and pontificated over Orion’s Belt, so it must be time to turn to Pooh Sticks…

One morning after I have left the house for work, the Other One (with nothing better to do obviously )peers from an upstairs window and notices that there is someone lurking in the front garden. Two someones, in fact. One is our neighbour, and the other is an unknown man dressed in a farmer’s weeds, to put it quaintly.

The Other One clatters down the stairs and out of the front door to inquire what they are doing. They seem to be peering at the ground, and the farmer-sort-of-person has some drain rods in his hand. They look up.

“Trouble with ‘cesspit,” they say.

“What sort of trouble?” The Other One asks.

The farmer points into a gaping manhole. The Other One peers in, and wishes he hadn’t. He’s faced with a distasteful soup of unmentionables floating in…well…an unmentionable soup….

There follows much discussion, interceded by various proddings at the pipes below with the aforementioned set of drain rods.

The farmer stands back and shakes his head woefully.

“We need a new septic system,” says the neighbour dolefully.

The Other One steps forward.

“Here,” he says, “let me have a go.”

This is clearly not what they expect him to say. After all, his hair is white, and he’s clearly over sixty. Apart from which, he looks like the type who wouldn’t gets his hands dirty. But there are things in The Other One’s history that people, on the whole, do not know. Such as a nine month gestation period as a fully-fledged drain-layer on Jersey, an island awash with septic tanks and cesspits.

The farmer again shakes his head.

“It won’t shift,” he repeats, gazing down at a particularly unpleasant-looking wodge of goo which seems to be blocking the system.

Somewhat reluctantly the farmer leaves the drain rods with the New Boy and sets off back to the multiple demands of the farm. The neighbour, also, scuttles back to the warmth of her house, leaving The Other One…well…to rod. Expertly. And to clear the drain entirely with an extra little help from the garden hose. Levels checked a couple of hours later, and by the time I arrive home, he declares the drainage system clean and “good as new”.  Think I might set him up in a new business. Only, he’s adamant that not only is he retired, but also he’d much rather listen to his new wife, his Gibson Les Paul 70’s Tribute, than me.

Still, when ever I flush the loo, Winnie the Pooh and Piglet spring to mind. Suddenly Pooh Sticks have taken on a whole new meaning…

The first morning of our holiday in the sun we wake to grey skies and rain battering the hotel windows. Never mind. We’re British. Stiff upper lip. Well, almost. Never did believe in stereotypes.
A friend had recommended a nature reserve to visit while we’re in Malta. So off we trot, in our raincoats, to catch a bus to Ghadira Bay. The buses, by the way, are a great way to see the island. And cheap. Unlike the taxis. Except nobody tells us that you can buy a weekly ticket for a few euros or a day ticket for 2e 60. Not even the bus drivers, who happily take our 2.60 per person per journey, until we finally discover it for ourselves. Like tourist destinations all over the world, they like our money better than they like us. Shame, because overall there’s a good vibe in Malta. The people are friendly and the service is great. At least, mostly.
But to return to the nature reserve. Or rather, not. Because firstly, we miss the bus stop. And secondly, the gates to the nature reserve are quite definitely closed and padlocked. To get in would be like trying to climb into Colditz – presumably on account of the islanders’ propensity to shoot anything in feathers.
Instead we walk to the red tower, or St Agatha’s Tower, perched upon a hill overlooking the coast and across to Gozo…

Lovely. And guess what? It’s not raining.

We follow a blue waymarked walk back down into Ghadira Bay and amble along the wide sweep of sand, watching the one or two kitesurfers accelerating across the waves in the near-gail conditions… Time for coffee, we decide, and walk on past the shut up beach cafes until we find a very welcoming cafe, where, surprisingly it’s warm and sheltered enough to sit out on the terrace IN THE SUN. And, even better, the cappuccino is very good.
Afterwards we make our way on foot along the coast, round rocky crags perched on the edge of these highrise conurbations so much part of the Maltese terrain, where waves tumble into the shore like young boys fighting over a football, crashing chaotically on to the field. Thank goodness for this ferocious wind, we say, for it’s keeping the rain at bay.

Malta’s a curious combination of old and new in centres such as Valletta…

   See what I mean?

And what is this British postbox doing, right in the middle of the street…?

These fishermen might have more luck if they were trying to hook a car…

In Valletta we finally seek shelter from the rain beneath the Siege Bell…

This was erected in 1992 to commemorate the George Cross, awarded to 7,000 people who died during the siege of Malta between 1940 and 1943. Equally poignant was this rather grisly bronze of the recumbent figure by Michael Sandle, also commemorating all who died in the conflict…

By the time we make a day to visit Medina, the sun has decided to behave itself…

More old…

…and new…

And at least one resident going about its daily business, queuing at the butcher’s…

And, for us, it’s time to queue at the airport, after our sometimes sunny winter sun…

The Other One suggests a week in the sun. This involves wrestling with a guilty conscience….think of all that carbon payback a flight to anywhere warm will entail…We decide (with the help of our meagre holiday budget) that the footprint could be curtailed to that of the paw of a very small dog if we stick to Europe. And we deserve a holiday. We haven’t had one all year. Not a proper one.

