A Writer's Journal
May 2026
Friday 1 May
I wore a new pair of jeans today. It’s a big event - I haven’t worn jeans for years. I suppose it’s all part of those little changes - sending half the wardrobe to a charity shop, trying out new (to me) styles - which somehow herald some big change going on half unseen. I go out one day with nothing more than the grocery shopping in mind, and mulling over the cheese counter suddenly realise I’m angry with that, fed up of this, going to chuck out some whatnot or two, no longer going to put up with...
Hello new me, whoever you are.
Sunday 3 May
New Me bought some pastels. Oh, they are lovely. Today I had my first go with them. Nothing anyone else would recognise as Art or even a Sketch or Picture but oh I did love them.
Tuesday 5 May
I had a headache all afternoon. I comforted myself by listening to Rory Kinnear beautifully reading the latest Hawthorne book, A Deadly Episode, while I did the ironing. (I have friends who tell me they never iron anything. How does that work? Why so crumpled?)
I did some more work on the novel and the suffragette interviews.
Thursday 7 May
The blue tits in the nest box do have some young! Over the last few days I thought they’d given up and gone. I’d watched them bring nesting materials to the box and then nothing seemed to be happening. And then today I saw one of the birds flying back and forth, back and forth, with beakfuls of food.
I worked on the novel and the suffragette interviews.
Sunday 10 May
I was too tired to write up my journal last night. We went to All Saints Church in Publow where my friend’s choir (Chew Valley Choral Society) was performing a concert on the theme of Celebrating Our History - the music all chosen to reflect local history and people. One of the songs was the suffragette anthem, The March of the Women, and I gave a brief introduction to it (I put an edited version on Substack.)
Ethel Smyth and The March of the Women
Music was very important to the women’s suffrage movement. Both the militant suffragettes and the law abiding suffragists enjoyed a repertoire of suffrage songs. Suffrage meetings often started with a sing song, sometimes of hymns, and sometimes of suffrage songs set to to well-known tunes. Suffrage groups sold song sheets and booklets. The non-militant…
It was a lovely event, I enjoyed the singing very much.
Wednesday 13 May
A long day at my desk when I did a bit of work on everything - the Biography, the novel, the suffragette interviews.
Saturday 16 May
There was a jay in the garden, a lovely splash of colour. I’ve never seen one here before. He didn’t stay long though. And then another one flew across our path later, on the way home from Lawrence Weston, after doing the suffragette talk. Two jays in one day! What does that mean? Is it one of my bird omens?
I finished The Old Curiosity Shop last night. I really think it’s as unpleasant as I found it when I first read it. There are things that Dickens does so well: a marvellous description of the Black Country which shows his hatred of factory blight and the cruelty of industrialisation and money grabbing, the degradation of the poor as workers in furnaces sleeping where they work, the unemployed in rags sleeping on dust heaps. It’s an astonishing, powerful piece of writing.
But then the chapters on Little Nell drooping and dying are dreadful sickly stuff. She starts expiring in Chapter 54 and is still at it by Chapter 70. She’s been dead two days by the time we get to Chapter 71. And that awful idea of the good child’s good death that was so popular…funny how being a good child means pandering to bad parents or parent figures. These good child death stories are horrible, the adult’s interest and relish in them is horrible. It’s a wonder children didn’t arm themselves against these grown ups who seemed to harbour a death wish against them.
I had a shock today when I read a Laura Thompson post on Substack
and found out that Anthony Horowitz uses Chat GPT! Only “a little bit”. That’s ok then. I searched for the article where he’s quoted saying this. I’m very disappointed. I thought he was a real writer and a good one.
Sunday 17 May
I started reading Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell, reviewing for the Historical Novel Society. It’s a nice book with some lovely ideas, but the underpinning arguments are weak. It seems to rely on the attractiveness of the ideas rather than reason. But I like the heart of the book.
I started Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth last night.
I saw two baby robins in the garden this morning. And two fledged blue tits a few days ago!
