On All Saints' Day

Well, the signings are over for another twelve months and so this is the time when Marcia tries to reconnect with the characters in the book she is writing. They disappear when the real world intrudes – which is probably very sensible of them. The poor things have enough problems of their own without adding to them with the dramas we watch unfolding on our television screens or read about in our newspapers.

Marcia at the last signing in Waterstones, Exeter
with one of her loyal readers, Claire Rudkin.

This year, however, it is not quite as simple as that. Next Wednesday evening (at 7.30 if it matters) Marcia will be giving a talk in Brendon Books of Taunton. The bookshop organises The Taunton Literary Festival: click here if you want to learn more. Anyway, that will mean another interruption in this business of connecting with characters but that is all part and parcel of a novelist’s life.

It does mean, of course, that we have done almost nothing since the last signing as Marcia reads herself back into the book. So, this week I will say something about what I have been up to – or more accurately what I have not been up to.

In London there is a news agency that sells video clips to news outlets around the world. These are shot by all sorts of freelance people of which I am one. You may have heard that a very severe storm was to cross the UK last week. These are unusual: most storms start way out in the Atlantic if not close to North America, wind themselves up over the ocean and hit us long after they have begun to calm down. This one, however, was predicted to start quite close to the UK and we were all prepared for winds in excess of 100 miles per hour and lots of rain. Newsflare contacted me and asked me to provide bvideo of this storm.

It may have been calmer than I expected but Dartmouth
looked pretty gloomy when I went down there.

This would not have been a problem but for one small thing: in this area it never really happened. There were two reasons, as far as I can make out. The first was that the storm started even closer to the UK than was forecast and not built up to be much of a problem until it was well to the east of South Devon (actually it was not until it hit Denmark that the wind speeds peaked). The second was that the effect down here seemed to be very local: worse on the north coast than the south. Anyway, the upshot was that there was nothing worth filming so I didn’t.

What was really irritating was that there was a tree down on the railway line a few miles away and well within my patch. This happened in the early hours of the morning and a train (passenger but empty) did run into it but there was no damage and I didn’t hear about this until everything had been cleared up so there was nothing for me to see.

It’s a bit like that when you want pictures of birds and so on. There they are, sitting comfortably, until you have the camera in hand and switched on. Some sixth sense tells them that their privacy is about to be invaded and they are away before you have time to hit the shutter. Plants are so much easier.

Ready to be picked: the crab apples.

Which leads me on to say that the crab apples have been picked by a good friend who will be turning them into crab apple jelly and, I have no doubt, letting us have a couple of jars in due course.

This week we have four Labrador dogs instead of one. Why not?

The top two photographs come from a reader in Canada. Here is the story. 

"The attached of Kyle (l) and Walker (r) is for your Dog(s) of the Week blog dog. 

Sadly, both have gone now and Wylie is now on scene.  Wylie's name comes from a combination of what else.....Kyle and Walker. He is now 9 1/2 months old and is recovering from surgery from elbow dysplasia.  (not sure of the spelling on that).  He is doing well but the prescribed 6 weeks of "bed rest" is nigh impossible.  We (he lives and is officially owned by my daughter and her husband) are trying though.

By the way, Walker was a working guide dog for Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind.  He guided in BC for almost 10 years.  Since we had puppy walked him he came back to us to enjoy his retirement.  Kyle was also a Canadian Guide Dog and we puppy walked him too.  Alas, he showed signs of knee dysplasia and he too was operated on.  He was a wonderful pet for 10 years but was never accepted into the guide dog programme due to his occasional lameness.

And the 3rd pic (I hope 3 photos is not too many) is of our friend's miniature poodle named Spike."

Where is that picture of Spike? In the folder for next week. Meanwhile, the bottom photograph is of a dog that belongs to an old friend of ours (old as in years of friendship, you understand, not as in age) called Teazel and it is taken in one of the fields near here with Ugborough Beacon on the southern slopes of Dartmoor in the distance.

Books - books to be signed and books of account.

Last Friday and that meant Tavistock and a signing in Bookstop for Marcia while I had a meeting in the Bedford Hotel (where else?) with our accountant. The accounts for our company have to be lodged with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs by the end of the month. They have been prepared from the books I keep but I still don’t fully understand how the final calculations are made. Anyway, I went through them with Hugh and tried to look reasonably intelligent thus giving the impression that I really did know what was what before I signed as requested and, by so doing, take full responsibility for the returns. All done for another year – but isn’t it scary that we have to place our lives in the hands of professionals? I would trust ours through thick and thin but he mentioned that he is thinking about retiring from the firm he founded which is a bit worrying. I think I shall have to make an effort to meet the man he has taken into partnership and who will eventually be at the firm’s helm.