Good plan, we agree.  But where is warm in Europe at this time of the year? It’s recent enough since our European Extravaganza, when we wintered in Southern Portugal and Tuscany, to remember that jumpers and raincoats were vital components of our travelling kit.

We settle on Malta, a place we didn’t manage to get to in our van, largely due to the expanse of sea between the continent and the island – though, it has to be said, that didn’t stop us from going to Corsica. Malta’s average daytime temperature 17-18°.  A cool 4° in Whitby, and that sounds positively balmy.

So, The Other One kisses his Gibson Les Paul goodbye, and we head off for the airport. I should have smelled a rat when, just prior to landing, the pilot announced that there was “a bit of weather” in Malta. We dive down through cloud thick enough to hide a Christmas pudding the size of London, and practically water-ski on to the runway, the wind gusting us into a neat little conga before coming to a more or less dainty halt in heaving rain.

Still, it’s warm, and we pile on to a number three bus and would have arrived almost majestically had it not been for our driver’s enthusiasm for attempting to drive down an extremely narrow street with a diversion sign at the beginning of it. What a surprise when he finds the road quite definitely barred… He reverses our bus back through the narrow gauge of parked cars with the aid of honkings from the cars behind and a fellow traveller, who nobly climbs off the bus and plays on-duty policeman until the reverse is complete.

By now, it’s late, it’s dark, it’s pouring with rain and we haven’t eaten for a very long time indeed. Hastily we check in to the hotel.

“Is the restaurant still open?” we ask sagely. Of course it will be, we nod to each other. This is Southern Europe not the Outer Hebrides…

The receptionist shakes her head dolefully. Then smiles, eager.

“I arrange taxi for you, take you to very fine restaurant.”

The Other One and I exchange glances. We’re not sure we can afford “a very fine” restaurant. Usually a back street pizzeria is more our style. As for the taxi, we’ve had enough of travel for one day.

“Are there any restaurants around here?” we ask.

“No. I order taxi. Very fine restaurant. Taxi only ten euro.”

The Other One has read on TripAdvisor about a great value Greek restaurant in the vicinity, but apparently the receptionist has not heard of it.

“Taxi to very good restaurant only ten euros,” she repeats.

I feel like the fish who has just been hooked. The more I squirm, the further the sharp curl of metal embeds itself into my gaping mouth. I’m ravenous and I need to eat. Now.

“Could you order the taxi, please,” I say weakly.

The Other One scowls.

“It’ll cost a fortune,” he hisses in my ear.

“Not as much as my funeral if I don’t eat something,” I hiss back.

Chris (or is that Kris?) the taxi driver, is very friendly. He shakes each of us by the hand and smiles a lot. When we arrive at the ” very fine restaurant” he accompanies us into the dining room and introduces us to the staff. Then he demands the ten euros, plus the ten euros for the return fare, before disappearing off into the night.

“That’s the last we’ll see of him,” we murmur to each other.

Then scold ourselves for being doubting Thomases. Although, actually, we are quite right. We do not see Chris/Kris again.

However, when we have finished our “very fine” meal (which despite all our doubts is very good and extremely modestly priced, with a very modestly priced and most quaffable Maltese wine), we ask the restaurant to call the number on the card Chris has left us, and in due course a driver turns up. In a minibus. We bundle in, taking great pains to advise him that we have already paid for the journey.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Nobody tell me.”

However, he doesn’t make a fuss, just calls someone as he’s driving through the rainy streets, and delivers us to the hotel door.

We decide to have a nightcap in the bar. It’s only ten past eleven, positively early for this part of the world. Except the bar is closed.

“What kind of hotel is this?” I ask.

The Other One nods at a sign. Saga Holidays.

“The ‘S’ word.”

“Does this mean that people over 50 don’t drink brandy after eleven o’ clock?” I ask.

“We should be tucked up in bed with cocoa,” he says.

After which, we tuck ourselves up in bed, with neither cocoa or brandy, and fall into the most comfortable of slumbers, dreaming of the sunny week to come.

                                                                                                               to be continued…..

Did I mention the first night I sleep in our new home? Lying in the clutches of woman-flu I gaze from the nadir of the airbed and stare out through the curtain-less window at three snowy balls of Orion’s Belt in the night sky.

