Hello everyone. Welcome to Sunday and welcome to March. Can you believe that we’re 20% of the way through the year already? How? I mean, really, just how? Anyway, apologies once again for there not being a proper blog last week. I fully intended to write one. I promise I did not commence the week thinking sod it, I won’t bother. But then I worked a 40-hour week. On my one day off mid-week, I had so much housework, gardening, shopping, laundry, and just general running about like a headless chicken to prepare for working another two 10-hour days, that there was not a spare minute to even sit down, let alone spend a few hours writing my blog.

Never mind, I thought, I’ll write it on Saturday. Sure, I’m launching two books at the weekend, but I’m sure there’ll be time to squeeze in writing an itty-bitty blog. Wrong. There was barely time to squeeze in an itty-bitty toilet break! I always forget how much time is taken up on launch day posting and sharing the posts other people very kindly make about my book, replying to every comment, and liking all the posts and comments. By the time I reached ten o’clock Saturday evening, I had accepted that the blog would not be written in time. Indeed, I had even acknowledged that I would not be getting up early on Sunday to write it either. So, I hastily dashed out an apology for there not being a blog blog and fell into bed exhausted at midnight.

But that was then and this is now and there is a blog. Quite an important blog because after sitting on it since the 19^th of January, I am finally confessing to my crime. Yes, I am a convicted criminal. Mum and Dad, I know you’re reading this and learning about this for the first time but before you leap to the phone, carry on reading and you will see that it was NOT MY FAULT.

Regular followers will know that Franki and Rys came for the first two weeks of January to celebrate Christmas with me and the family, and it was a lovely (if expensive) visit. I drove them back to their university on the 17^th of January. I was not looking forward to the drive. To be honest, I was dreading it. The route is not a nice one and I get quite anxious negotiating those horrible roads around London. They’re so busy and everyone drives so fast. Way faster than the speed limit. Without my oh-so-helpful Google Maps Lady, I wouldn’t even attempt it.

Anyway, before I could settle down to the rest of 2025, I had two stressful events to overcome. Driving the girls back to university and completing a tax return for the first time.

The 17^th dawned. We load up the car. Have a last trawl around the house to check for forgotten items, because there always is a charger wire somewhere or a lone sock under the bed. And then we set off. The roads were busy, but not horrendously so. It was a grey and overcast day, but not that bad. We chatted and played car games to pass the time. We were on the M25 which has a speed limit of 70mph. Not that you’d think it. Usually, the M25 has three speeds – dead slow, stop, or let’s see how fast the other cars can overtake me – but today it was a little sluggish and I didn’t get much above 60ish mph. I was still being left in the dust by other drivers though. Franki had her phone in her lap checking our route and she suddenly exclaimed –

Franki: Mum, I think it’s 50mph along here.

Me: What? Really? I haven’t seen any signs anywhere.

Franki: Maybe you should slow down while I check again on the phone.

I tried to slow down and immediately pissed off the driver behind me who attempted to climb into the back of my car, then swerved to dangerously overtake me and roared off into the distance. Then we saw a tiny temporary 50mph sign flash by. I mean, seriously, it was tiny and filthy and easily missed. Blink and you wouldn’t have seen it. I was doing 50 by now, a bit anxious and very stressed because I was crawling along and everyone else was burning me up.

Then, literally a few moments further on, another speed sign was there. Bigger this time, it loudly proclaimed the speed was now 70mph. I sped up with relief and the rest of the journey progressed uneventfully. I dropped them off, had a quick comfort break, then turned around and drove all the way home.

The next day I completed my tax return. I didn’t understand half of the questions so figured the answer was no. But it was done, and I had my email confirming it had been done in plenty of time so I wouldn’t be fined.

Not going to lie, getting those two major stresses out of the way was a huge relief and I very much enjoyed a big dinner and a glass, or two, of wine that evening.

Saturday morning, I slept in a little. I was beyond exhausted after two weeks of having the girls’ home, the long drive, and the tax return. When I got up, I had a cup of tea and scooped up the post off the mat. A brown envelope. Hmm. I don’t like brown envelopes. They’re usually bad news. I opened it.

WTF?!

NOTICE OF INTENTION TO PROSECUTE!!!

Wait! What?

Was this for me? Had I accidentally opened the lodger’s post? Nope, I checked, it was for me. From Billericay police force. Billericay?! What?

I’d been caught by a speed camera on the M25 between junction 26 and 27 doing 61mph in a 50mph zone. No! I can’t have been. I mean, the M25 is 70mph all the way round. Everyone knows that. Even the BMW drivers burning past me at 80+ know that.

I read the whole letter. I’d been caught speeding in a temporary 50mph zone. Then I remembered what had happened. The lack of visible temporary speed signs, the fact there was no discernible reason WHY it was 50. No roadworks, no lane closures, no accidents or bad weather to make a speed reduction logical. Nothing. Just a teeny tiny sign I had missed. And not just me, judging by how fast everyone was overtaking me in that area they must have caught hundreds of drivers breaking the law that day.

Oops.

I read the letter several times. It was terrifying. I’ve never received such a thing before, and I was honestly properly scared. It was so threatening. It talked about court and a thousand pound fine and points on my licence.

There was a form attached to it. A WERE YOU THE DRIVER form? Yes, I whimpered and completed the form. I was allowed to send evidence with the form, so I typed a contrite letter admitting to an ignorant but honest mistake and asked them to consider my 40 years of blemish-free driving.

And then I waited.

Waited to hear how many gazillion pounds I was going to be fined. If I would have to attend court in Billericay (I don’t want to go to Billericay! I think even people who live in Billericay don’t want to go to Billericay). How many points they were going to slap on my licence?

I didn’t mention it to many people. I waited to see what the outcome was before I worried anyone significant. Weeks dragged by. I heard nothing. A sudden thought occurred that I hadn’t even been in Essex as my route to Reading takes me nowhere near that county. Usually, I go A14 and then up the A505, not getting onto the M25 until the last minute and way beyond junctions 26 and 27. But, examining my driving history I found that on that day, Google Maps Lady must have seen there was congestion or an accident or something up ahead, so instead took me up the A14, then the M11, then got me onto the M25 much sooner than usual so yes, on this one occasion, I was where they said I was.

I mentioned it to one of our patients — a very sweet elderly lady in her eighties who said I seemed a bit down and not my usual cheerful self — and she smiled sympathetically.

Don’t worry about it. I’ve had three. As it’s your first offence and you weren’t driving dangerously, I expect they’ll offer you a speed awareness course instead.

I blinked in surprise, a little taken aback that this sweet old dear was three times a convicted criminal.

The last course I did three years ago was in Thetford. It was very interesting, but oh dear, silly me, I got caught speeding again on the way home from doing the course.

And then she trilled an airy laugh.

Okayyyy. Someone didn’t pay attention in class.

Anyway, I waited until almost the end of February, all the time quietly panicking that my filled-in form confessing I was the driver had got lost in the post, or that they were thinking about whether to throw the book at me or not. Finally, I had a brief and nasty letter saying all my pleas for mercy had been in vain. They WERE going to prosecute me and that I could have my say in court if I liked.

I tried to process exactly what this meant, I luckily didn’t have too long to fret that prison uniform would probably be unflattering, because in the next day’s post, I received a form stating I had a choice.

Pay a £100 fine and receive three points on my licence.

OR

Pay £95 and attend a three-hour speed awareness course and not get points on my licence.

Hmm, tough choice, I think I’ll do the course. I had already decided that if there was a course in my town and it wasn’t on a Monday or Tuesday because those are my workdays, I’d rather attend the course in person than do it online. I mean, after all, it’s a day out. With like-minded people. All of us criminals together. And if I’d paid £95 for it, then I wanted a free cup of tea and a biscuit at the very least.

 I went to the website the letter directed me to. I put in my reference number — half wondering if I should take a head and shoulders shot of me holding up a card with it printed on — and clicked on real courses.

Click on the drop-down menu to select the most convenient day for you to attend the course, it stated. I clicked on the down arrow. One date dropped down. Monday the 31^st of March. A Monday. That’s a workday. Of course, it is. I mean, really, what was I expecting? That it would actually offer me a choice of any of the other five days in the week I don’t work.

Sigh.

Go back to the main menu, and change my choice to online. Click on the menu. This time there was a bit more choice. Mostly Mondays and Tuesdays though and one lone Saturday. The 29^th of March. I chose that. The course is three hours running from 9am to 12 noon. I only hope my webcam equipment is up to the task. I can just imagine spending most of the course desperately trying to get the link to work and plaintively bleating that I can’t hear them.

I will keep you posted.

Other than that, it’s been nothing but work. I like my job, but I wouldn’t want to do it full time and I dread the lady I job-share with deciding she wants to retire. It’s one thing occasionally covering her days, but I would not want to work 40-hour weeks every single week. Yes, I would be better off financially, but everything else in my life would suffer, especially my writing. I’m not sure I could continue to write working such long hours. I know I would still have three days off — Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday — but I find when I do overtime that Wednesday is taken up with shopping, laundry, running errands, and cooking. Saturday is pretty much the same and there is housework and gardening as well. I need time to see friends and family and do house admin, I mean, let’s face it, just renewing your car insurance can take up several hours. No, at my time of life, I do not have the physical, mental, and emotional energy to work a full-time job.

Let’s just hope she has no plans to retire soon. I mean, she can take a holiday whenever she wants. That was made very clear to me in the job interview that part of my duties include covering her absences and I’m fine with that. These occasional weeks of overtime give a much-needed boost to my income. But I would not want to do it all the time.

It’s been an expensive start to the year for me. Having the girls here for the first fortnight and bearing all the costs of Christmas myself. Having to clear an interest-free store agreement for the new fridge/freezer and tumble dryer before it hit the interest-bearing period. Buying my parking permit for another year. A trip to the dentist and hygienist which cost a day’s pay. And having to pay the £95 speeding fine. Is it any wonder when I booked my car in for its MOT this Wednesday just gone, that I was apprehensive about how much it was going to cost?

It’s an old Toyota Yaris and yes, Toyota is a reliable make, and the Yaris is a sturdy model, but things go wrong with old cars. Let’s face it, things go wrong with new cars as well. I finished work at 6pm on Tuesday, walked home, jumped straight in the car and drove it to the other side of town where my garage is located. I put the keys through the drop box slot and walked home, buying milk on the way to make pancakes for dinner. It was Shrove Tuesday, and I wanted pancakes. I always drop off the car the evening before. I’d much rather do it then than be up at the crack of dawn on my one day off and take it then.

On Wednesday, I rushed about doing my chores waiting for them to call and let me know how much it was going to cost to get it through its MOT. My garage knows if it’s too much then I might have to make the tough choice of getting rid of the car rather than pay a fortune on it. I missed their call and spotted that they’d left a voicemail at eleven. I played it. My heart in my mouth. My car was all ready to be collected. Wait. Already? Gosh, that was quick. No mention of the cost.

