Rugby, Fairy tales, and more

Twas an interesting weekend. Chucked down with rain yet again, so a few of my soon-to-be-dried persimmons have got mould on them. Some students suggested I'd hung them too early, but I don't get a lot of free time during daylight hours, so I have to do them when I have a chance.

What a great rugby result! Very happy as an England to see the All Blacks beaten. Will be a tough final against South Africa (I was rooting for Wales, the home nation), but if we can put in another performance like Saturday it'll be hard to beat us. Still, we're probably due an off day so I'll be on tenderhooks throughout the whole game.

Got my proofread back for Coming Back to Me This Christmas, so it's now been loaded onto my kindle for a final check. I have to have the final file uploaded by November 11th, but of course I want to finish it earlier so I can get it out for the reviewers. I tend to take my sweet time about this part so will be trying to push myself along.

The last three or four mornings I've been sat quietly with my phone (and usually the cat) while working on Slim 5. Progress, now I've been devoting some real quiet time to it, has been good. It's close to 50,000 words and I'm on chapter 51. I got 1300 words this morning which is brilliant because I average about 250 a day on Slim books. Still, I'm not convinced by this book yet even as the end starts to unfold, so I'll probably try to find some trusted beta readers to give me an opinion. I'm actually confident I can finish it sometime soon, however. Fingers crossed.

Yesterday I was looking after my daughter, so took her up to the Fairy Tale Museum at Kurohime. It's a place near the ski resort which is dedicated to children's books and in particular to Michael Ende, writer of The Neverending Story, who apparently lived there for a while or something. In any case, it's pretty much just a couple of rooms of old kids books behind glass displays and a small, very expensive gift shop. The outside is much more fun, with great views of the mountains and space to run around.

However, by the time we got there it was absolutely chucking down and we could barely see the road for the mist. My daughter got scared by some puppet display and so after a forty-five minute drive up there, we left after half an hour. Disappointing, but you never know until you try these things. Below is the view you should be able to see, from when I was there three years ago.