Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Dear Maud,

As you know, Jane and I are enwrapp’d in restoration – no, not in a comedy by, say, Susannah Centlivre (‘Yes, friend, the blessing of their good works fall upon them’) – but in the renovation of Yeoman’s Hut. Indeed, so tightly are we bound that last week I took leave from my usual job of work, expressly to erect and install.

Fortunately, much was done – though, alas, little in the edificial orbit.

My one sally was to dismember a window, which I tore limb from limb, and then proceeded to skin. It was a dog of thing, and shrieked like a dying pup. Its cries drove me inside to watch beastly torture of different kind – the running of the Melbourne Cup.

It was in another realm that I beat the odds. For, after (mis)conceiving blogs aplenty (from ‘Bottom Drawer’ to ‘Dear Mr MacNeile’), I wrote and submitted a story for kids – my first in many moons.

‘They call it a dust tag,’ Karl said. ‘A tag made in the dust. Out here, though, it’s a dirt tag. Dust is for city kids.’

Yeoman’s Hut is, it seems, no writer’s block!

Yours etc.

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