I was still waiting for the doctor’s surgery to let me know my thyroid medication was ready to collect — the surgery is on the way to my garage, so it made sense to collect the meds on my way to collect the car — so I went into the garden and did some light work out there as it was such a gorgeous day.

This past week we’ve had False Spring. This tends to happen every year here in the UK. We have a week or so in March when the temperatures rise, the spring flowers burst into life, the sun shines, and everyone takes their clothes off. DO NOT TRUST IT. This is not really Spring. Come next week we will be plunged into Second Winter when the temperatures will plummet to below freezing again, gale-force winds will rip the spring flowers to shreds, and the knitwear will be dragged back out of the wardrobe.

I waited until almost four then, knowing that the garage shut sharply at five, I walked to the surgery anyway just to see if my meds were ready. I ordered them through the repeat prescription line early Sunday. They normally text me on Tuesday to say they’re ready so I can collect them on my day off Wednesday. I was down to my last tablet, and as I was working Thursday and Friday, not leaving work until the pharmacy was shut, I needed to get my prescription.

I got to the surgery. I asked. Yes, my medication was in, they just needed to box it up and text me. Could I wait? It might take about twenty minutes or so to do. I told them I’d be back after I’d collected my car. I then hurried to the garage, heart in mouth, wondering how much it was going to cost.

You can imagine how happy and relieved I was when they said it had passed the first time with no need to do anything to it. That left me with the lowest bill I could possibly have of £54 to pay for the actual MOT, labour checking the car over, and VAT. It was the best possible outcome. I paid, thanked them, and then drove back to the surgery where my medication was ready.

Wednesday was quite a good day. I got all my chores done including some like pruning the wisteria that I hadn’t planned on. I even found time to have a bath in the evening. Now, I never have baths. I mean, who has the time? I also fret about the cost of all that water and the gas to heat it. My new bathroom was fitted two years ago, and I don’t think I’ve even had a bath in it. Nope, I’m a shower girl. But I fancied pampering myself and wanted to do my feet and shave my legs and let’s face it, it’s so much easier to do these things in the bath. The water was way too hot, like molten lava, so I added cold and then it was too cold, and it took me ages to get it right. As I never have baths, I didn’t have any bubble bath or anything to put in it. I found a small pot of bath salts that had been kicking around the cupboard for ages and put them in. It felt like I was lying on grit.

I used to be so good at having baths. I’d have soft music playing, candles flickering, a glass of wine on the go, and a good book which I’d try not to drop in the water. The full works. I’d be in there for hours, topping up the hot water and emerging like a prune.

I think I’ve lost the knack of having baths. I don’t know, maybe having a kid and never having the time to have a bath breaks the habit. I did try. I had a book, I lit some candles, and I had the radio on, but I was so BORED. And my back hurt. I kept thinking of all the other things I could be doing, so in the end, I did what I needed to do and got out. And then I had to clean the bath.

Probably won’t be in a rush to have another one any time soon.

And now it’s Saturday lunchtime. I have a day and a half before it’s back to work. Once this blog is finished and scheduled, I will pop to Waitrose because I need grapes and yoghurt, and yes, I know I could probably buy them elsewhere slightly cheaper, but I will get a free cup of very nice coffee from Waitrose. I really fancy a decent cup of coffee but don’t want to pay for it. So, I will take my thermal cup and pay 50p more for my grapes and yoghurt and get my free coffee.

And that’s about it for now. Enjoy your Sunday, whatever you’re up to, and I look forward to chatting with you next time.

Julia Blake

I’m afraid there is no blog today. I had to work forty hours this week as the lady I job share with is away on a two-week cruise of the Norwegian fjords in the hopes of seeing the Northern Lights. It’s alright for some. No, actually, this is one trip I don’t envy her for. The temperature here has dipped to just under zero degrees centigrade and I am sleeping under the thick duvets. The thought of being somewhere that cold does not tempt me.

Anyway, the long hours plus the fact I launched two books this weekend left me with no time to sit down and write my blog. I am so sorry, but, you know, life.

In case any of you are interested, here are the books and where you can find them.

The Book of Eve has been published as a standard hardback and a deluxe hardcover. Those of you who regularly read my blog know what an absolute arse ache this has been.

Eve is still available as an eBook from Amazon, Smashwords, Nook, Kobo, Barnes and Noble and pretty much everywhere else you can buy eBooks from through Books2Read.

It is also available as a paperback with the original cover from Amazon.

Also available from Amazon, it was released yesterday as a hardback with 17,000 words of bonus material. A beautiful book, it has a gorgeous new cover as well.

Finally, The Book of Eve is also available as a deluxe hardback with thicker paper, a coloured title page and peacock feather printed edges. This version is only available from The Great British Book Shop so there will be postage costs, but as their production costs are lower, I have been able to price the book £2 cheaper than the standard hardback on Amazon to help offset the costs.

As well, the first four books in the Blackwood Family Saga have been released as an omnibus edition which works out significantly cheaper than buying all four books together.

Available as an eBook from Amazon, Smashwords, Nook, Kobo, Barnes and Noble and everywhere else you can buy an eBook from through Books2Read.

It is available as a paperback from Amazon and from the Great British Bookshop. It is £2 cheaper on the Great British Book Shop.

It is available as a standard hardback from Amazon and is a lovely great chunk of a book.

Finally, it is available as a deluxe hardback with a stunning dust jacket, velvet touch cover, thicker paper, and printed edges. Again, this is cheaper than the standard hardback from Amazon.

All the links are here and are universal so will take you to your local book sale site wherever you happen to be in the world.

getbook.at/TheBookOfEve

https://mybook.to/BlackwoodFamilyOmnibus

https://books2read.com/ap/R59K1N/Julia-Blake

https://www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk/search?type=product&options%5Bprefix%5D=last&q=julia+blake

Sorry again about the lack of a blog, but I will make up for it next week.

Regards

Julia Blake

It’s not going to be much of a blog today I’m afraid. Firstly, because the batteries have gone in my posh ergo dynamic keyboard, and as I don’t have any spare batteries in the house and I’m not going out just to get some — it’s dark and pouring with rain — I have had to dig my old plug-in keyboard out of the cupboard. Now, there’s nothing wrong with my old keyboard and I have written many novels on it, but I’m not used to it anymore. The keys feel squished together and in the wrong place and I keep pressing the wrong ones. It’s like I don’t know how to type at all. Still, at least I have a keyboard that doesn’t rely on batteries for all those times when all my other keyboards — of which I have several — run out of batteries. Franki has tried to make me throw this keyboard away so many times, but I have stubbornly resisted. Yes, the new keyboards are lovely and are easier to type on now I’ve got used to them. But … and it’s a big but, when the batteries run out ­— as they inevitably do — it is a universal law that I will never, ever, have spare batteries in the house.

Secondly, I have spent the last three days sitting in front of the screen going over the first four books in the Blackwood Family Saga (again), the Blackwood Family Omnibus (again), and The Book of Eve (again). In all the formats. Repeatedly. So that’s six paperbacks, five eBooks, and two hardback versions all to be checked, checked, and double-checked. Is it any wonder I got completely discombobulated and ended up with no idea which versions I’d done or not done?

Anyway, the end is in sight. My KDP account is mended once again, although how long it will stay mended is the eternal question. The Book Vault has finally come back to me and admitted that they have no control over whether my books will be listed on Amazon. It is up to the whim of Amazon and I’m guessing, as Book Vault are a rival print-on-demand publishing house, that the whim of Amazon is to tell Book Vault that they’ve got two hopes of getting their books listed on Amazon and the other one is Bob, and he’s dead.

So, I have spent the last two weeks going over and over what my options are. Is it annoying? Yes. Has it all been a bit of a waste of time, money, and mental energy? Probably. Are my hardback books a bit of a white elephant? Maybe. It remains to be seen. Right now, I must make the best of things.

Today I have uploaded the new hardback version of The Book of Eve on Amazon and ordered a proof copy. I have also uploaded the hardback, paperback, and eBook versions of The Blackwood Family Saga omnibus and have ordered proof copies of the hardback and paperback. They should all arrive next week and then I can do a direct comparison with the quality of the same books published through Book Vault.

I must admit, the books from Book Vault are beautiful plus they have the printed edges which the same books published through Amazon won’t have. The Blackwood Omnibus also has a gorgeous scarlet hardcover and a lovely dust jacket, which the Amazon version won’t have. The Book of Eve from the Book Vault has a beautiful colour title page. Amazon doesn’t offer an interior colour option for hardbacks yet.

As the production costs through Book Vault are quite a bit cheaper than through Amazon, the hope is that I can price the books on Book Vault significantly lower than on Amazon. This will offset the cost of postage that the Book Vault will charge, and this will hopefully encourage people to buy the deluxe versions from Book Vault, rather than the still lovely but not-so-deluxe versions from Amazon.

But who knows? I am spitting in the wind at the moment and hoping it doesn’t blow back in my face.

After three days of sitting here staring at a computer screen and wearing my reading glasses, my brain is leaking from my ears. The thought of trying to come up with something to blog about was frankly daunting.

I haven’t done anything the last two weeks, other than editing and amending and writing my new books. The weather has been dreadful, I’m still broke, and I’ve had nowhere to go so I have hibernated.

Oh, I did go to the dentist, so that was exciting. More than a day’s pay for the hygienist to try and pull my teeth out and then almost drown me with her high-pressured jet wash, all whilst asking me questions. I think she did her training in a prison of war camp and waterboarding was her specialist skill. Then the dentist had to replace my filling which fell out before Christmas. I had just about got used to the Grand Canyon in my front tooth and now I must get used to it not being there.

I’ve gone to work, obviously, and that has gone pretty much as I expected it to. Oh, and the diet has been going very well. I’ve lost a steady 2lbs a week — 8lbs in total so far — and am 4lbs away from reaching the lightest I managed to get to last year.

And, of course, it was Valentine’s Day on Friday. Not that it had any impact on me whatsoever. Being a long-term singleton it’s one of those dates on the calendar that I barely notice, other than to think the shops are full of even more expensive tut than usual and my social media feeds are suddenly full of pictures of roses and cuddly teddy bears. Even when I was married, Valentine’s Day wasn’t a thing. I have always felt that if your partner needs to be forced to be nice to you for one day of the year, then they are probably not worth having.

I do remember one year my ex-husband bought me an iron for Valentine’s Day. Yeah, that made me feel pretty special. I mean, yes, we did need a new one because ours had blown up, and if he’d come home with it and said — oh, I picked us up a new iron — then fine. But he went to the trouble to wrap it up. In pretty pink paper. With a big bow on it. So, it was not my fault that I got excited and dismayed all at the same time. Excited because he had bought me a Valentine’s Day gift and dismayed because I hadn’t got him anything.