“I can see Orion,” I cry in excitement.

The Other One continues to snore.

There’s something about this sight, even in my near-death paralysis, that sweeps over me in a wave of relaxation. I feel that I am, after all, connected to the universe. Because I had begun to wonder. The light pollution at the last house was such that I was lucky if I saw a star at all. Although as the house was situated opposite a hospital, we were graced with abundant blue-flashing and fast-moving stars spreading across the firmament, with accompanying sirens. But sky? Not much of that, I’m afraid. Houses? Yes. Some lovely, tall trees? Yes. And sprawl of star-blocking suburbia.

So, here I am, suddenly back in the cradle of the North York Moors, faced with skies that expand across the horizon like Granny’s knitting: intense blue, moody patina, stormy flusters of cloud stretching purple and pink, with the sea reflecting every strange quirk of light like a twin. Makes me want to weep like a baby, it’s so beautiful.

And beyond, the sea bucks and bridles beneath the cliffs, while the stars of Orion’s Belt spangle small silver suns deep within the dark night.

I have to interrupt the interruption of my blog to pay my most necessary respects to Nelson Mandela. Yes, I’m aware that this space has recently become something of a meander through a rough country of travel and domestic “incidents”, but now I just have to stop, pause and watch as the world mourns one of the most important icons of our era.

As world leaders flock to show that they really did, and do, care about apartheid and racial liberty with varying proportions of sincerity, there is still a massive amount of genuine mourning and celebration by ordinary people across the world. Which restores a little bit of faith in human nature, when there has been so much recent talk by rather small-minded and ill-informed people about other people from other countries taking “our” (i.e. British) jobs, housing, social security, etc, etc.  One of Mandela’s lasting legacies was his generosity of spirit and his belief in ubuntu – connectedness – and how this connection is what makes us all (yes, even David Cameron) human. In fact, I wrote a whole novel inspired by Mandela’s ideas, where I wanted to examine this concept, even in the face of some of the mistakes us mortals make (The Kiss). And boy, do we drop some clangers. But, Mandela had the ability to convert anger into hope. Something we can all learn to do. As well as to forgive, of course.

“Are you all right?” says the man who used to live here (and maybe still does).

What am I expected to say? That all is brand spanking marvellous? That all is tickety-boo?

But let’s not get bogged down in the detail. The long and the short of it is that I go away, and when I return, in the dark, with The Other One, the house is devoid of fish, cats and dogs as well as, it seems, all the furniture. We do notice, however, that the shed is still chock-a-bloc.

First night in the house on an air mattress, but isn’t it good to be here? And in the morning, the sea is still staring up at us from its glassy pond. My flu has taken over, however, and I can’t wait for the removal van to arrive to bring me a futon to lie down upon, or at the very least, a chair. True to their word, the van pulls up outside the house late morning. But who’s this? Doesn’t the removal man grinning outside the front gate look remarkably like the vendor of the property? Am I having some fever-induced nightmare?

Of course, as ever, things are not as they seem. The vendor is indeed standing in front of me, because his car is hidden by the van. The removal men are also standing behind the front gate, grinning. Just for a moment it seems incredibly hard to work out who is who. After all, they’re all tall and wiry, with cropped hair and tattoos and varying amounts of face furniture. Although, actually, face furniture isn’t exactly on my list of priorities at the moment. All I need is a chair to sit down on – out of that van!

“Can we unload the shed?” asks the vendor.

“You’ll have to come back,” we bark. “You’ll get in the way of the removal men.”

Diplomacy is in danger of breaking down here, but our wonderful removal man is vying for a position with the United Nations.

“How long’s it going to take, mate?”

The vendor stands back, folds his arms and studies the sky.

“Urrr, ‘bout an’ hour an ‘alf.”

“An hour and a half?” repeats the removal man, astounded.  He nods towards the contents of the shed. “You’ll do that in twenty minutes.”

And obedient as a freshly trained puppy, off the chap goes. And clears the shed. No mean feat. It’s stuffed from top to bottom with an amazing amount of what the inexperienced eye might imagine is junk.

Our furniture is unloaded and the men drive off. Job done. We’ve officially moved in. And at last I can roll out a futon, cover myself in a duvet and lie down to recover.

Ah. Let me grow nostalgic and misty-eyed a moment. Completion date. The moment when all the stress and the verbal acrobatics between estate agents, surveyors and solicitors comes to an end, and the pleased (dare I say it, smug?) estate agent hands you the keys to your wonderful new home.

“Happy New Home,” she says, handing over the white envelope with my name in capital letters on the front.

“Great!” I think.

