Vacation!

I have not had a proper holiday in over a year. I mean a good week away from the office, no one calls me, WhatsApps me, FB messages me about things I do not care about the minute I'm in a bikini. I'm burning out. I need sleep and inspiration and food. I need sun. Doesn't matter if I sound like a plummy boarding school girl from Fulham (even if it is South West LDN...) I need vitamin D. The deficiency in this country is real.

So, I'm going back to Africa. North. I know. Danger. And yet, I live in London. I know danger. I know vigilance. I can do that while haggling with a Berber for a hand embroidered pashmina. I'm also a lot friendlier on holiday. I'll talk to randoms - old and young- or rather they talk to me, because I have that sort of face that invites you to share all your deepest darkest. I can glean notes to put into some good tales, and I can rest. I won't be tense, or on edge - mainly because I'll be having several massages, one after the other, until my bones are jelly, followed by a pomegranate bellini. They exist and they shall be mine. All mine....

I've written some of my best work during and or after a good holibob (don't tell anyone I used that word, I'll get so much grief) Windows was on the island of Kos, Greece (the first 35% of it anyway, the rest in my friend's coastal flat in Hove ) The Baby Gift in Mexico - heatstroke, I swear, A Life Sublime after the best gelato ever in Capri and Sorrento, Italy, Verde Bianco Rosso in Lucca, Italy - sitting on the wall that surrounds the city as the sun went down; and on the train back to Venice, and a lot by a canal outside a small cafe that served me a few Aperol Spritzes, a hella load of Beppe's story (30,000 words in, soooo much left to do!). All the little stories that make up Wynne's Surprise are from my time in Morocco, nearly being run over or being offered marriage....

Hot Muse Hank tends to remind me that my creativity is best channelled when I'm in neutral. I'm never more neutral than when I'm in the sun and nothing to worry about. I'm a girl with some valium and a suitcase ready to be filled with goodies.

Let's go!