The feeling of dismay did not last beyond me unwrapping it — and neither did the excitement, I might add — and his flippant remark that he’d bought me an iron so that I could do the ironing, almost had me throwing it at him. Bearing in mind that 80% of the ironing that happened in our house was his uniform, I did not appreciate the gesture.

Yet another reason why he is an ex-husband.

I’ve never really got Valentine’s Day. It’s so manufactured and a million miles away from the rather sweet tradition of sending an anonymous card to the person you secretly fancied and letting them try and work out who it was from. Although, nowadays receiving something like that through the post would probably have you reporting to the police that you had a stalker. It’s all gone a bit too far now. Enormous, padded cards the size of a small child: forced scentless red roses that will be dead within a few days: chocolates to pile back on the weight we had managed to shift after Christmas: and over-priced teddy bears.

Don’t even get me started on going out for dinner on Valentine’s Day. The forced romance of it all. Sitting in a restaurant packed with other couples all trying to manufacture an emotional high, wincing at the inflated prices on the menu, and desperately avoiding making eye contact with the militant lady trying to flog half-dead roses from a bucket.

Ugh, just no. No, thank you. Even if I was in a relationship, I would not want that. Buy ourselves an enormous takeaway, sure. Treat ourselves to something special and cook a meal at home, absolutely. But dining out on Valentine’s Day? Absolutely not. Over my still-twitching corpse.

What did I have for dinner on Valentine’s Day? A delicious homemade lasagne stuffed full of mushrooms, accompanied by homemade chilli chips, and peas, all washed down with a glass of wine — the bottle was a present from my parents. Not for Valentine’s Day (at least, I don’t think it was) but a “just because” present — and there was a slice of Mum’s homemade fruit cake for afters.

What else has happened? Oh, I bought my resident parking permit for the year. I was expecting it to have increased in price, but it was only £67.50 which I think is the same as last year. It is possible to buy a second permit, but I think someone forgot the decimal point because the price for that was £8450. Gulp. Glad I don’t have a second vehicle or need to buy one for the lodger anymore.

I’ve also booked my car in for its MOT in early March. Really hope there’s not much, if anything, wrong with it because I can’t afford a huge repair bill this year. Last year it failed because the horn wasn’t working — yeah, who else knew that was a legal safety requirement on a car? The car hasn’t done too many miles since last time. I mean, I’ve been up to Chester and back twice and driven to Reading and back twice, but other than that it’s mostly pootled around Suffolk. I haven’t noticed anything wrong with it, but then I never noticed the horn wasn’t working, so who knows?

And that’s kind of it. My life is a bit slow and insular at the moment. I’m focusing on writing and getting my books up to date on Amazon. I’ve been reading a lot as well, which is nice, and just generally resting and taking things a bit easier. The run-up to Christmas and then the first fortnight of 2025 was manic. At the end of February, I’m facing three months of endless overtime, so I don’t feel guilty about having this respite. I think we all need to rest sometimes.

So, on that note, I am going to finally switch my computer off, heat myself some soup and binge-watch something on Netflix. Hope you are all well and maybe next time I will have more news for you.

Best wishes.

Julia Blake

Well, January is finally over. The longest month of the year. And yes, I know technically it’s only 31 days, but it feels like 131. Why does it seem like this first month drags on eternally? Christmas was centuries ago. I don’t like January. It’s a fatly depressing month. Everyone is ill, depressed, broke, and overweight. We all made resolutions and some even went so far as to sign up for gym memberships — yeah, good luck with that.

What have I been up to since we last spoke? Well, I’ve been giving hibernation a go and you know what, I think as a lifestyle it’s a good fit for me. After all, what is there to leave the house for? As storm after storm tore across the UK, one barely leaving before another was kicking the door down, I was not tempted to go out unless I absolutely had to. It rained. A lot. My hair does not like the rain. It was cold and dark. I was coming home in the dark. That is one of the only good things about this time of year, I can be home in my PJs, eating dinner, and settled in for the night by 6.30pm and nobody thinks it’s weird.

After having Franki and Rys here for the first two weeks of January and celebrating our Christmas then, I was left with empty cupboards, an empty bank account, and carrying an extra 10lbs of weight. Great. A whole year of brutal and dedicated dieting only to put it all back on.

As I did the sums, I realised I was in quite dire straits financially. So, I did an inventory of the contents of my fridge, freezer, and cupboards, and hunkered down in siege survival mode. I stayed away from my bank account. I had a little bit of cash left over from Christmas, and my niece bought a copy of each of my hardbacks and paid me cash. I would use that money for essentials and eat my way through the food I had in the house. Which wasn’t much.

So, January turned into some sort of bizarre “Ready, Steady, Cook” experiment. For non-Brits, this is a TV programme where a couple of celebrity chefs have five random ingredients presented to them by a member of the public from which they must produce a meal. I had a reasonable amount of rice lurking in the cupboard, a little bit of pasta, and a big bag of potatoes given to me by my parents. Where they got them from, is anyone’s guess, but I think given the truckload of dirt each one was caked in these were feral spuds.

Anyway, so commenced my fortnight of eating random weird shit found in the bottom of the freezer. You know what that is, I expect everyone has it. That lone chicken leg because there was one too many in the pack for your needs and you didn’t want to throw it away, so you stuffed it in a bag and threw it in the freezer, where it worked its way down to the bottom and you forgot about it. I found a bag of white fish fillets. Not in their original packaging so I had no clue what they were. They were white. They were fish. That was as good as it was going to get. There was half a bag of peas — always a good standby — and half a bag of Brussels sprouts — not so good.

There were odds and ends of bits of meat, bags of sauce, a big bag of gravy left over from Christmas dinner, a couple of chicken breast fillets, a chicken kiev, etc. I wrote out a list of different meals I could make with all the things I had. Some of the meals were a bit bizarre. One night, I had a large jacket potato stuffed with homemade cauliflower cheese left over from Christmas dinner, and hot cooked beetroot from my father’s garden. Hot, filling, and surprisingly tasty. Another night I had the chicken kiev with a big tray of roasted potatoes, red onions, beetroot, and Brussels sprouts which was surprisingly lovely.

I ran out of butter and spread early on so had to look for alternatives to use. One evening, I was making a chicken and pasta dish in cheese sauce. I had the milk, cheese, and flour, but no butter. What I did have was beef dripping leftover from Christmas. Hmm, I thought, the butter is really only used as a binding agent. The cheese sauce is being mixed with fried chicken strips and red onions, so I don’t care if it does have a slightly meaty taste. I made the sauce using beef dripping instead of butter. Result? It tasted exactly like cheese sauce.

I found a bag of pastry crumbs in the freezer. It was just flour and butter mixed into crumbs. What could I do with that? I mixed it with sugar and a little water to bind it. Then pressed it firmly into a lined baking tray. Chilled it in the fridge for twenty minutes and then cooked in a medium oven for twenty. Voila. Shortbread to have two slices of at lunchtime with a coffee.

Now coffee, that was interesting. I had two scoops of ground coffee left in the tin. I decided to keep that for a special occasion. I’d just go without coffee or drink tea, I decided. The coffee I like is over £3 a pack and is a non-essential item. The cash in my purse was hoarded for things I could not do without such as milk and toilet paper. Looking through the cupboard, right at the back, I found half a jar of Mellow Birds coffee. Yeah, the 1970s called, they want their coffee back. The reason I had half a jar of Mellow Birds coffee in the house is because Franki went through a stage of making coffee cake and Mellow Birds is excellent to use because it’s a powder, unlike most instant coffee that is granular. The Mellow Birds dissolves easier and doesn’t leave a grainy texture. It’s also brilliant in coffee buttercream frosting. Anyway, I looked at this jar and shrugged. I mean, how bad can it be? I remember it being awful back in the day when my mother used to drink it, but I wasn’t a big coffee drinker then and I wasn’t so desperate.

I made a cup and tried it. Not too bad. It’s obviously not my ground coffee, but it will do. It’s better than nothing. Luckily, I have plenty of teabags so that wasn’t an issue. If I’d run out of tea things would have got Very Ugly Indeed.

Over the past fortnight, I’ve learnt a few things. Looking at the bag of small fish fillets, I took two out and defrosted them. I made homemade chips using the feral spuds. I made a thick batter. Dried the fish, dipped it in seasoned flour, then beaten egg, then in the batter and deep fried it in oil in a large pan. The batter cooked quickly. Too quickly. By the time the rest of my food was ready, and, on my plate, the batter was taking on a slightly burnt texture. I heaved it out, drained it on kitchen paper, and put it on my plate. I cut into it, eager to see how it was. It was raw. In the middle. I took it back to the kitchen. Put the fillets on a small plate and blasted them in the microwave for a couple of minutes. They were then fine, although the rest of my food was getting cold. Lesson learnt. Blast the fillets for a couple of minutes first and THEN deep fry. After all, I guess it is only the batter you are cooking. Despite the initial set-back the homemade fish and chips with peas and tartare sauce was delicious. Will definitely do it again.

I found a small pot in the bottom of the freezer. Something red was in it. What was it? I had no idea. I defrosted it. Took the lid off and had a cautious sniff. Tomato something. I then remembered back in the summer a patient gave me a punnet of cherry tomatoes from his garden. I accepted them and thanked him, because hey, never turn down free food, right, even though I’m not keen on raw tomatoes. I brought them home, put them in a pan with a little water, brown sugar, salt and pepper, mixed herbs, crushed garlic, and onion powder and cooked them down into a thick sauce. That whole punnet reduced to literally a cup full of sauce. I then put it in the freezer and forgot about it.

So now I had this sauce. I put on a saucepan of water and brought it to a boil; I added rice and the last handful of frozen peas. I had two tiny fillets of white fish left. I put them in foil with a handful of mild chilli flakes and the whole pot of tomato sauce. Wrapped up the foil and popped in the oven for twenty minutes. When the rice was cooked, I strained it well, put it back in the pan, added pepper and soy sauce and stirred well. Then I opened the foil parcel, wondering what monster I had created. To my surprise, it looked and smelled okay. I poured it over the rice and sat down to dinner. It was Delicious! Like a fish biryani. It was tasty and had just the right heat level for me. It was very satisfying, and I’ll admit, if I’d ordered it in a restaurant, I would have been very happy. So, will be doing that one again as well.

Payday was the 28^th of January. I think that’s another reason why January feels so long. Many people are paid before Christmas, sometimes even on the 19^th or 20^th of December. They then must wait until the 31^st of January before they are paid again. That is a Very Longgggg Time. Especially if, just like the grasshopper dancing all summer and not collecting supplies for winter, you blew December’s pay on Christmas, heedless of the six long weeks until the next pay packet and all the bills that still must be paid in January.

Why is there so much month left at the end of the money?

I used to have a job where I was paid before Christmas, but I also used to get a Christmas bonus of an extra week’s pay, so I made sure that was what I spent on Christmas. My current boss did ask if I wished to be paid before Christmas and I told her Absolutely Not. I knew if I was paid beforehand, I would have had it, spent it, and forgotten about it by the time the mortgage was due in January.

