Progress Report

Hope everybody in other parts of the UK got some sunshine before the rain came! Personally I would have appreciated a few more sunny days, but that’s Edinburgh for you. I blame myself as I at last got round to watering some plants yesterday and woke up today to find the rain had watered them much more effectively..

I’ve just finished translating my hand-written pages of Pitkirtly XXVI (four and a half chapters of it) into Word document form, so now I have to work out where to go next with it! As often happens, I do have vague pictures in my head of what might happen, and usually once I begin typing they become clearer, though they do fade altogether in some cases. Anyway, I plan to have written ten chapters in all by the end of June and then finish the first draft during July. We’ll see how that goes. Rest assured I will be avoiding all sea-walls, beaches and promenades in the mean-time.

In other news, I managed, with help, to get myself into town on Wednesday and to graciously accept a volunteering award. Apparently I’ve been involved with the same local charity for 25 years – I only intended to help with the costumes for the drama group when I first joined! Since then I have written and directed pantomimes and have acted as chair and then as secretary of the organisation during a time when our building was completely destroyed by fire, following which we had to occupy unsuitable premises which were always under threat of demolition and have now been completely flattened. Fortunately before that happened we unexpectedly found a permanent home elsewhere. Some of that has found its way into my novels, as regular readers may have guessed, though the Pitkirtly fire (in ‘Crime in the Community’) happened a few years before the real one.

Of all the things I have ever done as a volunteer, the writing (in collaboration with one of my sons) and directing have been the most fun and are what I am most proud of. So I leave you with the lyrics from a song we wrote for a production of ‘Aladdin’. This is the song at the end of Act 1, where a fearless group of characters are setting off on an impossible errand.

We’re off to rescue the princess from the evil old magician

We’re off to rescue the princess and we’ll use our intuition

We’re off to rescue the princess wherever she may be

We’ll travel all night to get her back, by land and air and sea.

(I can still hear the tune in my head – I won’t inflict the lyrics of another song in the same show, ‘Camilla the Camel’, on you for now. I discovered a local costume shop that would hire out a camel outfit, which was why we had to have a camel involved.)