The Chilterns, Home. Despite my pain and sadness at leaving London, I’m happy to call this new place home. Had it been any less remote I might have struggled, endlessly comparing it to the glorious bustle of Acton (now there’s a sentence you never thought you’d read), but as it is, the view from our house is fields and trees, covered most mornings by mist and watched over by the endless procession of crows that guard our dwelling. It’s here that I’ve written most and much of it has been inspired by the quiet and peace and freedom to think.

From the morning mist so often strides a stranger, a new thought or twist that wraps itself around my brain and refuses to move until it’s committed to print. As I push my sleeping daughter up and down the lane, the crows screech and squark to me of visions and imaginings that turn from idle thoughts into beginnings and characters and plots and worlds, and just like that I’m swamped and find myself rushing to the computer, face stretched into a huge grin as I begin to type. (Sometime later I remember the small one and hope Wifey hasn’t noticed her daughter is abandoned halfway down the track. It’s only happened once or twice and she’s always been returned to us by considerate, if frowning neighbours, Except that one time when we had to pay the local gnomes off, but they were happy with a kidney and her first kiss.)