patsy

Wednesday word of the week – Swoop

To swoop often means moving easily and rapidly through the aiir. Swoop is a word generally used in conjunction with another. When followed by down, it means to dive or drop at speed, like a bird of prey. If swoop is followed by on, it implies making a sudden attack from a distance. Swoop up means to snatch everything in one go.

During one trip to Wales, I watched choughs swooping through the air – just as my character Alice does in Firestarter. (I’ll keep any similarities between our trip and the next chapter in the novel to myself!)

patsy

Excellent Ely

We’ve been to Ely cathedral before, and gazed up at the wonderful ceilings, and fabulous octagon tower.

On this trip, we took a tour so we’d be ‘up with the angels’. Those are the painted panels, you can see just below the stained glass windows, at the top of the tower. They’re actually far taller than I am – and we climbed further still, until we were standing (in the rain) at the very top. I was holding on tight and forgot to take photos at that point. These taken during the climb should give you an idea.

After that, we climbed back down the 181 steps, went for tea and cake, and then looked round the town for a while.

patsy

Grimes Graves and BIG news

Gary and I recently visited Grime’s Graves. The name is somewhat confusing, as they’re named for a pagan god called Woden (or Odin, or Grim), and despite a few bodies, they’re actually neolithic flint mines, not graves.

When the mines were created, side passages were created, to get out as much of the prized black flint as possible. The length and depth were limited, as they are believed to have used only natural light. They were then refilled with soil. Some have since been excavated, and it’s possible to climb down into one.

The descent is nine metres, which doesn’t sound a lot until you start negotiating the first of three ladders.

You may wonder what stone age people used to mine flint. Apparently it was antler picks, and flint axes.

The BIG news, is that I’ve been offered a contract for a large print edition of my romance novel, Escape to the Country. That will be available, from libraries and to buy, next May. The regular paperback, ebook and audio book are unaffected.

patsy

Quick catch up

Welllll I’ll still be a bit behind after this post, but less so!

Over a few days, we attempted to visit a windmill which was closed for repairs, actually visited Ickworth Estate, where I only remembered to take one phone photo for this blog (I may never catch up with the ones on the camera!) but did remember to visit the cafe. Plot twist – we had pasties and coffee, not tea and cake.

We found safe shelter from the storms, had to shift a fallen tree in the road on the way to Oxburgh Hall, then when we got there we discovered it was closed due to high winds!

We’re enjoying ourselves despite a few frustrations – and I’m managing to get a little writing done.

patsy

Bury St Edmunds

This was our most disappointing visit of the trip so far. Of course the rain didn’t help, but the biggest problem was that the only parking space we could find, which was big enough for the van, limited to just one hour. (On the plus side, it was free.)

By the time we’d had a look round the abbey ruins, there wasn’t really time for tea and cake, or to go into the cathedral – although we did nip down to the treasury to see a really old, and very beautiful, book.

We’ll go back another time – making sure we arrive early enough to grab a parking space.

patsy

Frighteningly good value!

It’s coming up to hallowe’en, so why not get into the spirit of things and treat yourself to one (or more!) of my collections of slightly spooky stories? If you’re in the UK or US you can download some of the ebooks for just 99p/99c – I promise that’s not a trick! They’re all available as paperbacks too. You can buy online, order from bookshops, or request them in libraries.

There are 24 stories in each collection, in a range of genres. None are super scary, and some might even raise the ghost of a smile!

patsy

Wednesday word of the week – Tradition

A tradition is an ongoing custom, belief or opinion, often passed on for generations. 

Atristic and literary principles and methods which are based on experience and common practice are also considered traditions. It’s traditional for romances to have happy endings.

A traditionalist is someone who has respect for traditions, perhaps to an excessive extent.

Which traditions do you follow and enjoy? A lot of my favourites involve food – I like to pour brandy on the Christmas pudding and set fire to it and try the traditional foods in places I visit, such as Welsh cakes, Cornish pasties and Scottish shortbread. And who doesn’t enjoy a hot cross bun, toasted and slathered in butter?

If you like reading about food, I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy these tasty short story collections.

patsy

Fabulous Framlingham

You can tell I’m a few days behind sharing my photos – the sun is shining!

Framlingham is where Mary Tudor rallied her troops, after her younger brother named Lady Jane Grey heir to the throne. She lasted in power for almost a fortnight. Mary managed a good few years, and her sister Elizabeth was one of our longest serving monarchs.

The wall walk looks quite scary from the ground, and on the climb up to it, but it’s fine once you’re there – mostly.

Don’t look down – that’s the key!

patsy

Orford Castle and the toast test

Orford castle was well worth a visit. It would have been worth me taking more photos for a post too, but they gave us audio guides and I was so busy looking round and listening to the information, that I forgot.

Well, I did remember when we got up on the roof. It was so windy up there my headphones blew off, so I didn’t was to risk taking my phone* out of my jacket pocket, and losing everything else I had in there – which included the keys to the van!

*It can take me months to catch up with processing ‘proper’ photos from my camera, so I’ve started using the phone for blog posts.

We bought some marmalade in the gift shop. We made the toast for that using the gas grill. It’s a little bit of a faff and not terribly fast. We could use a toaster. We tried that just before we came away. It worked fine, but used over a quarter of the power from our power bank. As we need that for the cameras, phones, laptops, toothbrush etc, w won’t be doing that again.