Even though I’ve been paid, I’m still in survival mode. I went quite a way into my overdraft and although I’ve clawed my way back out simply by staying away from the bank account, I still have a heavy month ahead. I have appointments with the dentist and hygienist that I cannot postpone again — they were supposed to be on Christmas Eve, but yeah, spending a day’s pay on Christmas Eve was not going to happen — so they were put back to the 12^th of February. I also must renew my parking permit and that’s going to be another £100.

The only problem as well with eating down your freezer and cupboards completely is that eventually, you must buy more food. I mean, seriously, on Wednesday morning, the freezer was down to ice, cubes of frozen lamb gravy, and three slices of frozen pink grapefruit. Even I couldn’t think of a meal to make with those. Can you imagine the chef’s face on Ready, Steady, Cook if I rocked up with those ingredients?

Okay, Julia. I’m going to have to add a few basic ingredients to yours. To the ice and pink grapefruit, I will add gin and tonic. And to the gravy, I’ll add a leg of lamb, roast potatoes and vegetables.

I had no choice. I had to go shopping. Instead of going to Tesco though, I trotted along to Iceland (the shop, not the country) because everyone claims it’s cheaper. I bought: 2 pints of milk; a large pot of yoghurt; onions; apples; grapes; frozen mangos, blueberries, and mixed summer fruits; a bag each of frozen carrots, peas, and green beans; toilet rolls; three tins of soup; two beef and vegetable pasties; two minted lamb pies; a lasagne; and a fish pie. Total cost, £24. Is that cheaper than Tesco? I have a feeling it is. And yes, I know, it’s probably not such good quality, but hey, it’s food. It’s fattening and filling and right now that’s all I can worry about.

So far, the lamb pies are excellent value. There were two for £1. They are large, tasty, and filling. I had them with roast feral spuds, mint sauce, peas, carrots, green beans, and lamb gravy. Total meal cost: 70p.

The lasagne I won’t bother with again. It was £1 but only did one meal. It was thin, bland, and disappointing, the pasta was rubbery.

I don’t know, maybe this is the start of a falling out of love with Tesco and other large — buy everything you need in one go — stores. I think I should explore the smaller cheaper stores like Iceland, Poundland, Audi and the like, where maybe I can’t get what I want but can probably get what I need, and maybe that’s the way to start thinking.

I am doing two days of overtime in February and then several days in March and April, so I will be able to slowly rebuild my account. But the cost-of-living crisis is here and it’s not going away. Food is getting more and more expensive. I do need to live within my means and if that involves shopping around, doing without, and lowering expectations, then that is what I will do.

Needless to say, I did not drink very much in January. I finished up the Christmas alcohol, and on particularly depressing days when I was facing an uninspiring dinner, my homemade cherry vodka was a bright and much-needed treat. But that’s all gone now. My house is officially an alcohol-free zone. Alcohol, contrary to popular belief, is Not Essential. I am aware this may come as a shock to some, but it is possible to live without it. To put it bluntly, if it comes down to a choice between a bottle of wine and a pack of loo rolls, well, then, I’m sorry, but it’s a no-brainer.

Okay, in other news. My KDP account is still broken, which is depressing. I am in email correspondence with them, but nothing has been done to either fix it or set me up a new account. I honestly don’t know what to do. There is no real alternative to Amazon for a broke indie author so if it’s not fixed, well then … But I am trying to stay positive and not think about it too much. Amazon must fix it. They fixed it before, and it was fixed for a week before it broke down again. They must do what they did before, and this time make sure it stays fixed.

Whilst hibernating, I have been resting, reading, and writing a lot. My work in progress (WIP) is now standing at 68,000 words and I’m estimating that I’m about halfway through. I am having a blast writing it and I hope the readers will have as much fun reading it. When will it be published? That’s hard to say, hopefully, late spring but it all depends on the schedules of my proofreaders, formatter, and cover designer. Writing a book is the easy bit. It’s everything that comes after that’s hard.

Hope January hasn’t been too unkind to you and that 2025, in general, has got off to a good start. I’m going to go and make a cup of Mellow Birds now — nom nom — and then get back into the writing zone.

Take care.

Julia Blake

Oh, 2024, what a strange and stressful year you were. Looking back at my blog of January last year, I’m laughing at my goals because other than doing more live events, I failed to achieve any of them. I think if I were to sum up 2024 in one word it would be disappointing.

It began in January with a nasty kidney infection and my tumble dryer going bang. Great start there, 2024, but I should have known you were only easing me in gently. My then lodger was also giving me a lot of grief. A grown woman in her forties who really should have known better, she was acting in a downright childish manner and just causing me stress. I did not shed any tears when she left. I cleaned the room thoroughly because she’d left it in a bit of a mess and had to buy a new mattress. She’d left the existing mattress covered in large and very unsightly brown stains. As I was within my legal right to, I used the damages deposit to replace the mattress as the one she’d damaged was unfit for purpose. That caused a lot of upset and nastiness, including her sending her large and burly male friend around to hammer on my door, scream in my face, and demand her money back. Not nice. Very intimidating.

In February, she moved out. I put the room up for rental and within a day had found a lovely new lodger. I am happy to report that ten months later he is still living here, and I still think he’s lovely, so at least that’s one good thing. I also took a nasty tumble onto concrete this month and ended up with a badly bruised and smashed-up face. It scared me mightily and made me reluctantly decide that flat shoes and boots were the only way to go from now on. I haven’t fallen over since so that was the right call.

March. I finished writing book sixteen this month. Hide & Seek is book six in the Blackwood Family Saga and I planned for it to be the first of three books I wrote in 2024. Launch day happened towards the end of the month and I was pleased with how well the book sold. Easter happened. I drove up north to collect Franki and Rys to come home for the Easter holidays. It was great having them here, but I went down with a nasty cough that seemed to clear up after a few days but then kept coming back. When I finally spoke to a doctor about it in July, he confirmed that it was whooping cough and that there was “a lot of it going around.”

April passed in a blur of having the girls home, working overtime, and doing three live events. I was also still suffering from the cough and trying to begin writing my next book. If I wanted to publish three in 2024, I needed to get a move on.

In May I made the crazy decision to completely revamp my whole garden. So, writing was put on hold. I didn’t appreciate how long it was going to take though, or how much I would spend on paint, varnish, new garden furniture, and plants. May and June were both wet and cold months, I even had to put the heating on in June because it was that cold. Every spare moment I had that it was not raining, I was bundled up and outside painting. It took weeks and weeks.

In June, my mother had a stroke. Luckily, it was reasonably mild and didn’t affect her speech too much, but it was still scary, and it was a time of readjustment for the whole family. I painted and painted and painted in the garden. I just about finished it in time for the summer. No writing was done at all. At the end of June, Franki and Rys arrived home for the summer. I had so much planned for the three months they were going to be home. Trips to the coast and the surrounding countryside. Long, lazy days in the garden. Games nights and movie sessions. Did any of these things happen? No. What with me working double shifts the whole of July and then Franki getting a job that involved her working long hours, there never seemed time to do anything.

In July I turned 57 and, as if to celebrate, the summer weather finally arrived, literally on my birthday. This was a huge relief as I had a table booked in the garden of a local restaurant for myself and six of my friends the next day. It was a lovely occasion though. Good weather, good food, good wine, and good company — what more do you need on your birthday?

August rolled around and Franki turned 21. Not wanting a big party or much of a fuss, they opted for a large charcuterie table and a night of Taylor Swift and cocktails. It was another busy month of work and live events. The weather stayed lovely, but I never had time to sit in my garden and I certainly had no time to write.

September. A lot more live events including the big one, Norwich Comic Con, at which I did very well. Rys went away with her family for a holiday, so Franki and I had a few days together, which was nice. We even managed a quick trip to the coast, but the weather was awful, so we didn’t stay long. Then it was time to move them both into their new university in Reading. A long, very very long day of loading up the van and the car from the storage locker, braving the horrible roads around London, and finding the university and their accommodation. Moving them in. Assessing the flat, which was very nice, then having to face IKEA on a Saturday afternoon on the admittance day of one of the largest universities in the country and then having to do the big grocery shop in the hypermarket. I then had the worst car journey of my life on roads I didn’t know in the dark and the rain, utterly exhausted and coughing up a lung (the whooping cough had re-emerged).

October was wet, cold, and generally miserable. I still hadn’t had time to start writing again as every spare minute was being spent trying to create gorgeous hardback copies of some of my books. It was all taking a lot longer than I thought it would, but I was confident they would be out in time for the Christmas markets. The lady I job-share with was away for the whole of the month on a 28-day cruise (I know, very nice for some) so I picked up a lot of overtime. This was just as well, as my boss was off work for a ten-day holiday, so the extra pay compensated for my days lost then.

November was a month of continuing to struggle to get my hardback books produced and the absolute nightmarish pain in the arse that was turning out to be. I also had yet another long drive to Reading and then up to Chester, where we stayed for a couple of nights to attend Franki and Rys’s graduation ceremony. It was lovely, but the expense of the Airbnb, plus all the driving just to go to a 45-minute service I could have watched on YouTube made me question if it was worth it. Driving back from Chester, I barely had an hour at home before an old friend arrived to stay for a few days. Towards the end of the month, I had the first Christmas market of the season, and I went down with another horrendous cough and cold.

December is always a busy month, and this one was no exception. I had three weekends of nonstop live events, and I was still struggling with trying to publish my hardback books. I hadn’t written a word since April — so much for my plan to publish three books in 2024 — and when disaster struck and my Amazon KDP account was found to have a fault meaning I couldn’t use it, I was just about ready to give up being an author full stop. Needless to say, my books were not ready for Christmas, well, not really. I did manage to acquire a few author copies which sold very well at the fairs I did, but I couldn’t publish them through Amazon, so no one worldwide was able to buy them.

Christmas itself was quiet to the point of boring and I spent much of it alone. Franki and Rys were not coming home until New Year’s Day and once again I was facing a long drive to collect them. I ended the year by going to bed at 9pm on New Year’s Eve because I was exhausted and facing an early start and a long drive the next day.

Can you understand now why I say it has been a very disappointing year for me? I did achieve a few things such as the garden, getting the hardback books sorted, and doing quite well at live events, but mostly it was twelve months of failure to achieve. I didn’t write the books I planned to; I didn’t save the money I intended to; and I didn’t have the trips out that I wanted. I did lose weight, but climbing onto the scales this morning for the first time since Christmas, I discovered to my horror that I now weigh Exactly the same as I weighed on this day in January 2024. So, a long year of brutal dieting has achieved precisely nothing.

