Struck down by the dreaded 'non-specific flu-like virus' for a few days. Recovered sufficiently this morning to take The Guardian's 2002 News Quiz. And score 41 out of 50. Smirk.

Grumble. The Two Towers is sold out until the weekend. I suppose I’ll just have to rent the LoTR DVD in the meantime. Hoping that someone will buy me the extended disco remix, all-Aragorn-all-the-time DVD for Christmas, I haven’t actually sprung for my own copy yet. The first movie, the drippy Arwen aside, was as stupendous a conversion of novel-to-screen as I’ve ever seen. Doing Lord of the Rings was some risk and I suspect that it couldn’t have been done by an American. With Jackson’s film, you always get this sense of the grandeur and the seriousness of the books and none of that daft ‘sword-and-sorcery’ vulgarisation of the fantasy that one might have feared – and which might have been imposed on even the strongest US director by the studio execs. The mood, the colours, the design of LoTR were all spot on and the acting (mostly) worked. And the landscapes of New Zealand are perfectly meshed with the sets to make a truly epic spectacle. I always thought of Strider as older, more care-worn than Viggo Mortensen, but somehow he captures the character. Now that the second Star Wars trilogy has patently failed to deliver (more Jedi than Empire), I prefer the mythology and scale of LoTR. Or maybe I’m just older now and beyond the demographic of The Phantom Menace.


Currently: Pondering a dash through the ice to the post-office to send off the Xmas cards. Ho -hum.

People always start with the weather. You get in a taxi and kvetch about the rain. Or you meet someone for lunch and you both begin by remarking on the cold.


It is bloody cold, at the moment. But a nice kind of bloody cold. That kind of clear-skied, twinkly-starred kind of bone sharp, crystal-dry cold I'd forgotten about after a couple of wet, mild winters and a long, drizzly, mildewy summer. Living where I live, it never gets life-threateningly cold ( the sort where, if you walk outside, your snot freezes). It just rains an awful lot. It's a wonder we don't all have moss growing up our legs.


I've begun with the weather. And I said I wasn't going to be predictable. Bugger.

Well, Hello There...

I've been a writer all my life, since I was old enough to hold a crayon. Lots of my scribblings have been published, although to date my only creative award was 2nd place in a national infants art contest. I was six years old and the prize was a Thumbelina hardback book, which my proud mother promptly locked away in the glass cabinet in the front room. I was able to see it, on the rare occasions when we were allowed into the room, but had to content myself with pressing my nose up against the glass, like a Victorian urchin with a sweetshop. I finally got full possession of the book 24 years later, when I bought my own house and threatened to report my mother to ChildLine if she didn't hand it over. The magic had gone, though, now that I was able to leaf through the cheap seventies paper and gaze on the gaudy illustrations at will. Anyone know what they go for on ebay these days?

I've had lots of things published, from op-eds and newspaper and magazine articles to big, hard and very scary academic stuff, but no fiction. Not yet, anyway. I live in hope in front of my PC and have the neck to start a blog about the whole thing. At least I can spell.

I promise to write when I can.  You'll let me know if you're out there, won't you?

I'm not young and not old. I'm much more left than right (but not always). I live somewhere in Ireland. I'm intelligent, articulate and sociable. I'm good company. I think.

You decide.