Meanwhile, Transworld was out in strength for this event. Emma Buckley, Marcia’s editor and Elizabeth Masters who looks after her publicity had travelled down from London the day before and had spent the night in the Bedford Hotel (where else?). They were with Marcia in Bookstop and I was to join them for lunch in Taylor’s – as was Chris Smale who looks after the south west for Transworld. We all had a great time.

Chris, Emma, Elizabeth and Marcia

Next morning and Chris rolled up to take Marcia to The Torbay Bookshop in Paignton. This turned out to be a splendid event and so many congratulations to all involved.

Then it was Tuesday and time to go down to Saltash to a very unusual bookshop run by two sisters. Is it a café? Is it a bookshop? Is it a place where people pop in and out for a quick chat? It seems that Bookshelf is all three. Saltash is, of course, at the mouth of the river Tamar on the Cornish side just a mile or so from the setting of The Sea Garden. I only say that to give me a good reason to show you another Tamar photograph.

Tomorrow is another busy day: Waterstones in Plymouth in the morning at 11 am and in Exeter in the afternoon at 2 pm (both lasting one hour). There are two Waterstone’s in Exeter: Marcia will be at the Roman Gate branch – not the one near the cathedral.

The old mill tail race in Totnes the other day and . . .

... and there was a moorhen (I think) lurking in a drain.

Then there will be no reason at all why, on Monday, Marcia should not be back in front of her computer typing like mad. Well, there is one. There may even be two. For a start all this dashing about is surprisingly tiring and she probably need more than one day off to get back to normal. The other is in the lap of the gods. Will she be able to wriggle out of the real world into her own imagined landscape without at least one trip down to the coast to reconnect with her people? I rather hope not – I do enjoy our jaunts. The weather forecast is a bit worrying:  “sunshine, showers and strong winds on Sunday. Potentially turning very stormy on Monday.” Well, that could make it quite dramatic, couldn’t it? I’ll let you know what happens next week.

This week we have another reader's dog.
Mutley, a collie cross, - and friends.

Let the signings commence

So the time for signings is with us again. Usually the first one takes place in the Harbour Bookshop in Kingsbridge but this year the proceedings started in the Totnes Bookshop on the Friday after publication day. Marcia was really delighted that this year the signings started in her home town. Friday in Totnes is, as you know, market day which means the town is very busy and the car parks are full – and especially so in the morning – so this year it was decided to try the afternoon instead. 

In Totnes Bookshop

It just so happened that Marcia's friend for a couple of hundred years or so, Susie (you may remember that our last dog, Jossie, came to live with us after Susie's mother died), was in the town as was a chap called Terry Ford, with whom I worked about fifteen years ago and have not seen for ages. It was a wonderful surprise to see him and to swap news. While we were waiting for Marcia to finish at the bookshop, Susie, Terry, his cousin and I sat chatting around a table in Rumour – the bistro just down the road from the bookshop – where we were joined by Bob Mann: writer and historian (Bob and I have collaborated in a couple of books on local history), literary critic (it was Bob who wrote the very first review of Marcia's first book - Those Who Serve), publisher (he now runs Longmarsh Press which he describes as a "craft publishing house") and good friend. Eventually Marcia joined us and the party really took off. Indeed, it was gone five thirty before we all decided, reluctantly, that the time had come to move on.

Bob Mann: writer, literary critic, historian and publisher.

Next day it was down to Kingsbridge and the Harbour Bookshop. As always here, there was a group of readers waiting for Marcia and a pile of books to be signed for people who were unable to be there in person.

Work is being done on one of the roads we usually use.
As a result we were driving down a lane we haven't used
for years and there, suddenly, in the middle of nowhere
was this lovely group of cyclamen in full bloom/

There seems to have been a subtle change in the signings over the last eighteen years or so. To start with there were far more people at the signings and virtually no books set aside to be signed in the purchaser's absence. Now that is changing. This is probably because more people work these days and so cannot make the signings but, whatever the reason, the number of books Marcia signs steadily increases each year.

This is the first of the foreign editions of
Postcards from the Past to arrive.
Please note the Newfoundland dof!