After all, I am dying of flu, and it’s all I’ve been able to do to pack up from my temporary accommodation and load up the car, safe in the knowledge that The Other One has everything under control at the Lincoln end, complete with removal men. Sensibly, said removal men are planning the journey north the next day, so all The Other One has to do is hand in the keys that end and hop on a train.

Or, at least, that’s the theory.

Grasping new key in my sweaty mitt, I drive through the back of beyond and land in the sticks…at our new home with the estate agent’s congratulatory song still in my ears.

I climb out of the car and open the front gate, besides which stands a sack barrel.

Ooh, I think, nice of them to leave a sack barrel behind. Very handy. Then, gazing towards the garden shed, oohh, a surf board! Could be useful!

I head for the front door, and turn the key. Pity The Other One isn’t here to carry me over the threshold. But then we’ve been married rather a long time for that, and it would be sure to end nastily…

I push open the door, and there before me is a pile of toys. Less handy, I think to myself, than the sack barrel or the surf board. In fact, less than handy altogether. And am I beginning to smell a rat?

The heating is on full blast. Strange for a vacated house. Yet we completed at 2 pm, and now I am in my new legal home, after Completion, and no-one else has a right to be in it. Not even the numerous fish swimming round in the extremely large fish tank in the sitting room, fully plugged in and using our electricity.

I walk into the kitchen, where there’s a fairly unpalatable dining room table and an awful lot of stacked dining chairs, not to mention houseplants.

I am beginning to feel like Snow White entering the dwarfs’ abode. Where are the dwarfs, I might have asked myself, had I not been feeling so ill all I wanted to do was go to bed. So, upstairs I trot. The least the old owners could have done was left me a nice bed to sleep on.

I wander from room to room. Yup. Each room has a variety of knick and knack in it, random bags and furniture, and a very fair sprinkling of…not exactly fairy-dust, but good honest household dust. And grime.

If my heart had been capable of sinking, but bearing in mind it was half-sunk already, as I was dying of flu, it sure as hell would have sunk then. Plunk. Into my boots. And not a feather-bed in sight.

I wander back downstairs and walk back along the hallway towards the kitchen. Halfway along, I hesitate. I have omitted to inspect the dining room and the conservatory, and there’s a strange rectangle of white cardboard attached (at a skewed angle) to the door, on which is written in capital letters: DO NOT ENTER. DOG AND CATS.

“Just a minute,” I think to myself. “This is my house. I have paid a great deal of money for it. Since when am I not allowed to enter one of the rooms in my house?”

I cautiously push open the door. There is an immediate and frantic scrabbling of claws across wooden floor. Without waiting to see said creatures, or risk a bite in the ankles (the dog was caged up during the viewing), I hastily shut the door.

There’s nothing for it but to clear one of the rooms of the intruders’ furniture and unload the car. Sadly the room in question is upstairs (having the least in it). Hacking and sniveling up and down the stairs, I have just completed this exercise (and it feels like a full marathon) and I am wheezing down the garden path to drive away and go and die in some café somewhere, when the ex-owner pulls up, winds down his car window and grins broadly.

“Are you all right?” he says.

Welcome back to Yorkshire, I think to myself.

It seems like a long time since I posted in my blog. That’s because it is. September, in fact. And here I come, like an annoying little furniture beetle, crawling out of the woodworm, just when you thought I’d disappeared for good (or nearly, at any rate….).

I have a good excuse, or at least I think I do. I’ve moved house, started a full-time job, and had a virus, which wasn’t so much a kiss of death, but a long entanglement with a man-size slug in the back row of a cinema showing  a horror movie  with full cinematic experience and special effects.

Moved house, you might say. Very nice. Yes, it is, actually….well, it would be, if…and here I must pause. Because there really is a tale to tell. But it might need to wait a day or two….due to The Job.

And “The Job?”, I hear you ask. Ah. Yes. Ahem.  It seems to me that these days there are two ways for a writer to go. Marketing Mad – Facebook, Twitter, Marsocial, Tumblr, and an infinite count of other social media sites, in which case all day is spent marketing, and creative writing becomes a dream that might have happened once in the misty mountains of the past. Or The Day Job. Which at least provides a few pennies to buy some food…oh, and some of that very dear commodity called Electricity for which the energy companies seem to be most adept at providing at exorbitant cost. The trouble with Day Jobs is the writing has to be squeezed in at night, or into the crack of dawn. And actually I’ve never been particularly good at the crack of dawn. Thus candle-lit garret, midnight oil, and all those other clichés, here I come…and if I have a minute, before I turn into a pumpkin, over the next few nights, I might just let you into a secret or two about our move…and guess what? It was about as straightforward as a retrieving a corkscrew from the grips of a tarantula in a gorse bush…hence the celebratory glass of Pinot Grigio hasn’t quite made it into the glass…but more of that to come!