Thursday 21 May
I was too tired to write in here last night. We had a lovely day yesterday with friends who visited. I’d made a tomato and basil tart for lunch, with a spring salad, and brownies for pudding with ice cream. We had coffee and chat when they arrived, and lunch and chat, and then went on a mini tour of Bristol and came back for tea and more chat. It was raining but we still managed to show them the Suspension Bridge, and the Great Britain, the Wills Building, the museum and art gallery, the Royal West of England Academy, the Downs. So there are lots of places to actually go and visit when they come again.
Today was very warm and the gardeners came and planted the rockery. It looks fabulous, I’m so pleased with it. They also put in some new plants around the garden. It’s so nice to have found people who can help with the garden, I just don’t have time to do it all. My big wildlife friendly scheme seems to be working - dragonflies and mayflies over the pond, newts in the pond, bees buzzing so loud it sounds like an engine running, lots of birds. Starlings making a mess. Hum. And too many pigeons trampling new plants, which I had to move. Grr. But that’s what no one ever tells you about trying to be wildlife friendly. The wildlife isn’t very clean or tidy and if you’re not careful you might get too many things you don’t want. Yes, yes, they’re all God’s creatures…
We went to a talk at Bishopston Library on women in music hall, by Alison Boulton. It was really interesting. She’s doing some fascinating research.
We saw lots of swifts! Later there was a crescent sliver of white luminous moon, beautiful.
Friday 22 May
We went to see Anthony Horowitz at Bath Literary Festival - we’d booked the tickets ages ago, before the AI Debacle. I thought I might sit with folded arms and glare at him, but he was so entertaining and funny and clever that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I just gave him my “do you really think so?” face as he talked. He didn’t seem at all perturbed.
I enjoyed listening to A Deadly Episode - yet at the same time there was a niggle of doubt and disillusion hanging over it.
It’s been very hot again today and I’m tired.
Sunday 24 May
I feel as if my brain is leaden, I can’t concentrate, I’m absent minded, keep dropping things, lose the thread of what I’m doing, and I sliced a bit off my thumb when I was slicing a cabbage. My poor novel, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to write again, my ideas have all died, they’re leaden and uninteresting. No skill, no talent, can’t write a novel, I’m doomed to be enmeshed in non-fiction and unfinishable projects for ever.
Monday 25 May
What with heat and housework and working in the garden I’m worn out. And dragging around the feeling that my fiction writing is finished, useless, a waste of time, the ideas all dried up…and then after I put out the light the ideas started to come! I wrote furiously into the night, getting things down while they’re fresh, this scene and that scene and he will say and she will say and they’ll be standing here and moving there, then I said thank you God for sending these to me, and for reminding me that I’m still only on the first draft, that I’ve been comparing my work to a book that’s finished and edited and published, when I need to get on and finish the draft, get the story done. The first draft is hardly anything! It is always this way, get the story first, then you’ve something to work with.
Wednesday 27 May
I hate the heat.
I had my hair cut short. I’ve been fed up with it for ages and finally worked out what I wanted. Another change! (See wearing jeans.)
Thursday 28 May
This morning I was up early again, and worked on the novel before breakfast. The pc crashed, major panic. Managed to retrieve my work. The pc has been on the downward slope for ages and I know I need a new one. It looks like now would be a good time.
Afterwards I unpacked the bird food order, planted herbs in pots, planted geraniums in pots, cleaned the bird feeders, watered everything. I was very dirty when I’d finished, and showered, dressed, had coffee.
Then I worked on the suffragette interviews. After that I did a few minutes sketching. Then I read some of the book I’m reviewing. I made a Greek salad for supper and after clearing up we watched Death Valley.
An ordinary, commonplace day. There are no bombs falling on my town, no drones targeting the building I live in, no jackboots bursting into my home, and I wonder at a world where an ordinary, commonplace day feels like an enormous privilege.
Saturday 30 May
Today we had the special general meeting of the West of England and West Wales Women’s History Network and voted to wind up the network. It’s very very sad, but it was inevitable - falling membership, over-burdened committee…we’re going to have a final farewell event. It’s been a part of my life for years and years, it feels like a gap opening.
And then with that gap comes also a feeling of relief. It will mean less work, less to worry and get stressed about.