Clematis is doing its thing and hopefully at least some of what I planted today will sprout. Also still digging up bits of plastic windmills that my son used to love back in the day. & now wholesomely tired and have freckles.

(villainous and/or perfidious and wimpy)

Ouf, A Woman of Substance is SO much better than the Downton era tosh. This is definitely a time of villainous toffs.

ok so: feverfew, love-in-a-mist, borage and columbines. Hopefully some of them will make it and fend off the prowling slugs etc.

tree covered with white blossom

😍😍😍 spring doing its thing

I am not much cop as a gardener (oh hello, ghosts of lilac and ceanothus I did in), but I do like how things that appear to be dead may turn out not to be.

there is something ultimately reassuring about the dynamic of being schooled by Gen Z

For those who don’t know - Hacks is SO GOOD and Christina Hendricks is even more of a goddess than I realised (just got to her cameo)

though my housemaid ancestor did not mess with the aristo sons (bound not to turn out well), but sensibly waited and saved up until she and the coachman could afford to get married. My grasp on the history of all this is hazy, but I think it was at Painshill in Surrey (which is pretty fancy).

started watching new adaptation of quintessential rags-to-riches revenge drama A Woman of Substance (Emma Harte: 'The secret of life is to endure') & was put in mind of the little brass bell we have somewhere that was once used to summon housemaid ancestor by her bosses

I have been told that in novels by women my age (70s-born, 20s in the 90s) the ex-boyfriends are often called Simon.

Rule no 1 of writing is that if you call someone Will and change your mind, beware of ‘replace all’.

One thing I really, really like about what I do for a living is the luxury of sitting round inventing family trees. Especially the names. Though as I start on my tenth book I’ve totally forgotten which names I’ve already used. (No Alisons, I know for sure.)

At the point in writing where it’s a rush of names like people at a party who you haven’t got to know yet

It's World Autism Acceptance Day. Cuts coming in to the health element of universal credit will slash support available to #autistic people with #learningdisability who are unable to work, leaving many of the most vulnerable in penury. Which makes me think we have accepted nothing #WAAD

When generative AI was but a twinkle in a tech bro’s eye.

Just found (not quite at the bottom of a desk drawer) the Jiffy bag containing the long-ago printed-out MS of what later became my first published novel, which had been returned by an agent who’d rejected it. (And who through zeal or error or both, actually wrote to reject it another 2 times.)

Fantastic news in the UK today - the government has apparently ditched its plan to force creatives to 'opt out' if they don't want AI companies training on their life's work.

www.thetimes.com/uk/technolog...

🧵 1/4

😊

'Enshittification' is not a word recognised by autocorrect [have just introduced it to an 80something having tech headaches]

It is one of the pleasanter rules of life that a man carrying flowers must be smiled at.

Sons were suspects in nearly one in five cases of women killed by men in UK in past year Figures recorded by Femicide Census in past 12 months indicate highest rate of matricide in 16 years

this suggests the collapse in mental health care is one factor behind these horrifying statistics. The collapse affects children's MH services too, where young ppl wait years to be seen, & over-16s who are violent towards their parents wait too. Will govt now act? www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

I just registered 😊

today I met someone very nice who vividly remembered a book I published 12 years ago (and who I haven’t seen in about as long.) which was an out of the blue reminder that books have strange secret lives of their own.

You're not going to make any money doing this and no one is going to read it, so you must hope for a secret third thing to happen

maybe the secret third thing is realising that the first two aren’t the point

Oooh A Woman of Substance is back, Edwin Fairley watch out!

May (or may not) contain me.

I'm in excellent company between these pages standing up for UK copyright protections for authors..

ps You can see the full list of authors involved at dontstealthisbook.com