Will 2025 be any better? Well, I’m not doing the number of live events this year. We have figured out which ones work and which ones don’t, and I will be focusing on the successful ones. I’m not tackling any large house projects so that should give me more time. Franki and Rys are not coming to stay until possibly the end of their academic year in September, and even then, it probably won’t be for long. Hopefully, I will have more time to write and focus on my author career. Am I aiming for three books? Well, no, let’s aim for two and see how much of the year is left after that. I’m back on the eating plan, very annoyed with myself, but I’ve done it once so I know I can do it again. With the girls not coming to stay it means the house won’t be full of tempting food and the smell of nice things cooking. It’s certainly easier to diet when you live alone.

Mostly, I’m focusing on me. On living within my means, staying healthy, trying to have fun where I can, relax and take things a bit easier this year. I’d like a drama-free year, but I don’t suppose for one moment I will get one.

I hope that 2025 is a better one for all of us. Take care and I look forward to chatting with you next time.

Julia Blake

Good morning from a cold and wet Suffolk. As I write this, the rain is lashing against my window and the wind is gusting. The poor souls in Wales and the West Country are suffering from the latest storms to hit the UK and even on the other side of the county, we are feeling the effects. I had to dash out this morning, which wasn’t fun. Usually, this close to Christmas, the market will be bustling, and the town will be packed. But, as I picked my way around the biggest puddles, I saw plenty of empty spaces where stall holders were a no-show. I guess with such high winds there’s a danger of them blowing away, so it was safer to stay home. It’s a shame though. I know they probably rely on Christmas takings to see them through the rest of the year.

I was annoyed with myself because I could have gone late yesterday afternoon, but it was dark, I was tired, and I’d already been out twice in the day so I decided to leave it until the morning. Looking at the rain-blasted windows, Saturday Julia was very angry with Friday Julia for being so lazy. But I had to go out, so out I went. Well, I didn’t have to go out, but I’d decided to treat myself to a new dress for the festive season and as my first outing is tomorrow (Sunday) I had to make the effort. Now, I have a complicated relationship with dresses. I love the idea of them. I love seeing them on other people. I want to have them. I try them on. They look stupid on me. I am quite short — barely 5ft in my socks — so most dresses are ridiculously long on me. I’m curvy so they tend to not hang right. And I’m picky about the cut and feel of an outfit. I only own two dresses. One long, loose, blue and white sleeveless cotton summer dress, and a plain black linen shift dress for special occasions.

My boss wears a dress every day for work. She has a large collection of dresses that all look amazing and suit her well. Dresses are her thing. But she’s taller than me and built differently. Last month she rocked up to work in yet another new dress. Black and white, it was simple and flowed to the knees with a tie belt. It had long sleeves and buttons down the front of the bodice. It came from Marks & Spencer, she informed me when I asked, only £35 from their dress collection, so not a bad price. The more I have looked at that dress over the past month, the more I have coveted it. Finally, I decided to treat myself to one as my special dress to wear over the festive season. I checked on the store’s website. Yes, they had plenty left in a variety of sizes in my local branch of M&S.

This morning, I trotted over there, took a size 12 and a 14 off the rack, and decided to have a quick look through the other dresses hanging there. You could tell they had been picked over. There were odd ones and twos of designs, and the most popular sizes were gone. I was skimming through a rack of black and blue long-line dresses when one caught my eye. It was simple and long, in a charcoal-black base colour with abstract green smudges which could have been leaves. It was scoop-necked and had long sleeves. It looked a bit shapeless having no waistline or belt or even darting, but there was something about it, plus the fact it was the only green one left AND was in my size made it seem like an omen.

I took the three items into the changing room and tried on the black and white dress in the size 12 first. I had such high hopes for this dress. After all, it looked so amazing on my boss surely, surely, it must look equally as great on me. It didn’t. It looked horrible. It bagged in all the wrong places. The tie-belt made me look like a mattress tied in the middle. It was the wrong length, the sleeves were too long, and it wasn’t cut right over the shoulders. The neckline plunged and showed a bit more cleavage than I am comfortable with. In all, it was a total disaster.

I stared at myself in the mirror, mouth wobbling, trying to persuade myself that maybe with shoes on and proper underwear, and with my hair done nicely and make-up, it would work. But I am experienced enough to know that if you must validate buying an article of clothing, then it is a no. If I bought it, I would either be rushing to bring it back in the morning, or it would hang in my wardrobe, unworn, until I guiltily donated it to a charity shop. Briefly, I wondered about going down to a size ten to see if that solved the bagging issue, but it wouldn’t alter the fact it simply didn’t suit me. Reluctantly, I took it off. A bit dispirited, I wasn’t even going to try on the other dress, but I figured I was there, in my undercrackers, with my hair already upright in a halo of static from pulling the manmade fibre dress over my head. I might as well.

There were no zips or buttons or hooks or poppers, it just went straight over the head. I wiggled into it and discovered it had a full-length lining. Hmm, unusual in a £35 dress, I made sure I pulled that straight first, then let the top layer drop down into place. Much to my surprise, I loved it. It fell to my ankles. Normally maxi dresses look ridiculous on me. Like I’m a child dressing up in her mother’s clothes. But maybe because it was so simple, or maybe because of the weight I’d lost, it didn’t look silly. It fitted beautifully. The long sleeves were the perfect length. Because the neckline was scooped there was no danger of cleavage exposure. The whole dress just felt good. And at £35 was an absolute bargain. It needed a necklace to break up the neckline, so I wandered over to the accessories department and had a look. Eventually, I found a grey and silver three-stranded affair which picked up the mossy green in the pattern and looked fab. I needed footwear, but all the shoes and ankle dress boots in M&S were either high-heeled or way too much money. It must be flats for me now, I don’t want to fall over. I popped into the cheap shoe shop next door and found a pair of black suede effect ankle boots with fancy silver tassel detailing and low heels I could handle. £20. Bargain.

My first festive occasion is my brother’s Lodge Christmas lunch tomorrow, so I shall paint my nails tonight and don my fine feathers in the morning. Luckily, I am finally on the mend from the nasty cough and cold I went down with last week so shouldn’t be snotting and hacking up a lung over the turkey.

It was inevitable I was going to catch something. The lady I job-share with has been off work for two weeks with flu. My boss has been down with a nasty cold. All our patients are coming in coughing and spluttering over everything. It was only a matter of time. After so much overtime and burning the midnight oil over my books, and various fairs and markets, I was run down. My immune system couldn’t fight it off, so I went down with a humdinger of a snotty cold, complete with a hacking cough. Lovely.

Anyway, the books. What is happening with them? Last time we spoke, I had missed the deadline for standard postage fees to get the books in time for the first weekend of the Stonham Barns Christmas Market and had to pay a bit extra to ensure I would receive them for the second weekend. I’d also placed a panicked, last-minute order with Amazon to at least get a supply of paperbacks for the first weekend. Amazon stated a delivery date of the Saturday — whilst I was at the first day of the market — but Amazon has come through for me in the past and this time was no exception. The books arrived Friday, to my huge relief, as I did not have many books left after Leiston Market the weekend before. I packed up my car Friday evening and was off early on Saturday. I was giving another author a lift and as Stonham is only a 40-minute drive away, it wasn’t long before we were there and setting up.

Storm Bert was ravaging the UK that weekend and we were told many of the outdoor traders had not come because it simply wasn’t safe for them to pitch their tents. It was a bitterly cold day with winds gusting and rain threatening. People came though, and I didn’t do too badly. Not as well as I would have expected given it was a Christmas market, but pretty well under the circumstances. I got home at four. I’d barely been home 5 minutes when there was a knock at the door and a Yodel delivery guy handed me a heavy box. In great excitement, I opened it. It was the first six copies of The Book of Eve hardback that I’d paid a premium to get for the first weekend — well, the Sunday at least. Pleased, I put them in the boot of my car and then went uptown to get fish and chips for dinner. I was hungry and too tired to cook. Again, I’d barely been home a couple of minutes, and my dinner was keeping warm in the oven when there was another knock at the door and the same Yodel delivery driver stood there with two more boxes. I opened them. Seven copies of the omnibus paperback edition of the Blackwood Family Saga in one box, and much to my surprise, another six copies of The Book of Eve which I’d only paid standard rate for in the other. Okay. Not complaining, but not sure how that happened. I put both boxes in the car and had my dinner.

Sunday was a strange day. The winds had dropped slightly, but a nasty cold rain was hissing down and putting a damper on things. Mid-morning, all the lights went out. In the barn, we were plunged into darkness. The music stopped. We were left looking at each other and wondering what was happening. Officials appeared eventually in high-vis jackets. Power was down in the village, they explained, so there was nothing to be done until it was fixed.

Ho hum. Okay. Luckily, at the last minute, I had packed every battery-operated candle and string of fairy lights I possessed and a new pack of batteries. I shared the candles with my fellow authors so people could see our stalls and our books. Because it was a Christmas market, most of the other stalls had twinkly lights of some kind, so it wasn’t the disaster it might have been, and the barn did look very pretty. The Wi-Fi was also down, but, again luckily, my old card machine is 4G, so it was still working. I sold quite a few books during the blackout which lasted a couple of hours because people stopped to talk to me about it, then ended up looking at my books and buying one. The power eventually came back up, but it had been a disaster for the food trucks outside. One of them had a gas-fired hot plate so could do bacon and eggs and burgers, but the friers were down so nothing that had to be deep fried. And, of course, the hot drinks machine was down so no coffee.

The power went down again in the afternoon, but only for about twenty minutes or so that time. In all, I sold £279 worth that weekend. Not fantastic for a Christmas market, but under the difficult circumstances it was better than it could have been.

I was back to work the next day, and I was not feeling well. I think standing in a chilly barn all weekend and talking to lots of people hadn’t done me any good. My throat was raw and every time I coughed it felt like my heart was being ripped out. I struggled through work. I was very thankful that my co-worker had recovered enough to return so I wasn’t working her shifts. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were taken up with setting up my accounts on Nielsen Title Editor and Draft-2-Digital. Tedious, long-winded, complicated affairs that had me grinding my teeth and tearing my hair out. I went to upload the new paperback and eBook versions of the omnibus of the Blackwood Family Saga to Amazon — I have no idea if the Book Vault versions will be up before Christmas — so had decided to get them up on Amazon as well so at least they’d be available before Christmas.

To my horror, nothing was working on my Amazon account. Everything I tried to do either achieved nothing, or a whole page of coding would flash up. In a panic — and remembering horror stories from other authors about Amazon messing about with their accounts — I dashed off a quick email to customer support outlining the issue and asking them to fix it. I didn’t hold out much hope of a quick reply, or even that it would be a human being who replied. Anyway, to cut a long and painful story short, after many emails and online chats, it turns out that there is a fault on Amazon’s end, and their background website coding is populating some authors’ accounts rendering them unusable. It is a relief to know it is just a glitch and not deliberate sabotage on Amazon’s behalf, but they can give me no idea of when it will be fixed. Until it is, I am stuck. I cannot upload the new paperback and eBook versions of the Blackwood Family. I cannot upload the amended paperbacks and eBooks of The Book of Eve, Lost & Found, Fixtures & Fittings, Sugar & Spice, and Kiss & Tell. Basically, I am stuffed. So, thank you Amazon, for once again screwing me over and right before Christmas as well, so chef’s kiss on your absolute crappy timing.