There was a report of an interview by Benedict Nightingale with Tom Stoppard in Wednesday’s Times. Here is something he said: “There are too many things I find it difficult to say no to. So I’m clearing my desk and planning to work without interruption. When I was younger I could do something useful just by being free for half a day but now I need five days to get the world I’ve left out of my head and ten days or a fortnight of not talking to anyone to hold what I need to hold inside my head. I can’t just put things aside for a day and come back. My brain just isn’t good enough any more.”

I’m a year younger than Tom Stoppard and I have to agree that getting back into gear is taking me far longer than it used to – and, unlike Mr Stoppard, what I do is not creative. These days I find myself starting to stare at the blank screen and then, without really willing it to happen, find I am doing something else by way of displacement therapy. Sometimes this is something useful (like paying the electricity account) but often it is totally pointless. Clearly this needed to be discussed with another creative writer, Marcia (eight years Mr Stoppard’s junior). Did she recognise this problem?

“Yes, very much so. Every year it is harder and harder and so difficult to get people to understand. It doesn’t take me as long to switch from one world to the other as it does Tom Stoppard but stopping for ten minutes to drink coffee with someone may not look much to them but it probably means it is the end of writing for that day. How can you be, say, down on the River Tamar inside Oliver’s head as the world shifts beneath his feet and be talking about something else, something completely away from your inside world at the same time? You can’t and I am going to have to learn to say ‘no’ more often.”

There is a bit of a story about this week’s very tiny blog dog, Beau. He has been rescued from a home where they could no longer afford to keep him and where he lived with a number of flea-ridden cats. These had been such an irritant that he had bitten himself almost bald. Now, after treatment at the vet’s and a few week’s wearing a collar to stop him licking off the medication, he is as right as rain.

A few weeks ago, we had an Oscar of unknown breed and I was asked what he was. Well, I have been hoping to see him again and find out from the owner but no such luck. My guess is that he is a cross and may even have three breeds tucked away inside that strong little body. Do I see a touch of terrier and a bit of labrador? I think I do.

Signings as of today (all signings last 1 hour):

Friday, October 18: Bookstop, Tavistock 10.30 am

Saturday, October 19: The Torbay Bookshop, Paignton 10.30 am

Tuesday, October 22: Bookshelf, Saltash

Saturday, October 26: Waterstone’s, Plymouth 11 am

Saturday, October 26: Waterstone’s, Roman Gate, Exeter 2 pm

To be scheduled: Waterstone’s, Truro and The Bookshop, Liskeard.

Lastly, Marcia will be appearing at the Taunton Book Festival at 7.30 pm on Wednesday, November 6th in Brendon Books, Old Brewery Buildings, Bath Place, Taunton. For details CLICK HERE.

A Tale of Two Worlds

One of the problems associated with living in two worlds – the real one and the one that Marcia creates is keeping the two separate. Marcia tends not to consider this a problem. As far as she is concerned one is of extreme importance and the other pretty irrelevant. I find it difficult to go that far although I am happy to concede that her world should take up about sixty percent of our time I do feel that the real bit deserves the other forty.

The worlds clash, as you would expect, and no more so that when it comes to where we should be living. Unlike some really lucky people, neither of us quite knows where our roots lie (other than the fact that we both yearn for the south west corner of England when we are away from it).

Are we moorland people? Should we be living by the sea or in a remote area of farmland? We still don’t know even though we have done all three.

Then comes the where? Cornwall, Devon or Somerset. Again we don’t know even though we have lived in all three.

It has been suggested that it is time for
cats to have a look in so...
As part of an occasional Magnificat series
please welcomw Kiri from Porlock on Exmoor.

What we do know is that we always want to be wherever the book that is in the making is set. This has led to all sorts of heart searching moments which have been made no easier when the locations involved include fictional communities – as in Peneglos in The Christmas Angel (which, incidentally, reappears in Postcards from the Past). I won’t bore you with the houses we really thought for a while we would buy but didn’t. There was, for example, a lovely place down on the River Tamar, not far from where Marcia put The Sea Garden, which we both coveted and which, astonishingly, came on the market at that time.

Now, however, matters are going critical again. Not only is the book on which Marcia is working set in real places but in real places we love: Dartmouth along the south coast to Torcross and beyond. The time has come, of course, to consider what we are doing in a hard-nosed and very practical manner. Well, we have been trying to do just that, we really have. So we have a list of things we want and a list of things we don’t want. It is the latter that is causing so many problems. When you get to a certain age you have experience of all the difficulties that life can throw at you (either first or second hand) and they are legion.

