Book Launch, Rewriting the Past and Mum visit

This is Tom Leaper's fabulous statue dedicated to all the fishermen from Newlyn who lost their lives at sea. We walked down here last Saturday after my cousin Jenny Dearlove's launch of her wonderful book "Women to the Rescue, A Penzance refuge for Girls in Trouble". It was a fascinating talk and discussion afterwards, and the book is well worth a read for anyone, Cornish or not, exposing just how hard it was for girls who "got into trouble" in those days, and a stark reminder of how narrow society's views were.

To continue the literary theme, the editor I consulted over my most recent novel suggested I start it in a different place. As the first part of the book is mostly autobiographical, it means rewriting history and she wasn't sure how I felt about it. She suggested that my late husband should die at home (in the book) rather than in hospital and it's actually been very therapeutic - though I've cried a lot - so it could not only improve my novel but help me too.

I'd long ago arranged to do a day trip up and back to see my mum last Monday. But the day before, I had a text from my brother to say that there was a case of covid in Mum's care home, so all visits were suspended for the moment. She's been so down recently, with a couple of infections, that I felt it would be too awful to postpone this visit, so I asked if we could stand outside and talk to her through the window, and the staff said yes.

It was a long journey - five hours of driving to see Mum for 20 minutes - but to see her face light up was fabulous. To our great relief, her eyes were bright and her skin was a good colour so we hope she's getting better at last. I'm going up again in a couple of weeks so will be able to see more of her then - covid allowing.

In the meantime, I leave you with a picture from our first pitstop on our way up to see Mum. Enlarge the picture to see the writing underneath. Good old Trago.....