I was supposed to be going to the meeting of my local authors’ group on Friday afternoon. It was to be held in the garden of a local pub. Even though it’s covered and has patio heaters, it was a raw and damp day, and I didn’t think it would do my chest any good. The cold and cough were taking hold, and I was unsure how I was going to cope with being at the second weekend of the Stonham Barns Christmas Market. The five copies I’d ordered of the Blackwood Family Saga hardbacks arrived on Wednesday and, for the first time, I got to see the printed edges. Oh dear. Not that good. The London skyline image that looked so great inside the book had not printed very well on the edges. It was blurry and indistinct and, to make matters worse, the image was upside down, which made it hard to make out what it was meant to be.

I contacted the printed edges lady and explained the issue. To be fair to her, she was horrified and offered to do it again for free. I knew the London skyline image simply wasn’t going to work. It was too intricate to print clearly. Instead, I went with plan B. Print the edges with a solid block of colour, I told her, a sophisticated urban slate if possible. This she did and I uploaded the amended file to Book Vault. Again, I can’t see what it looks like without ordering a physical copy. This close to Christmas, the soonest I can get copies is the 16^th of December, so I’ve had to place the order and hope they’re okay.

Anyway, to get back to the books and the market. I had no choice but to take the copies with me to sell. They had cost me too much to discard them and they were still beautiful books. It was just me being super picky about how I wanted them to look. So, I took them to the Market on the Saturday of the second week and wondered how we’d do. The weather was better. There were more stalls and fairground rides, which was nice. It was also the first weekend in December which tends to be an — oh, shit, Christmas really is coming — moment for many.

And how did I do? Phenomenally well. I had the best day of trading I have ever had. I almost sold out. At the end of the day, I had seven books left on my stall. People were buying the new hardbacks like hotcakes. I sold almost all copies of The Book of Eve and had sold all my paperbacks by lunchtime. Once buyers realised I was a local author and that Eve is set in Bury St Edmunds, the copies flew off the stall with many taking me up on my offer of free gift wrapping. I ran out of Christmas ribbon, but luckily still had a good supply of my artisan hessian wired ribbon and that looked great on the gold paper.

When I went home Saturday, I honestly didn’t know what to do. Was it even worth me going back on Sunday with only seven books left to sell? I had a frantic trawl around the house. I had one paperback copy of Eve with a slightly bent cover. I marked it up as imperfect and knocked off money. I had one complete set of the paperback editions of the Blackwood Family Saga. The cover was badly damaged on one of the books thanks to Amazon cocking up when printing them. One of the books had a bend on the cover and was signed to my daughter. I bundled them together and made a label explaining the imperfections and offering them at half RRP for the set. £25 instead of £54. Bargain. I had my copies of Lifesong and the paperback version of Eclairs, they were perfect so I could sell them. I had the proof copy of the hardback of Eve. It didn’t have the printed edges and the bonus material at the end was a wee bit small, but I would cut the price, and it could go. I had my proof copies of the Blackwood Family hardback and paperback. There was nothing wrong with them other than the hardback didn’t have printed edges, but I would mark it cheaper.

In all, I went on Sunday with only twenty books to sell and I sold them all bar one copy of Eclairs for Tea and one paperback version of the Blackwood Family. I can’t believe how well I did. Adding up my totals afterwards in card and cash payments, I took over £760 for the two weekends which is phenomenally good and made struggling there even though I was full of cold and not feeling it, and all the hard work and extra money to get the hardbacks in time, worth it.

I feel vindicated that what I suspected — people want pretty books and are prepared to pay for them — is true. It was a great way to end a year of over 30 days of live events, markets, fairs, and comic cons. What a high to bow out on. I don’t have any more events now until possibly March when Leiston starts up again. By then, hopefully, all the issues with Amazon and Book Vault will be sorted and my books will be up on all the platforms they are supposed to be on, and I will have built up my stocks again. Who knows, I might have another couple of hardbacks out and I might even have a new book out — if I pull my finger out and get writing again, that is. Over Christmas, I have promised myself I will write over the Christmas holidays.

Right, this is another simply enormous blog and I do need to go. I put all the Christmas decorations up in the dining room yesterday, so this afternoon I need to decorate the lounge and put the tree up. I seem to have misplaced a set of lights, or maybe they died last year, and I forgot. Who knows. Anyway, I need to sort that out. I did intend to go minimal with decorations this year, but things got away from me and before I knew it, the dining room looked like Santa’s Grotto. Is it possible to have too much glitter and sparkle at Christmas? I think not.

The next time we chat it will be the weekend before Christmas. I know, scary though. Are you ready? I am, just about. Get the decs up this weekend and then next weekend I’ll wrap the few presents I’ve bought and that will be that. I will also be on my break from work so you never know, I may even be writing. I can but hope. So, take care of yourselves and I hope you stay healthy.

Best wishes.

Julia Blake

Good Morning. I am writing this on a freezing cold Wednesday afternoon as this is the only clear time I have this week. It is seriously cold here. My phone says it’s a temperature of 4 degrees centigrade, but there is a blasting wind coming straight from Siberia, so it feels a lot colder than that. The forecast is predicting snow. I hope not. I detest the stuff. It’s nasty and slippery, cold, and dangerous to walk and drive on.

I am afraid it will be a brief blog this week. Well, after the mega-long one last time, there isn’t much to tell you. We ended with my friend leaving and me knuckling down to work on my hardbacks. I knew I was up against the clock if I had any chance of ordering and receiving them in time for the big Christmas markets at Stonham Barns. I worked all day Sunday, listening to the books being read aloud to me through the Word function. I listened intently as each, and every word was read to me. Is it time-consuming? Incredibly. Is it a long-winded and tedious exercise? Oh, undoubtedly. But is it the best way to ensure your book flows, that the sentences are punctuated correctly, and to pick up any minute typos? Yes. Without a shadow of a doubt.

I worked on The Book of Eve all day Sunday, and around being at work on Monday and Tuesday, until I was happy it was as perfect as it could be. Then it was sent to a lovely lady in America to embed a design of art deco peacock feathers along the three edges of the pages. She got it back to me on Wednesday morning and I uploaded it to Book Vault and ordered my author copies. I don’t think I will receive these in time for the Christmas craft market on the 23^rd and 24^th of November, but I should have them for the following weekend.

For the rest of Wednesday, I listened to the Blackwood Family Saga Omnibus. I thought I had all of Thursday and Friday to work on it, knowing so long as I uploaded it by Friday evening, I should also get my author copies for the second weekend.

Then, disaster struck.

I had a message from the lady I job-share with. She had come down with flu, was bedbound, and unable to work Thursday and Friday. There was nothing anyone could do about it; I had to cover her shifts. Now very anxious about deadlines, I worked until my eyeballs bled Wednesday evening. I was up an hour earlier than normal on both Thursday and Friday to listen to some more of the rather large book. I dashed home in each lunch break to pack in another 45 minutes of listening and worked until nothing made sense any more each evening. I was up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and worked until late. On Sunday, I was doing the Leiston Christmas Market, so got up early and managed an hour of listening until I had to go.

I think Leiston is one of the markets I will keep next year. Yes, it’s a two-hour round drive but I listen to the radio and don’t mind it so much. The pitch fee is only £15. There is a lovely vibe to it and I’m becoming friends with the other stallholders. I sell on average between 9-18 books so it more than covers costs. And, even nicer, I’m beginning to have people come back to buy from me who have already bought and read my books.

I wore a bright red sparkly Christmas jumper, put lights on my stall and shivered in the chilly breeze gusting through the doors. I drank very good coffee and chattered with the lovely ladies manning stalls behind me and treated myself to a hot portion of fries for lunch. The ladies of the WI make excellent chips. I sold nine books, so that was worth the trip. The market finished at 2:30, so I packed up, drove home, and … you’ve guessed it … cracked on with listening to the Blackwood Family Saga.

I finished listening to the last page at 5pm. Had a final check that everything was okay, and then sent it to the lovely lady in America to print the edges — this time with a fabulous image of the London city skyline.

She got it back to me the next day. I checked it, uploaded it, and went to order my author copies. Only to find I’d missed the Christmas deadline by two days. It is a bit frustrating. I know my co-worker couldn’t help getting ill, but her timing was disastrous for me. If I’d had Thursday and Friday at home as normal, I would have finished and uploaded the book in time to order my copies. I did look at paying the express printing fee to get them quicker, but it was exorbitant and meant I must charge a silly amount for each book or make a loss on them. Neither option was tempting. I chose the premium option, which means I should have them for the second weekend. Hopefully. Fingers crossed.

I looked at what books I had left in the house to sell. Not a lot. I’d done quite well at Leiston and due to my not grasping how soon everything was happening, I hadn’t ordered any more from Amazon to fill the gaps. I quickly placed an Amazon order. Now, unlike Book Vault delivery times which are precise, Amazon delivery times are a moveable feast. It’s saying I won’t get them until Saturday — when I won’t be here but will be at Stonham for the first day of the market — however, there is a chance they may come on Friday.

Oh well. It is what it is. I will scrape up what books I have in the house, including my own copies, and take them on Saturday if the books from Amazon haven’t arrived. At least I will have the Amazon consignment for Sunday, and all my new books for the following weekend.

I’m tired. Very tired. What with working two 40-hour weeks back to back, then having the frantic week with the graduation trip and my friend’s visit, working another 40-hour week last week, all the burning of the candle at both ends I’ve been doing, Leiston market, plus I’ve been asked to cover my co-workers shifts this coming Thursday and Friday as well and then being at the Christmas market all weekend, it is a month of late nights and early mornings, and nonstop work and stress in-between.

I am looking forward to Christmas, for once, because I will have some much-needed time off to rest and recharge.

It’s not my turn to have Franki and Rys this year, so they will be going to Wales to spend the festive holidays with Rys’s family. I think they are coming to me on the 4^th of January. They were concerned about train fares as they have increased again. Even with student rail cards, it is ridiculously expensive for them to make the return trip. A compromise has been reached. I will drive there and collect them. They will then get the train back at the end of their visit, whenever that is.

I will be going to my parents for Christmas Day. And as we couldn’t think of anything grimmer than spending all that money, time and effort cooking Christmas lunch just for the three of us, and then sitting there eating it with paper hats on our heads, we booked to have lunch at my parents’ local pub. It has a nice menu and is very reasonably priced. It’s a ten-minute walk from their house and as I will stay the night, it means everyone can have a drink and not have to worry about taxis or driving. At least this way, both Mum and I will have a break from cooking. There will be other people around us, an atmosphere and a nice vibe. When the girls come, we’ll do a family meal of some kind and do their presents then.

