Funky face

I’m in a funk. Not just because it’s mid-May and the weather is pants – yup still cold and wet and showing no sign of letting us have a glimpse of the sun in the coming weeks, I also have to market The Book and I’ve landed myself an eye infection. I would put sunglasses on but under such gloomy skies, I wouldn’t be able to see a thing – let alone take a half decent photo of yours truly. The woofers aren’t helping either, every time I ‘set up’ a photo shoot they disappear to the furthest reaches of the garden. The thing is I’m not a natural at selling myself, let’s face it I’m not exactly photogenic and useless with anything technical. The first lot of photos had the opus’ title back to front – something I wasn’t aware of until some kind person on Facebook alerted me to the mistake and how to fix it. I didn’t even know there was an edit button on my phone’s camera. I haven’t got anyone to help me either as Mumo is worse than me at snapping pictures and Denis wouldn’t know one end of a lens from the other. With all this being said, I have decided to postpone further attempts until Tuesday when my job lot of books arrive, the ones I will sign and send. Hopefully by then my eyeballs will have returned to their normal colour instead of the current ‘Queen of the Dead’ look.

Aside from last Sunday’s party in the courtyard with D’s family and a few close friends, it’s been a pretty quiet week. For once the rain held back until the early evening and even though it wasn’t beach barbecue warm, everyone had a good boogie across the cobblestones and downed a fair few bottles of the grape. Seeing the photos afterwards was a bit of a fright, I need to find an air brush app. After two weekends of high jinks and hedonism, both D and I decided some calm and a bit of a cleanse was needed which is why we went out for pizza last night. We were very good about the alcohol though. It won’t be long before the Friday night village get-together at the Bistrot starts again, mind you with my man in charge of the food and me no doubt getting in his way, we will have to behave ourselves this year. I just hope the weather does too. Next week sees the first of our summer guests arriving, I hope they have packed their waterproofs. According to the meteo, it is supposed to be getting much much warmer which could be seen as a plus except for the predicted addition of thunderstorms. Oh joy.

I have to say the garden is looking rather glorious at the moment, especially with another trip to the local nursery resulting in lashes of floral colour around the place. The potager is blossoming too, my brother Simon is convinced our mammoth lettuce (or is it lettuces?) are on steroids. And since Louise next-door has given Denis a new remorque (a trailer) for his birthday, I am going to give his old one a face-lift. Poor Belle has seen better days and some would say she is dump-bound but thanks to Mumo’s brilliant idea, she shall retire gracefully in front of our corner wall and be covered in begonias and bees. It’ll also stop people from parking down there, a constant irk with me as you can’t see the bunkers of roses trailing across the mass of pink concrete when they do.

Before I end todays ramblings, I would like to shout out a big thank-you to all of you for the over-whelming support and cheer-leading. Not just for The Book but also for remembering that Wednesday marked 5 years since T passed away. 5 years seems like a long time when so much of my life has changed since then but not long at all. I still talk to him every evening – I think he’d be proud of me. As I mentioned and I know some of you have already pre-ordered, I will have copies here from Tuesday to be signed so let me know if you want to purchase one with an added scrawl. No photos attached…

“Much publishing is done through politics, friends and natural stupidity” (Charles Bukowski)