28th June 2020

Today, for the first time since lockdown, we’re going out for afternoon tea in a friend’s garden. Raincoat and face mask are at the ready as this is England. Forgotten what it’s like to go out. My hair’s now iron grey with its Mallen streak and my body is bloated from too much sitting down, but what the hell. This is me these days. No longer do I worry what other people think. For weeks I’ve been busy writing another memoir, this time covering the period since my birth in the ‘40s up to the 2000s - just before we moved to France. Of course, as a non-celeb it’s difficult persuading a publisher to take it on so I’ve included some more salacious bits from the car-wreck of my life growing up in post-war Birmingham - a time of poverty, rationing and bomb shelters. We’ll see. Meantime I’ve been busy marketing my other pseudonym, Isabella Mancini. You remember, the one who’s written a timeslip novel about a girl and a violin in 17th century Rome (click icon on the right.) Ah, the struggles and many faces of a writer today. There are many strings to my bow - especially at my age!
(Original oil painting by friend Ivor Roth.)