Words on a Page

  Photo credit: Dominic Alves cc 2011 It's the August Bank Holiday weekend, here in the UK, and in Portsmouth, the Victorious Music Festival is in full swing down on Southsea Common. Over on the island, it's the weekend of annual Isle of Wight International Scooter Rally, and yesterday hundreds of scooters made the ferry crossing from Old Portsmouth. On this very day, in 1984, Jenny crossed over with them - her last chance to find Deborah before the end of the month. ~ It is Saturday morning, the start of the bank holiday weekend, and this time she is taking the car ferry to Fishbourne, a few miles to the west of Ryde. A veil of fog hangs over the water, and the seam between sea and sky, crafted anew each morning, is stitched so finely that from the bow of the ship Jenny cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. Everything is white and empty and thick with silence. Lost in the mist somewhere off to the right of the ship, a foghorn cries out. A moment later, a muffled ...

The past few weeks, since the publication of Missing Words , have been a bit of a whirlwind and I am struggling to keep up with everything that is happening at the moment. A few days after the online launch with my cohort from Fairlight Moderns I had my very first LIVE book signing at my local independent bookshop – the fabulous Pigeon Books . Even though Covid restrictions have been almost entirely lifted here in the UK, many people – myself included – are not ready throw themselves into a crowded indoor space just yet, so the book signing was a good alternative to a full-on event with a book reading and clinking glasses of champagne. For three hours, I sat as if enthroned in the comfy chair in the window of Pigeon Books while a surprising number people trooped through the door and asked me – ME – to sign copies of my book. It was a wonderful day, with time to chat to friends I hadn’t seen since pre-Covid days, including some I hadn’t seen for years. And more thrilling still were the ...