Time to be Honest

Ten regrets re:2013

1. Not being able to afford to buy every book on my want to read list.

2. My inability to manage on less than 8 hours sleep a night so that I could pack more into my already busy days.

3. Not meeting my target of swimming 3 or 4 times a week.

4. Failure to lose more weight in spite of low fat milk, only one sweet treat a week etc.

5. I should have signed up for more book blogs for my romantic historical novels.

6. Spending too much time on Facebook when I should be reading historical non-fiction and making notes for my novel.

7. Describing the hero helping the heroine to sit on his horse and then sitting in front of her. In order to do so he would have had to pass his leg over her head. Ouch! Neither my efficient copy editor nor my efficient line editor noticed this. No matter how hard I try it's really difficult to always get everything right.

8. I wish I had mastered the technique of growing indoor and outdoor winter salads.

9. Failure to finish my new novel by Christmas 2013.

10. I should have bought new carpet for the stairs and a new gas cooker.

The Canterbury Tales

After a busy morning I stopped at a charity shop on my way to the Health Centre to swim and enjoy the jacuzzi,sauna and steam room. I bought a secondhand copy of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which I have been intending to re-read for a long time.

I don't have time to enjoy reading these tales for very long but I shall enjoy dipping in and out of it. So far I have read the Introduction and a little bit of the Prologue which begins:

When that April with his showres swoote (showers sweet)
The drout of March hath perced (pierced) to the roote,
And bathud (bathed) every veyne (vein) in such (licour)
Of which vertue (virtue) engendred (conceived) is the flour (flower).

Visited an Osteopath today

Visited an osteopath today, my back is painful, partly due to the hours I spend writing etc., on the laptop and computer. I must find time to go swimming more often and make sure I walk round the green every day.


It's my second visit to this osteopath. Last time all the muscles in my back burned on the next day, but I'm still hoping the treatment will improve my back.

Writing & Sore Muscles

Recently I've been spending more time than usual working on the laptop or computer. It's made my back, neck and shoulders ache and caused sore muscles, so I saw an osteopath earlier in the week and yesterday I went swimming. I have another appointment with the osteopath and have made up my mind to swim more often.

At long last the sun is shining so, after dealing with various 'writerly' matters I shall gather vegetables from my garden for lunch, probably turnips and curly kale to have with peas and a vegetable pie and gravy. I will then sow vegetable seeds in a heated propagator, and if I have time begin tidying the greenhouse