Well, the summer has well and truly arrived in Mallorca and with it the mixed blessing of visitors.

I haven´t stopped sweating for days and sleeping is next to impossible. Even a trip to the video store is more like a quest in the midday heat. It´s quite an art, really, trying to stick to the shade and running through the bits where the sun is beating down, most often at crossings.
Thank God for the balcony! After sun down I sit on the balcony, sometimes with Laurie and a glass of wine, and we talk about metaphysics and try to use back-engineering to work out the purpose of existence. Other times I sit on my own, with my i-Pod, enjoying the breeze and a few moments to think and be myself: not a mother, not a teacher, not anybody´s anything: just me.

Often I think about the characters of my book, who have become almost like family members to me. And I´m still writing, and really proud that I have stuck for so long with such an ambitious project. I know books are written all the time, but I never thought that I could do it, discipline-wise.

I´m also making a concerted effort to read as much as possible, because I know reading will make me a better writer. Television is more or less tabboo in my house, and I´m kind of glad, because it´s true, what the spiritual snobs say, it´s 90% crap. I find that the less I watch television, the less tolerance I have for it. Even programmes I didn´t use to mind seem really mindless now. Having said this, I religiously watch Desperate Housewives every Wednesday night. We all have our weaknesses, I suppose.

I love Mallorca and it really suits me, living here. I feel like at last I have come to the place where I was meant to be, and I can say without hesitation that I´m much happier here than in wet Tamworth, where I couldn´t connect with anybody and going to a boring office job really was the high point of my days.

Will write some more soon

Sylvia