NARNIAN-LIKE WOOD

Here I am, larking/goofing/mucking around amid the bluebells of Buckinghamshire in a wood where I kept expecting to see a fawn and a lamp-post.  

Past their best here, the flowers are pale and ghostly and very beautiful I think.

Have had a gorgeous bank holiday weekend, with lots of sunshine and good food (chocolate, strawberry cheesecake ice-cream & vegetarian lasagne; though not all at the same time - obv).  The only dark cloud on the horizon has been my latest book which has been playing up, big time.  

Gabe Steel is proving a delicious but very stubborn hero.

So....

If you could inspire me in any way, it just might earn you a dedication....

DIMENSIONS & BLUEBELLS

It's that time of year.  When woodlands are filled with hazy purple-blue and the air is soft and scented. 
The bluebells are out.
So for those of you who don't have these wild and fragrant flowers growing... here are a couple of photos I took on a recent walk.  
This first includes the creamy-white addition of wild garlic (great for adding to home-made pesto)

And in the second is a very HOBBIT-LIKE TREE!  (Which looks exactly like an elephant's trunk)

In other news - apart from battling with my latest hero, Gabe Steel - I'm haunted by the memory of part of a tantalising poem called Dimensions, by Laura Riding.  She was American and apparently, had a very complicated relationship with Robert Graves.  This excerpt was put on her gravestone but if anyone has the complete, amazing poem (Megan Crane, are you out there?) - then I'd love to read it.

Measure me by myself

And not by time or love or space

Or beauty. Give me this last grace:

That I may be on my low stone

A gage unto myself alone.

I would not have these old faiths fall

To prove that I was nothing at all.

DONKEYS AND MOUNTAINS AND CENTRAL CASTING

JUST BACK from a week teaching romantic fiction in Italy where I was staying in a glorious place called Posara, which is  tucked away in the mountains of northern Tuscany.

There are donkeys....

And villages which have obviously been plucked straight from the files at Central Casting....

And delicious things to eat....

And even the odd (very odd) writer who is so busy googling something, that she's completely oblivious to the brooding and beautiful hills behind.

I'm running another course from 22-29th June this year and there are two places left.  So do contact the Watermill if you'd like one.