So, for my part – no hedges: I have been cutting and trimming hedges most of my life and I have very fond memories of the one place that had none. I really, really don’t need all the hard work but this closes many doors.

For Marcia’s part – the house must be bright and sunny. There is nothing more depressing than living in a gloomy cottage. We speak from experience: this is another of those things we have done and do not intend to repeat.

The list goes on an on. What is really good is that we agree on everything: we need to be near a railway station so that it is easy for people to come down to see us and vice versa; we need reasonable access (preferably on foot) to the basic shops having learned the problems of a fourteen mile round trip when you need anything; we need quick and easy access to the natural world from which both of us draw a great deal. Yes, the last two requirements are incompatible. We know that. Oh, how we know that!

Anyway, we had more or less settled on the idea of making the town of Totnes our centre: it has a railway station, all the shops we need, is close to Dartmoor and to the coast. Like most towns, it is surrounded by suburbs. Neither of us want to live in a suburb which, in our extremist views, is neither one thing nor the other and offers no positive advantages. Really life would be so much easier if we were just normal but we’re not. Anyway, apart from anything else, most properties in the suburbs have hedges. That means we are either well outside Totnes (as at present) or we need to be bang in the middle. The problem is that neither of us is quite able to go for the latter although I suspect it could well happen when we get old.

Dartmouth, however, holds a special place in our hearts. We both lived there before we met and we lived there again when we were together. So we have been looking at properties in Dartmouth.

Richard Blake

Our favourite estate agent in the town is Richard Blake – and no doubt it helps that his wife loves Marcia’s books – but I have a nasty feeling that we are far from his favourite clients even though he hides that very well. He has patiently shown us a number of houses and flats which we have turned down for one reason or another but one of these days we are going to be shown a place we really love. Then what? Well, Dartmouth does not have a proper railway (there is a heritage railway that links Kingswear on the other side of the river to Paignton which has one but …). Dartmouth is now fully geared to the tourist industry and this has an odd effect. If Marcia and I walk into a shop or café in Totnes it is assumed we are locals: most people are. If we walk into a shop or café in Dartmouth it is assumed we are visitors: most people are. It is an odd feeling.

Meanwhile, it is time to leave the real world and return to the one that really matters, Marcia’s world, and to celebrate the publication of her latest book Postcards from the Past which happened yesterday. In a moment we are off to Totnes where she will be signing books in the aptly named Totnes Bookshop and tomorrow she will be off to Kingsbridge to the Harbour Bookshop. Let the dance commence.

Ti and Chloe share the rostrum as blog dogs untied this week.

Publishing and exclusive territories

Last week I said that I would explain the situation regarding publishing areas in the world. When a book is published in, say, German it is assumed that the only people who will want go buy it are those who speak German but English is spoken in many countries and that creates a problem.

A little while ago I mentioned that most of the colour has gone from Dartmoor.
Not so in our garden as this and the following photographs demonstrate.

There were two English speaking nations when mass publishing started - the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Publishers in these two countries were faced with a decision: outright competition or some sort of agreement to enable them to work together. No doubt driven by the thought that there was more profit in cooperation than in war, they choose the latter. 

Thus the contracts Marcia has with Transworld do nor give them world rights but only over what are known as “The Exclusive Territories”. This list is too long to reproduce here but it includes most of Africa, America (Central and West Indies), The Falkland Islands and French Guiana in America (South), parts of Asia where English is generally spoken, most of Oceania and virtually all of Europe and Scandinavia.

Likewise when the same books are then published by St Martin's Press - the same but sometimes under a different title - their rights too are restricted. They have “The United States, its territories and dependencies (including but not limited to U.S. Diplomatic, military and educational establishments wherever located), the Republic of the Philippines and the same rights, but non-exclusively, in the Open Market.”

These two lists do not cover all the world and the sale of English titles in the rest of the world is available to both publishers as suggested in the paragraph above. Translations into other languages are outside this agreement and these are available worldwide.

None of this, of course, stops readers in one territory from buying books sold in another. Indeed, I know that a lot of Marcia’s readers in the U.S. buy her books from the U.K. and have them shipped over The Pond. This can be done either through some of the bookshops here or on-line. (If you want help in this regard, send me an email and I will do what I can). Usual address for me is mail@rodneywillett.co.uk.