Don’t hate me, but I’ve just about finished Christmas. Well, I honestly didn’t have much to do this year. What with going out for Christmas lunch and cutting down on presents, I’m saving time, money, and effort. I have gifts for my parents to arrange and hampers to make for my ex-in-laws, plus a couple of bits to pick up for stocking fillers, and that’s it. I have cards to write, but I’m cutting back on those this year. It’s all so stupidly expensive and when the stamp to send a card costs four times as much as the card itself, it’s time to rethink things.

So, that’s why I’m writing this blog today. What with two long days at work and then an early start and a late finish for the market on Saturday, today is the only free time I have.

I can’t believe this year is almost over. Where has it gone? Time has especially flown by since Franki went to Reading at the end of September. October was a blur of editing and formatting. I need to start writing again, but I still must sort out the eBook of the Blackwood Omnibus.

Hopefully, next time we talk I will have more time and more things to chat about. I’m also hopeful that my new hardbacks will be published, and I can include links to where to buy them — if you are so inclined.

In the meantime, stay safe.

Julia Blake

Hello there, my word, so much has happened since we last chatted, I barely know where to begin. Right, okay, umm, let’s do this in order, first things first, the Halloween Party. When I ended last time, I was about to wander the charity shops in search of a costume. We have a fancy dress and accessories shop in town, so I went there first to get an idea of what they had and the prices. The theme of the party was Zombie Saturday Night Fever, so basically 1970s glam with zombie makeup effects. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy finding genuine 1970s clothing. Let’s face it, much as I like to fool myself that the seventies were only thirty years ago, they’re not, they’re fifty years ago. Any clothing from that era either fell apart years ago or is in vintage shops with hefty price tags on them. No, it was going to have to be 1970s-inspired clothing. I went to Dance Crazy. They had a couple of ABBA outfits, but they were (a) expensive and (b) horrible nasty PVC-looking stuff. I was not paying nearly £50 for cheap-looking tat that I would be wearing just once.

I set off on my quest around the numerous charity shops — and believe me, Bury has a LOT of charity shops — but by the sixth shop, I was beginning to despair. Anyway, I hit the final shop and at the door hesitated about going in. It’s a small and cramped shop and it was packed with people. My heart sank. Could I honestly be bothered going in? Then on the rack closest to the door, I spotted a flash of green chiffon and what looked like black velvet appliqued peacocks. I edged in. It was a lovely scarf. It wouldn’t do for the fancy dress outfit, but it would be perfect for using in promo images for The Book of Eve and on my stall as a backdrop to the book. I picked it up. £4.50. Yes, I was going to buy that. It was unique. I’d never seen anything quite like it before. The intricate design of the peacocks was beautiful. I turned and saw on the end of the dress rail opposite a sparkly black catsuit. All-in-one, slightly flared loose trousers, a fitted bodice with a plunging neckline and spaghetti straps. Think Shirley Bassey. I looked at the label. Size 10. Ho hum. Been a long time since I was a size ten. I held it against me. The length was perfect, being only 5ft I struggle with trouser length. The material was quite stretchy, so I decided to take a chance and try it on. I took it into the changing room, stripped off my boots and jeans and looked for a zip or buttons. There weren’t any. It was wiggle into it and hope you don’t hear a ripping sound. Holding my breath, I began to wiggle. It went over the knees, over the childbearing hips, and it fitted to my waist at least. I took off my coat and jumper, now fully committed to trying the whole thing on. It slipped over the chest and the straps fitted snugly. It was on. It looked fine. It was rather flattering. It flattened things that look better flatter and boosted things that look better boosted. It showed a lot of my bra, but I’d been thinking for a while I needed a new one so could treat myself to a plunge bra with thin straps.

I wiggled back out of it and looked at the label. It was from Selfridges originally. Ooh. I took it to the till. The lady couldn’t find a code for it so in the end only charged me £4 for it. Bargain. I then went back to Dance Crazy to see about buying zombie makeup and maybe a feather boa to complete my outfit. They had both these things, but I was not paying £15 for a boa with mange, and I certainly wasn’t paying £15 for a tiny pack with some white, black, and red makeup and a couple of bits of sponge in. I decided to look online. By this point, I was late for drinks at friends so hurried there and proudly showed them the fruits of my foraging, saying I would buy a black feather boa to complete the look. I have one you can have, my friend announced. She ran upstairs and re-emerged with a bagful of old boas which she tipped out in a sea of purple feathers as one had completely disintegrated in the bag. Shame it’s not nesting season, otherwise the birds in their garden would have had the bougiest nest boxes in town.

So funny, I staggered home later and went to bed. I must have tipped the bag out to get the catsuit out and hang it up because when I awoke the next day, it looked like a crow had been molested on my bedroom floor. Black feathers everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE! I also went on Amazon and found a complete zombie makeup kit with fake blood and latex for £5.99 delivered. So, I was all set up. Great original costume for £10. As the catsuit was a bit revealing up top and I’m of the age where upper arms are best not left to dangle free, I found a little black shrug in my cupboard to wear over the top.

My hours at work are thankfully back to normal. Working a couple of 40-hour weeks has made me realise I just can’t do that anymore. When I was young, sure, no problem, but I get so tired now and I have other things I want to do rather than work. So, it was work on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday, I had a lot of running around to do. Shopping, visiting my parents, sorting out my car ready for the long road trip the following week, buying birthday cards and wrapping up Rys’s birthday presents — I would be taking both mine and my parents with me the following week, so I had to run my parent’s presents out to them, they wrapped them, and then I brought them back home — all ready to pack. I also had a prescription to pick up and a doctor’s appointment to keep.

I didn’t mention it, but a week before I’d had what I can only put down to an extreme allergic reaction to something. It was a stir fry I’d made for dinner. I normally make my sauce, but because I was working until 6pm I stopped at the local shop and bought a sachet of ready-made sweet chilli and garlic sauce. I fried up noodles, beansprouts, carrots, mangetout, mushrooms, prawns and this sauce. I began to eat. Halfway through the meal I realised something was very wrong. My throat was swelling, my eyes and nose were streaming, my soft palette was in shreds, my tongue was blistered and swollen, my lips were swollen and buzzing with pain, and my face was bright red and swollen. Alarmed, I took an antihistamine and drank lots of water. It helped a little, but not a lot. (Ten days later my throat still felt scalded and raw.) I fished the packet of sauce out of the bin and read the ingredients. Rapeseed oil was the first one listed. Now, I used to have issues with rapeseed plants when I suffered from extreme hay fever. Bury is surrounded by bright yellow fields of the stuff and every spring when they were in flower and in the autumn when they were harvesting it, I would be in agony with weeping and swollen eyes and a scratchy throat. After sunflower oil became expensive because of the Ukraine war and a lot of manufacturers replaced it with rapeseed oil, I found there were certain brands of crisps that I could no longer eat because they left my mouth and tongue sore and blistered. So, when I saw rapeseed oil was the main ingredient, I wondered if it was that, but I thought I better see a doctor. Allergic reactions only get progressively worse and as I live alone, the last thing I want is my airways to close in an attack.

So, I made a doctor’s appointment — that was an issue in itself — my surgery has introduced this stupid new online system where you can’t simply book an appointment for your next day off work, you can only book for the same day. If there are no appointments for that day, you must wait for your next day off and try again. Absolutely ludicrous. Anyway, I managed to get an appointment for late Wednesday afternoon, so after lunch at my parent’s house, I picked up my Tesco shop on the way back into town, filled up with diesel, went home and unpacked, did a few chores, then walked to the surgery. There were major roadworks on the main artery road connecting one side of town to the other shut. It was quicker to walk than pick my way around the convoluted detours.

The doctor listened to my tale of woe and looked at my throat. I can see inflammation, she said, it’s almost like it’s been burnt. She recommended antiacid liquid medication, told me to leave a urine sample, and book in at the hospital for a blood test. She would also send a letter to the allergy clinic. On the way home, I bought my new bra ready for the party, bought Gavaston (an antiacid medication) and picked up something for dinner. I then went online to book a blood test. The next available appointments are on Friday, the website told me. Okay, that’s fine. I booked 11.05 as a nicely convenient time.

Thursday was another busy day of editing my two hardback books — yes, that is still ongoing, but more on that later — and catching up with laundry and housework. On Friday, I set out on the twenty-minute walk to the hospital. It was a lovely bright autumnal day and as the walk was through the local water meadows it was very pleasant. I reached the hospital with time to spare, made my way to the blood testing department and tried to log in. It told me I didn’t exist. A receptionist came to help.

Do you have either the text or emailed confirmation?

I have both, I replied and pulled out my phone.

We both looked at the email. Sure enough, it confirmed my appointment for 11.05am on Friday the 8^th of November. Which was fine. Except. It was the 2^nd of November. I was a week early.

Oh, bugger.

She looked around. It was very quiet in the department. She looked at the nurse standing in one of the cubicles.

Can you squeeze this lady in? She’s accidentally come a week early.

That depends, replied the nurse.

On what? I asked.

On whether you’re a screamer or a fusser.

I am neither, I assured her, stripping off my coat, rolling my sleeve up and thrusting my arm at her. Just stick the needle in and let’s do this.

She stuck the needle in. We did it. Four minutes later I was walking home again.

Saturday was the day of the party. I worked all day on my books. It was my turn to clean, but I thought I better leave the bathroom until AFTER I’d done my zombie makeup. I had a feeling I might make a bit of a mess.

I allowed plenty of time. I’ve never tried to do zombie makeup before and despite watching a couple of YouTube videos that made it look as easy as falling off a log, I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be. I was right. I tried. I despaired. I smudged and wiped and smeared it around. I stuck on latex. I didn’t realise how long it took to dry, and I tried to make convincing scars before it was firm enough. Lots of mess. I looked at myself in the mirror and wasn’t sure. I applied lots of fake blood. In the end, I video-called Franki. She visibly recoiled when she answered. Maybe I should have prepared her first. She inspected me thoroughly and pronounced my makeup suitably zombie-like, assured me I looked fine — well, as fine as an undead creature CAN look — and told me to go to the party and have fun. I wiggled into my catsuit. The boa I left in a plastic bag planning not to put it on until I got to the party owing to its tendency to moult everywhere. I was driving to the party and then walking home.

It was a fun party, although a lot of people seem to have either got only the zombie part of the dress code right or the seventies part. Not many seemed to have done both.

Slight hangover the next day, but not too bad, I worked some more on the books and cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom — it had been a good call not to clean before the great makeup session as I’d left the bathroom looking like a clown had been slaughtered in there — and I walked to retrieve the car.

On Monday, I went to work for one day. Normally, I work Tuesdays as well but because I was driving up north ready for the graduation, the lady I job share with was covering my shift that day. It’s the first time I’ve asked her to do that, and I am always covering her shifts, so I didn’t feel bad about it other than the fact I am losing a day’s pay.

