Have just made it home after a wonderful but exhausting weekend away, but can just muster the energy to put up a few photos of the party last Thursday.  Sadly, I was late arriving, thanks to a delayed train, and so missed a lot of the razzamatazz.  I could hear it all going on as I was struggling to change into my jewelled shoes in the rather lovely loos, but it was pretty much over by the time I made it upstairs (couldn’t help thinking it was all a bit of a metaphor for my life) and the speeches were just coming to an end. 

Still, there was still plenty of party going on, and the Wallace Collection was a wonderful setting. The crowd was a bit daunting at first, but once I got a glass of champagne and elbowed my way into the throng I found lots of people I knew. 

Liz Fielding was in fine form ...

...and later I bumped into Natasha Oakley and Fiona Harper, who both seemed to be having a very good time too. 

The next day was a complete contrast.  Got up very early and headed down to the south coast on the train with my best friend, Diana.  It was the most beautiful day with a high, blue sky and the sun glittering on the sea, and we walked eight miles along the cliff tops before deciding that we were having much too good a time to tamely take  the bus back to Eastbourne.  We would walk back the way we had come instead.  Sixteen miles … why not?  This is me striding out in the morning.  I have to admit I had something less of a swing to my stride by the time I limped back into Eastbourne  later that afternoon, my boots pinching my toes horribly and my legs quite trembly with the unaccustomed exercise, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.  Between us, we put the world to rights and, more practically, worked out a few refinements to the plot of my next book, so now I’ve no more excuses not to get on with it.

Talking of books, a copies of MOTHER WANTED will be in the post to Diana Newland tomorrow, and also to Laura Vivanco (if you’d like to email me your address, Laura) as they both knew that Richard is the name of the character who spends much of the Bridegroom Boss duet in a coma.  I do get a lot of amusement from naming characters after friends, especially if I can make their namesakes as unlike the originals as possible.  The real Richard is an academic and one of the most intellectually alert people I know, and I seem to remember the idea of casting him as a rather ineffectual, not to say comatose, character seemed very entertaining at one of our plotting sessions.  It doesn’t take much to keep me amused.