Farewell to the One & only Reethi Rah

Bliss.......

I feel like lying down on the floor and throwing a tantrum as I don't want to leave paradise but the upside is that I will be with writer friends in London at the Romantic Novelist awards luncheon!

Sand Bank

Yesterday we went snorkeling at a sand bank and to watch the sun set. I can't show you the fabulous fish or coral because those photos were taken with an underwater film camera but I can tell you that we have a fabouls picnic (For Jess - began with skewers of baby mozzarella, tomato and olive plus little wraps of shrimp and lettuce followed by french bread sandwiches of roast beef, turkey or more mozzarella and finished with fruit skewers of grape, honedew, papyia and pineapple - washed down with crisp white wine.)

But even paradise has a phone signal as one of our guides demonstrates. Fancy a game of coconut catch???

Hated

My son hates me as it appears many of my blog friends do and quite frankly I would hate me between the clicking palms fronds in the ocean breeze, the nights filled with shooting stars, jumping fish in crystal clear waters. So to complete the cycle of hate here a few more photos of paradise.........

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Bliss

What can I say? I have clearly died and gone to paradise. I am not only on a coral atoll in the middle of Indian Ocean but I have has just devoured the first of my reads....... C.S. Harris'sWhat Angels Fear. Absolutely gripping.......It kept me glued during the flight and even on the beach today when I could have been well looking at other things........If you love Regency like I do and you like a bit of mystery with a bit love thrown in.....well 10 out of 10. I could rave on about how it was brilliant to look at the period from different eyes but well the sunset on my beach is calling.................

Laundry and Expat Blues

I have piles of laundry. My eldest son goes back to school today and I have masses of laundry before that event can take place. He arrived home the day before we left for Florida with all his kit including trunk and tuck box. All that stuff has remained in the front hall fermenting for the past three and a half weeks. Last night when we returned from Cornwall, I approached the trunk with great trepidation. He sat on the stairs and watched so he could tell me whether the kit would be needed at school this term! His next comment was, 'I can smell it from here!'

The odor of adolescent boys socks filled the fetid atmosphere of a hot London house that hadn't been lived in for three weeks. The aroma should be bottled to kill off opposing armies!

Today begins the slow return to normal. I am happy to say the sun is shinning. All the off-spring are tucked up in bed and a feeling that all is normal is returning. With that comes the huge tasks ahead of me. Finishing A Cornish House is the high point to look forward to in the next day or so. The low is the knowledge that we are moving and don't yet know where. Once in my life I looked eagerly to each transfer but at the moment with the sun shining in London I can't think of another place I want to live other than my home in Cornwall.

This is the joy and pain of expat life. The problem was that although the company treated this as just another move - coming back to London was returning home. This happened once before and it was was brutal then. Leaving home is not the same as leaving another international posting. You know in your mind that you are on borrowed time in some foreign locale but back in the UK roots start to find their way into the soil and it hurts when they are pulled up.

Hence why the elder two kids are ensconced in boarding school. They are both at an age when ripping them out and changing schools every few years isn't fair. But then my soul yells what about me...I miss them terribly and yes I say this with a long bickering car journey from Cornwall still clear in my mind.

So back to smelly laundry and to unpack from Florida which is just a distant memory. Why haven't I unpacked yet.......well, we had to go to our home in Cornwall so once we landed and hit London I became a fierce animals herding the troops into the car and straight down without a chance to think. I knew once settled into the house in London they would never get out the door again and our beautiful home beckoned........

Enough rambling.........back to normal soon before the packing crates start arriving :(

Sniff

I'm packing and leaving in a few hours.......I don't want to go. It's been a fabulous holiday. We are rested and tanned and not too fat after our time here in Naples. Hell, I even managed write a few thousand words. What more could I ask for except another couples of weeks?????

So hopefully spring has found the London again while we were gone. There was frost on the ground at Gatwick as we left and I send a silent prayer that it won't be bleak grey skies on our return!!!

I will be back to more regular posting and finishing A Cornish House. The last few hundred words I wrote were crap.........not in content but style. I had so much I wanted to say but did it all in flash back in order to put the words down. The scene is totally crap. However the thoughts were captured and I can rewrite the scene in a better manner later. Normal writing will return soon. The kids still have another week of hols so I will progress slowly as sniff sniff I will be back to cooking and housework too..........

Holiday Reading

Well, our time in Dubai was way too short. I mean way too short. We arrived at just before midnight Sunday and left Dubai in the early hours of this morning. As we had lived there for three years it was intended as a quick break to enjoy friends and enjoy the sun. Ticks on both accounts. I didn't write a word. The first morning I thought about it but after that well the pool, the sun, the food all beckoned. So I gave up guilt and embraced the joy of reading. My tbr pile was educed by two......joyfully. The new imprint Little Black Dress was designed for holiday reading from the two books I sampled. First off I read Phillipa Ashley's Decent Exposure.

Maybe I should first tell you all what a great book - which it was. But first I will talk about the grief ds1, the 14 yr old gave me about the cover. "Mum, there's a naked guy on the cover."

"Yes."

"Mum."

"Yes."

"You like looking at naked guys?"

Now what is a good up standing mother of three to say but, "Of course."

Needless to say he walked away and left me to happily read the book. Boys get so embarrassed about these things! He was still asking me about it today when I unpacked and he saw the book again. This time he just rolled his eyes and asked where the calendar was. I reminded him I didn't need a calendar when I had his father around. He beat a quick retreat!

Now to the book itself. I fell head over heals for the hero Will. Emma's vulnerability was so credible and how she held off for so long I don't know. It was a great read and I smiled my way through it. All the twists and turns felt real and I loved each moment of it. Definitely ideal holiday reading to make you smile even more.

Next out of the bag was Julie Cohen's Spirit Willing Flesh Weak. Now I have read and loved Julie's other books. So in a way I wasn't prepared for the different feel of this book. The book is told in first person and you get right into the head of Rosie. She grabs you from the start. I loved her complex nature and really found myself wondering if Harry could ever be good enough for her. I rooted for her the whole way through. It could be that she is from Massachusetts went to university near where I did but we won't pull those things in to it. It was a great story and a very different read. But like all of Julie's books I have read filled with incredibly real character portrayals.

The two books from the same imprint were very different in feel but both were perfect shorter reads that completely satisfied. Ideal for a holiday from life :-)

Now back to laundry and hopefully writing again. Have fallen way behind my fellow racers!