I was not looking forward to the journey. A final plan had been settled on. I was driving to Reading on the Tuesday morning taking up everything Franki and Rys had left at mine, including a 6ft pink Christmas tree called Boris. I would have lunch with them, then we’d drive together to Chester. I waited until 9.40 to leave home, hoping I would avoid the work and school traffic. The journey there was not too bad. It took me 2.5 hours as the roads were reasonably clear. We left at 2pm to head to Chester and that journey was not so great. It’s a four-hour drive, all motorway, and it was dark by the time we reached Chester and were trying to find our Airbnb. There was a public car park opposite, which was handy, but it meant I would have to be up before 7 each morning to repark the car and put another ticket on.

The house looked tiny from the outside, but when we went in it assumed TARDIS-like dimensions and went back into a huge kitchen and shower room extension which took up the whole of what would have been their garden. As Airbnb’s go it was fine. There was a large bedroom on the ground floor, with a pull-out double sofa bed in a lounge/diner, a kitchen, and a shower room at the back.

Upstairs there were two more large bedrooms with super king beds and simply ginormous TVs on the wall. Seriously, 62” TVs. Why? Who on earth needs such a large TV in an Airbnb bedroom. But every bedroom had the giant telly, whilst the one in the lounge was only 42”. Weird.

We chose our bedrooms, settled in, and waited for the others to arrive. A Chinese takeaway was planned. I was exhausted. It had been a long day with lots of motorway driving which I always find draining. It’s having to concentrate so much; it leaves me hollowed out. After a big meal and a couple of glasses of wine, I was ready to fall asleep, but the others wanted to play games and got out an incredibly complicated and convoluted game about building shops and buying potions and spells for your dragons. I had no clue what was going on. I think I fell asleep at the table at one point. To my surprise, I came second. No idea how that happened.

I didn’t sleep very well. For once, the mattress was okay and wasn’t too firm. Regular readers will remember all the issues I’ve had with concrete-like mattresses in various hotels and Airbnb’s in the past, No, this time it was because I didn’t take enough water to bed and couldn’t get up to get more because one of Rys’s sisters was asleep on the sofa bed in the lounge and I didn’t want to wake her, and because something beeped every four minutes throughout the night. No idea what it was. All I know it was bloody annoying, especially as no one else heard it.

The next day was the day of the graduation. I was up, showered, car reparked and drinking tea by 7.15. The ceremony started at 9 so we had to be at the cathedral by 8.40. The service was lovely and mercifully a lot shorter than last year, so we had time to return to the accommodation for coffee and cake before making our lunch reservation at Pizza Express for 1pm.

I am being very careful about what I eat until I get a diagnosis, and, in my mind anyway, I am convinced it is rapeseed oil I have an issue with. I asked for the allergy menu. Every single thing cooked or prepared in Pizza Express has rapeseed oil in it. At first, it appeared I wouldn’t be able to have anything. On closer examination, I found the only things I could have were the gluten-free dough balls with garlic butter and the cannelloni. Seriously, that was it. I had those, and they were very tasty, but it would have been nice to have a choice. I’m only beginning to realise that if I do have a rapeseed oil allergy it is going to majorly impact my life, especially if I want to eat out or get a takeaway. Everything is cooked in it now.

That evening, we played games and ate the big cheeseboard I had taken with me. I slept better that night because I made sure I took a large bottle of water to bed with me. I could still hear that bloody beeping though.

I overslept the next day and rolled out of bed at 7.05am. Panicking about getting a parking ticket or paying a big fine, I rolled out of bed, pulled a coat over my PJs, pulled on my boots and charged across to the car park. It was contactless payment only and wouldn’t take my bloody card no matter how many times I tapped it. Card declined, it spitefully told me, which was worrying, but I figured I may have reached my tap limit. Luckily, I had the card for my little author account, and it did accept that. I drove out of the car park and drove back in. As I pulled into another parking space I heard a loud crunch. Getting out of the car, I found a small bottle of instant coffee powder had been smashed on the ground and I had driven over all the big chunks of broken glass. Just great. So, that was me, crouched in a Chester car park in my PJs, picking up bits of glass and trying to examine my tyres.

We all had breakfast. Check-out was by ten at the latest. Since we last spoke about it a new plan had been hatched. I would drop Franki and Rys at Stafford train station on the way home. Stafford is a one-hour drive from Chester and only ten minutes off the M6. It’s a direct train line to Reading and would only take them a couple of hours. We had thoughts of many solutions — I drive them to Reading and then drive home, not tempting — when we were originally making graduation plans in the summer, I hadn’t yet done the drive. I was naïve about geography and stupidly thought that Reading was on route to Chester. It’s only on route in the same way that Portugal is on route to Russia! Then we thought maybe Rys’s sister who lives in London might be able to give them a lift back, but she had decided to go straight to North Wales to stay with their mum. Then it was thought maybe Rys’s other sister could drop them off at Newport train station on her way back to South Wales, but that would involve a three-hour, complicated train journey with quite a few changes. Franki and Rys coming back to Suffolk with me, staying a few days, and taking the train from Bury to Reading was also discussed.

Then, last week, an old friend I hadn’t seen in ages asked if she could come and stay for a couple of days. She wanted to come the same day I got home from Chester (Thursday) and go home Saturday afternoon. Now, call me selfish, but the moment I learnt that she was coming to stay I wanted to come home alone and have a few days with my old friend, just us.

When I went to have a drink with friends after scouring the charity shops for my fancy dress outfit, I mentioned the dilemma and that’s when my friend’s husband suggested Stafford station as a viable option. I sent a message to Franki, they checked out the logistics, realised it could work, and so that plan was settled on.

And it worked beautifully. Franki booked their tickets for 12.20 leaving Stafford. We had to leave Chester at ten so reached the station at just gone eleven but there was a large Tesco store behind the station, so we parked there, used the facilities, and then Franki bought food for them to eat on the station waiting for their train. I also took the chance to fill up with diesel at the Tesco garage. As I expected, the machine made me put my card and PIN in, so I was correct, I had reached the tap limit, and it was nothing more sinister than that. I dropped them off at the station, hugged them goodbye, then climbed wearily back into the car for the last time and set off for home. It was a reasonable drive, and I reached home at 2.15pm, giving me just enough time to unpack and settle in before my friend arrived from the 3pm train. She had initially suggested we go out for dinner, but I knew I’d be wiped from the trip, so I suggested cooking something at home. In between arriving home and her arrival, I took a bag of cherries from the freezer to defrost, whipped up a sweet batter mix and put it in the fridge ready to make cherry clafoutis for dessert. I also lit the fire in the dining room.

After a quick cup of tea and a catch-up, we wandered to Waitrose and bought a couple of beautiful steaks for dinner, along with green beans and some mascarpone to go with the cherry clafoutis. I already had beer-battered onion rings, homemade braised red cabbage, and Norfolk potatoes to roast in butter and salt and pepper. We put music on, opened a bottle of wine, and cooked dinner together, and it was lovely. The lodger arrived home, shared a glass of wine with us and when chatting with my friend, discovered that he had gone to school with her older sister. It’s such a small world. He disappeared whilst we ate our steaks, but I invited him to come back an hour later and share dessert with us. I had brought home the remains of the large cheeseboard I took to Chester, so I laid that out with grapes and crackers, and we sat and ate and chatted and drank wine by firelight and candlelight, with Fleet Foxes and Clannard softly playing in the background. It was so relaxing, and I didn’t have to worry if there was rapeseed oil in anything because I knew there wasn’t.

Friday morning, we had fat sausages and fried eggs and crusty rolls and butter for breakfast, then my friend went to visit her father, and I caught up with laundry and phoned the doctor for the results of the reply from the allergy clinic. They were sorry, but they didn’t think my reaction was serious enough to warrant further investigation. Okay, so my throat closing, my mouth swelling, my face puffing up, and my tongue and throat still being sore and blistered two weeks after the attack isn’t serious enough!? Do I have to die before they think it’s serious enough then? Oh, and please could I keep a detailed food diary for a month to discover any common causes of reaction. In other words, save them time and money and do the job for them.

I was so annoyed, that I grabbed one of the leftover sausages from the fridge for a quick lunch, bit into it, crunched on something, and found a part of my front bottom tooth had snapped off. Oh, just great. It’s right where my tongue naturally rests and feels the size of the Grand Canyon. So, that’s a big blister forming on the end of my tongue and me trying to get a dentist appointment.

When my friend returned at three, we went for a long walk down to the local park and around town, culminating in a drink at Wetherspoons, and then a wander home. We had a freshen-up and then wandered back uptown for a light dinner and a cheeky carafe of wine at a local French restaurant that was lit by candles and was beautiful. As it was still early when we got home, we watched a Jane Austin film, Persuasion, before heading to bed.

I slept like a log. I stumbled downstairs at 7.30, made a cup of tea and went back to bed. We had arranged to meet another old friend at 10.30 at a local restaurant that does very good brunches. I asked the waitress what on the menu was cooked in rapeseed oil. Almost everything. I was able to have Eggs Benedict, which was nice, and we all had coffee and a Mimosa each, then a bit later had more coffee and Danish pastries. It was wonderful to be with these women who have been my friends for over thirty years, and there was a lot of “Do you remember” and “Whatever happened to so-and-so?” and it was almost one when we emerged blinking into the daylight.

We said goodbye to our friend and then wandered through the market. A simply superb pair of musicians were playing a harp and a cello in the centre of town, attracting a large, appreciative audience with their sheer talent and exuberance. We browsed an old bookstall, then visited Moyse’s Hall, a local museum. The fruit and veg stall outside the museum was selling Fen black celery, which my friend fell on with cries of delight and bought some to take home. I don’t care for celery much, and Fen celery certainly is far too bitter for me, but whatever makes you happy. Home again, for a quick cup of tea, and then I ran my friend to the train station.

And for the past two hours, I have been chatting with you. I plan a quiet evening. As I’m still reasonably full of brunch, I will have a light tea and watch some TV. As you’ve probably gathered, the diet has been put on hold this week. I’ll start again on Monday and start keeping my food diary then. Will be interesting to see which foods trigger the reaction. I’ll keep you all posted.

I have one more day off before it’s back to work, and tomorrow is earmarked for uploading what I hope will be the last, last, absolutely buggery last drafts of the books to Book Vault. Despite sticking rigorously to the templates provided by them, the margins were too narrow and in the centre of the Blackwood Family Saga book two rogue blank pages appeared. Hopefully, these issues have been addressed, but I will still order final proof copies just to check before the books are sent to have the printed edges embedded in the pdf and I can finally publish.

I am still hopeful they will be available for Christmas or that I can at least order my author copies for the Christmas markets coming up. We shall see, fingers crossed.

Anyway, this blog is double the length of my normal ones so well done for sticking with me. Take care and I will speak to you soon.

Julia Blake