Another school year starts, so what changes will that make in your life – if any?

Well, it’s not back to school – or is it? Do you sing in a choir, work in clay or paint? Do you attend classes on literature or a drama group? As we get older these things can become the structure around which we build our lives. Tai Chi in the park, Strength and Balance classes keep our bodies mobile and the arts keep our brains ticking over – if not as fast as they used to do in the old days. There’s also he benefits of being in a Café Society. We go shopping, meet someone we know and end up having a restorative cuppa AND chat. Don’t take my word for it! The Authorities have decided a life with lots of people in it will keep us going till we reach a hundred!

For me, life is half socialising and attending choir, etc., and half on the computer. Soon I have to deliver another book, and already Severn House want to know if I can manage another one. For the first time, I hesitate. Perhaps I need a short holiday before starting on anything else? Except that I’m not one much for holidays. For fifty years I’ve delivered a story only to start on another the next day. If I write another story, it would be an Ellie Quicke, of course. But yes, perhaps a holiday first?

                           Praise where it is due?

I have been receiving some lovely emails recently. The writers want me to know how much they appreciate my books, my wisdom, my wit; the charm of the backgrounds, the light they bring into the darkness. They want to help me get a wider readership, which is only what I deserve. Etcetera. Then there comes the hook, which is hardly to be seen at first, but there it is . . . ‘We can help you get a bigger readership, we can show you how to promote yourself, we have different prices for doing this, see our tariff attached.’ And now I’m told that it’s Al who is generating all this fulsome praise in the hope I’ll pay someone oodles of money to get better known. What pity. I was almost beginning to believe I was a wise and witty person.

                            The next short story . . .

. . . is one that appeared in the Methodist Recorder at the end of last month. It’s called Music but maybe it ought to be called Find the Christian. Is a man or woman who spends all their lives in the service of the church a Christian? Or is it someone who follows Christ’s command to love one another but may go to church infrequently? You decide. You can read it here.

A blessing on all those who look after a neighbour’s cats or dogs (or budgerigars) when said neighbour goes on holiday.

Veronica Heley