Indeed the arrival of internet bookshops, e-books and Amazon’s Kindle books has thrown a rather large spanner into the works and has caused problems that have yet properly to be addressed. We shall have to wait to see how it all pans out.

Meanwhile, Marcia and I are still hunting down her people. Some of the ideas with which she started have been discarded. This is usual and the explanation nine times out of ten is that they come back again for another book. You will remember how often in the past characters from two books have caused all sorts of problems by jostling for attention at the same time. Well, Marcia is now more aware of this tendency and can talk quite severely to them if she feel they are speaking out of turn. Liv (you will, I am sure, remember Liv from The Way We Were) is such a one and will not be in the book Marcia is working on right now but will, I suspect, be back. Watch this space.

While all that is going on, I am working on a book I have titled Hattie’s Mill Revisited. Telling you about this is pretty stupid. The idea is that it will be available by mid-December but that timetable is by no means certain. Just to explain a bit more, here is an extract from the Preface.

As many readers know, and especially those who read my Friday blogs, the way in which Marcia discovers her characters, where they live, what they do, where they shop and so on is . . . well, let us say “unusual”.

This little booklet is the first of what I hope will be a collection covering a number of her books. It shouldn’t be the first, really, as Hattie’s Mill was the fifth novel to be published. It was, however, the first one where we worked together by exploring ideas and then talking endlessly until Marcia was satisfied that we had both met the demands (and it seems they really are demands) of her characters and my stubborn insistence that there has to be at least a shred of reality for me (and readers) to hold onto. That will make more sense as together we revisit “Hattie’s Mill”.

Part of this booklet consists of quotes from the book and, at the back there are a few pages devoted to some history about the Dartmouth waterfront. Why? A good question but it happens that my grandfather, then the Royal Borough of Dartmouth’s Engineer, reclaimed the last cove and built the last part of the embankment so this is, if you like, in memory of him.

Anyway, as all who have read the book will know one of the most important characters is Admiral Jellico. That being so the blog dog this week is of our last Newfoundland, Trubshawe, on whom “Jelly Baby” was based so this is, if like, in memory of him. Clearly he has just come in after running about in the long wet grass of the field next to where we then lived.

This week, a tumble, a wumble and an apology.

Let's get the apology out of the way first. In part this is associated with the tumble but there were other inputs as well. These included a stray nephew who asked if he could come and stay for a few nights – he is an architect who practises as a Design Manager on construction projects. He had come down from York to resolve a few problems on a site in our part of the world. Thus our evenings have been taken up chatting about old times (when he and his generation were small and would stay with Marcia) and about his work. It was great fun having him to stay but our usual schedules took a hammering with the result that I did not respond to the comments on last week's blog. Sorry about that.

Shot in Totnes outside Totnes Bookshop. Author and reader, I assume.

The tumble happened on Sunday when Marcia was walking to church. There are a number of places where the kerbs are 'dropped' to road level in order to make it easier for those in wheelchairs or using Zimmer frames. Basically she tripped over the slope at the end of the dropped section and fell rather heavily. With blood pouring out of one hand, and feeling very sick, she decided to return home but one of our neighbours saw her. Bless, her, she took Marcia into her kitchen and carefully cleaned the wounds, applied anti-septic cream, bandages and a good measure of tender loving care. Then she walked up our lane with Marcia to ensure her safe arrival home. She was extremely lucky: she could so easily have broken her wrist. As it was both wrists and her right shoulder were badly bruised – still are but now in the browny-yellowy stage, the angry purples having faded.

One of the nice things about Totnes is the total disregard most people have for cars.

There was no question of her typing on Monday so we spent the day going into Totnes, where some part of the work in progress may or may not be set, and then down to Dartmouth and along the coast to Torcross, both of which are definite candidates.

Whenever we go to Dartmouth, I gravitate to the boats.
Well, I would, I suppose. I have been doing that for as long as I can remember.

The wumble was associated with the contract for Postcards from the Past and the Sea Garden with St Martin's Press in New York. This is a fairly bulky document and the obvious way to send it across the Atlantic for checking and signing is to do so electronically. For some reason, which I still do not understand, we often have problems opening these files from the US. This time, I was able to open the it in read-only mode but not in edit-mode. Thus there was no possibility of Marcia signing 'electronically' and my sending the contract back as an attachment to an email – as we do with all the European contracts. Back to snail mail but ...

An evening shot of the mouth of the River Dart taken a few weeks ago.

