Weird old weekend,
spent mainly in the past. As anyone who
knows me on Facebook will have realized, I finally got a scanner and indulged
in a totally over-the-top nostalgia fest.
Pictures spanning a century (no, I’m not quite that old – I found some of
my mother’s old photo albums too).
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| Living in a box, living in a cardboard box. |
It was bittersweet, the
way looking at the past often is. I compounded it by reading through old diaries. And then, just to cap it all, I decided to tackle my box files and weeded through a decade of accounts and cuttings and clippings and other detritus. Dear god, I was another
person entirely – earning a packet (THAT much?
SHIT!) and spending a packet (mainly, has to be said, on doing up the
derelict money pit otherwise known as the Rectory). I didn’t have time to think – one year I
think I wrote six books (quite apart from doing a shedload of journalism and TV
and radio). Funny old world, huh?
 |
| Shoulda spent more on hairdressing, huh? |
Anyhow, the passed is
past and I had a big bonfire (of my vanities) and there you go.
 |
| Burn! |
And then lovely Zoe and
her lovely husband came over to visit and I was going to be all Nigella-ish and
make them pukka tea with scones and wotnot but they came early so the poor sods ended up taking me out
to lunch (at lovely Woods, of course) and then I spent a bit of time dragging
Zoe round the estate agents in town and pointing out the delights of Dulverton
in the hope she would decide it really was time to ship out and come on
down to Exmoor.
And then, the post
came. A thick parcel from Aurum Press. Huh? I
opened it up and there were two fat hardbacks sitting inside. The Hedgerows Heaped with May. Huh?
The Telegraph Book of the Countryside, edited by Stephen Moss. Huh?
And then I
remembered. That piece I’d written for
the Telegraph, years back, about Liz Jones being such an arsey cow when she moved
to Exmoor. 22 August 2009, to be
precise. Time flies, huh? Based on that blog post.
Anyhow, it was being
included in a compilation of ‘the best writing’ on the countryside from the
Telegraph. Well, well. Even better they were asking me to invoice –
for fifty quid. Not quite a fifteen
grand royalty cheque but hey…every little helps right?
The book is quite nice
actually. It’s got contributions from
people like Clive James, James May (hey, how come he gets his name in the title??), Max Hastings (The Hedgerows Heaped with Hastings?), Joanna Trollope (umm, better not) and Boris
Johnson. And, er...me.
