11 May

So the sun is still shining but the sky now has a tidal wave of cotton wool clouds - despite that being a cliche, that is what they are....which drift towards me like a threat. Is it because I don't keep up with this blog? Is there a malign influence out there which drifts closer and closer to entwine me in its malevolent grip and squeeze the details of my life out of me for everyone to see? Will I end up as a dark spot on the ether of the web drained of all I can give?

Enuf: I will come clean on what has happened since I left for Gloucester....we stopped at Chicklade for lunch and chose The Vale to lunch in - wood floors, friendly publican who said hello and then disappeared to play golf leaving his sidekick to serve us, blackboards advertising gazpacho soup (yuck) but when I went to the loo I knew this was the place for me. A painter had been left to express himself on the walls, the doors were painted like the branches of trees and there was a medieval wooden seat stretching the length of the loo to sit on, the gents loo was decorated like a boy racer's room with racing cars on the walls and a mock circuit circling the weeing area.....and the food was good as well. Fortified with smoked salmon and scrambled egg (me) and a ploughmans - yes there is still a pub in the world which supplies ploughmans (him) we set off for Chegworth,, a Roman Villa. Disappointing after Brading on the Isle of Wight but still worth visiting to enjoy the ice-cream, and peace and quiet of a NT place in the week. Supposition has it that this might have been a sort of monastic retreat - I reckon it was a low class brothel but then I always did have that sort of mind. In my youth (when people wore flowers in their hair if they were going to San Francisco) I took part in a dig at Camulodunum (look it up if you didn't do Roman Britain for o-level(sorry GCSE for all you youngsters) and, at the end of the three week session, the administrator took us to one side of the site and pointed out what we had found - a brothel just outside the city walls! And all I had seen was red dirt being scraped away by my four inch pointing trowel.

Back to Gloucester - the cathedral rates 9 out of 10 on my Cather scale (which I will use in future to describe the cathedrals I visit purely for secular and architectural reasons) but the city itself sadly lacks good restaurants. We managed to find a Greek restaurant (OK but will remain un-named because I choked on a hard bit of my afelia) after wandering around for twenty minutes and asking a friendly native. She expressed surprise at us asking for restaurants, and said the pubs were good.

Then we met up with our CWRS mates - lots of kisses and cuddles as we greeted and a dinner for 20 was quickly organised in the hotel because of our research the night before, not worth going into town to find an eaterie that could cater for us all. One of my favourite people is Will Hutchison who has written a novel based in the Crimean War, called Follow me to Glory - we swapped novels last year so I got a copy of his for a copy of my Gawain Quest. I am not into battles so I had to report I hadn't got very far but he assures me that if I read Chapter 20 then I'll get the romance bit....

Will has learned his craft, like me, by going to lots of workshops and seminars and explained how he writes dialogue - he writes it straight, without any 'he saids' or 'she saids' asides, and then, once he's got it all down what he wants his characters to say, he might put in some 'infill.'

He has suggested I go to the American Historical Novel Society's conference next year and so I will....

Other books were also on sale - Helen Rappaport was the keynote speaker and I was proud to see that she gave the spouse a mention and acknowledgement for his help in her latest book, No place for Ladies about those females who managed to get to the Crimean War - not just bleeding heart Florence Nightingale - there are loads of others, on all sides....

And then Kathie Somerwil-Ayrton (a Dutch member) also wrote about the spouse's research capabilites in her dedication of her book to him, which is called The Train that disappeared into history - a serious work about the Berlin to Baghdad railway. Are you still awake?

Also visited Winchecombe with the intention of visiting Sudeley Castle (Tudor connections to follow up on my Anne Boleyn novel, Luther's Ambassadors, out later on this year - published my Goldenford)

So, a stimulating and wonderful weekend - making me even more determined that one day I'll write a novel about Mary Seacole whose whole life seems to be novelistic - it's just crying out for the treatment...

Now to work and finish off those entries for the Winchester Writers Conference as if I'd never been away.....

Jay