In the US the standard paper size is American foolscap. Here it is A4. Furthermore, SMP call for six copies – each having twenty-four pages. Apart from worrying about the destruction of the woodlands required to produce all this paper there are the costs associated with postage. Because of the difference in paper size, the way this has happened in the past is that SMP sends the contract electronically to Marcia’s agent’s agent in New York, Kathy Anderson, who prints off the required six copies and posts them to Dinah Wiener in London. Dinah then checks the contract and, if all is well, posts all copies to us. Marcia signs them and we post everything back to Kathy. All of these costs are, of course, charged to Marcia.

This is looking down over Torcross from the hill behind. The narrow strip of pebble bank that divides the fresh water "ley" (pronounced "lee") from the sea along which the road runs is clearly visible. The village is just to the right of this picture.

You can see why we want to find an easier and cheaper way. Anyway, this time we have taken a flyer. We can read the whole contract on the screen and I was able to print off six copies of those sheets that need Marcia's signature – on the wrong paper size, of course – and I have posted them off to Kathy. Will this be acceptable to SMP? I have no idea but I'll let you know next week – assuming we know then – and I will also tell you about the complications created by publishing zones.

Looking along Slapton Ley towards the village of Torcross.

By the way: if you don’t know what I mean by wumbled, it’s time to read Echoes of the Dance.

This week our blog dog is a beautiful Bernese Mountain Dog - Oscar. Now, where have I heard that names before?

Market day - Totnes

I don't know how many of you realise that writing a blog every Friday is a huge act of faith. Somehow and coming from somewhere will be something like five to seven hundred words which are, at worst, readable and sometimes, at best, worth reading. Usually at some time on Thursday there is a glimmer of an idea which, by some strange and probably miraculous process, matures overnight so that in the morning there it is, waiting to be written. John Bailey recounts how his wife, Iris Murdoch, would say - with relief - "Well, that's the book finished. Now all I have to do is write it down." Within the infinitely smaller and less erudite context of my Friday blog, I would say that I know exactly what she meant.

Fish

Not, however, this week. This week I have not even an acorn of an idea let alone a mature oak. So,where does that leave us?

Furniture

Marcia has need of some brooding before getting back to her computer. This happens. I needed some inspiration for today's blog. Clearly the thing to do was to drive into Totnes and see whether that particular Totnesian buzz - a buzz I have found in no other part of the world that I have visited including places such as New York, Paris and Basle to name but three - could work its magic once again.

Cauliflowers

We arrived and parked (Marcia's little car) in the Heath car park next to the huge van with 'Sitting Room' written on it which belongs to our friend Bob who, as you may have guessed, runs a shop in the town of that name which sells everything that you might find in - well, a sitting room. Then over to The Brioche to enjoy coffee whilst sitting at a table on the pavement - after all, we are nearly at the end of the summer and this might be the last day this year when it will be warm enough for this to be an option. Being a Friday it is market day and we can sit there and watch some of the colourful folk who have stalls here selling everything from fish to furniture, cauliflowers to clothes, sausages to scarves.

Clothes

We had just finished our coffee when a couple walked by with an absolutely beautiful Bernese Mountain Dog. I could not resist him so I accosted them and asked if he could be a blog dog. This, of course, means explaining the Friday blog and so on but I am quite used to that now. He is called Oscar and he is a hospital PAT - pet as therapy - which means he goes into the hospital and patients stroke and cuddle him and, as a result, feel much calmer and generally happier. You will see the him here in a few week's time.

Sausages

On the subject of pets acting in a therapeutic way, the first Cat Cafe in the UK opened here, in Totnes, a few weeks ago. The idea comes from Japan and China where people have difficulty in keeping cats. The concept is simple: in the cafe are the four cats who are on duty that day so that people can go in and enjoy a drink while cuddling or playing with a cat. It seems that there are enough people who are away from home and missing their cat or who live in places where they cannot have a cat to keep the place pretty busy.

Scarves

Back to today - and the need to write a blog. Oscar duly recorded in the camera, I left Marcia to her own devices and repaired to Rumour where, fortified by yet more coffee and (more importantly?) a large glass of Rioja (and Marcia is, of course, driving today) I settled down to tell you all about it. Writing is indeed a mysterious business. Now, with any luck, next Thursday ...

Your probably won't believe this but when I was "back at the ranch" and preparing the photographs for the blog, I discovered (to my horror, I suppose) that this week's blog dog is also called Oscar - and to think of all those people who wait for years to get an Oscar and I find I have two in one day!