It's Wednesday?

I'm not sure what happened to yesterday - catching up, I suppose you could say.

Catching up on:

Emails - and yes, I know I still owe some of you answers

Letters

On phone calls (there's a big part of the day gone)

Shopping - we had no bread, no veg and - worst of all very little cat food in the cupboard. So we had to go and get some more before the cats left home.

Cat appeasing. We've had the sulks, the 'how dare you abandon us in this way' - then they moved on to 'I wasn't fed at all while you were away, so I need a little smackeral of something on the hour, every hour until I catch up and get my body weight back to normal'. Then, in between the snacks on the hour every hour, there was the 'I want you to open this door and let me out NOW!' and as soon as they're out there's the - 'I want you to let me in NOW - just because I can demand it. And I'm going to keep on demaning it on the hour every hour - and more at 3 am!'

(Note photo of Sid obviously wasting away!)

Washing - and drying - so of course it poured with rain

I think I've got caught up now, though there are things I still have to do. It's great to go away and I really enjoyed the stay in Fishguard - and the course. the group really gelled and that helps so much - specially when you're discussing their work with them. If would-be writers can't take editing now then they'll not be able to work well with editors in the future when - hopefully if - they get accepted. This wasn't a problem with the Fishguard group. No prima donnas amongst them -they all wanted to learn.

I've had two lovely messages from members of the course since I got back and a fantastic card from Rachael who often visits this blog (Hi Rachael!) Not only that but she went to the trouble of making me a lovely Christmas cake as a way of saying thank you - that was so kind Rachael! Thank you again and I'll think of you and Fishguard when I have a taste of it on Christmas Day.

So I had a lot of fun and as always it was great to talk writing and to meet up again with lovely Anne and Gerry who run the Writers' Holidays, and the Fishguard Writing weekends. Saying goodbye was tough as we probably won't be able to make Caerleon in summer 2008 as we're planning on heading for the RWA Conference in San Francisco and I don't think there will be a Winter Novel Writing Weekend in 2008.

I'm going to miss the great atmosphere of the weekend - and I'm really going to miss the wonderful views I woke up to each morning of my stay in Fishguard so I took a few extra photos to keep some memories while I'm away from there.

But there will be the Writers' and Artists' Workshops Weekend in 2009 when I've been asked to run the Novel Workshop and Caerleon in summer 2009. There are even rumours that the BM will be teaching courses then too. So I won't be away from Wales for too long - but I am going to miss it for a while.