There has been little to tell, which has contributed to me having little to write here. I have been writing elsewhere – book 3 of the Scarlet Revolution series is ongoing, and I’m waiting for the edits on book 2, which I expect to get in a week or so. But before that, I’m taking a bit of a holiday and going down to visit my parents for a week.

Taking with me chocolate, brandy, a jigsaw, some books and dvds, some salmon I ordered from the Pished Fish website, and, well, let’s say it’s going to be fun trying to close my suitcase.

The weather here is being dismal, wet, and very grey and cool for August. (I do of course remind myself that at least we haven’t got drought and wildfires, like Corfu and too many other countries, but it’s still depressing.) It’s enough to make one believe in the folklore about St Swithin’s (or Swithun’s) Day – that if it rains on that day (the 15th July) then it’ll rain for the next 40 days and nights.

Still, now that I’ve signed off work for the next week, I can almost feel my shoulders rising and relaxing as I take a deep breath of free air. (Well, free in the sense that it’s not facing my work computer and a stack of clinical codes and SNOMED CT concepts – I’m sure there are corporations out there who’d like to charge me for each breath if they only could.) I intend to have a nice relaxing week, sit around, catch up on some reading, watch television in the evenings, etc. We shall see.