Saturday, February 25, 2006

CURRENT PLEASURES -- OR NOT...

I was tagged by Michelle Styles to list my current stuff. Here goes: --

• current clothing: t-shirt, jog pants – comfortable writing clothes
• current hair: newly cut and unusually tidy!
• current mood: happy; I’ve delivered The Valentine Bride a whole day early, I’m already into the current book and I’ve finally got around to ordering a stationery cupboard for the Snap & Scribble. (And some “mud” mats!)
• current refreshment: water
• current annoyance: a dodgy knee that keeps giving out on me
• current avoidance: the garden; lots of clearing up to do and a heap of stuff to go through the shredder to make compost. A north wind is keeping me inside.
• current smell: roses – the entrance hall is full of the scent of Valentine’s Day flowers
• current thing you ought to be doing: working on the book instead of doing this!

• current thing or things on your wall: framed picture of my first cover, a white board covered with photographs and details of the wip, a corkboard with the US cover of THE FIVE YEAR BABY SECRET, a photograph of me with Jane Porter at Brown’s Hotel in Denver, a photograph of Bath Abbey, a much loved card sent by the dh with a picture by Rebeccsa Lardner of a couple of “oldies” dancing the tango, a picture of me – young and thin – in our garden in Kenya, TV licence, RNA membership card, dentist appointment, the RT review of THE MARRIAGE MIRACLE, an aerial view of Stourhead Gardens.
• current jewelry: wedding ring, a ring given to my mother on their ruby wedding anniversary by my father. Earrings given to me by the dh.
• current worry: the book after the one I’m writing – it’s going to be a toughie!
• current obsession: my little wood. Will the trees I planted last autumn actually have leaves on them?
• current love: the dh, my new handbag,
• current longing: for a pair of pink, flower-bedecked wellington bookts
• current disappointment: the wallflowers I planted last autumn; they are not performing to specification!
• current lyric in your head: I don’t listen to pop music much; the music in my head at the moment is a Corelli Adagio
• current favorite book: Sophie’s Bakery for the Broken-Hearted by Lolly Winston
• current favourite movie: not easy – there are precious few movies that I’d sit through twice and I think that’s the test; I recently watched The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (the last time was when it was new and I went to the cinema to see it with my Mum & Dad!) and it was still great. Looking forward to seeing The Constant Gardener, Brokeback Mountain
• current wish: that I could write faster; so many plots, so little time…
• current desktop picture: the lilies blooming in my garden last summer
• current plans for weekend: celebrate my daughter’s birthday



I post this picture as an awful warning about what happens to your figure when you stop having to run for the bus to work and instead stay at home and write! (The grey hair is hereditary, however, although old age might have something to do with it!)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! look at you! All that long hair, what a cool chick! It seems so exotic to me, 'our garden in Kenya' ... it must have been wonderful.

cheers
Helen

Liz Fielding said...

It was wonderful, Helen. The dh is (was) a civil engineer and he was working on a project to bridge a series of rivers. The house was an old settler farmhouse and we could right across to Mount Kilimanaro at dawn when the air was clear.

That photo was PC - pre-children) New Year's Eve 1974 and we had a huge party that night around the barbecue. I can't blame the kids for the middle-aged spread, though. I had that figure until I sold my first book in 1991 (although the hair was already going west!). I can still remember thinking that I'd buy a larger size skirt because it would be more comfortable. Totally wrong decision.

Liz Fielding said...

When I "was" -- he's retired!