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Whatever Twelfth Night means to you - and it means something special to me - I think Christmas really ends on Dec 31st. So that's it, then. Over for another year. And this one hasn't been all that bad- mainly because the village is an ideal setting for an ancient festival - and gets more so by the day. Only recently the local bus company contributed to our lurch into the 18th century by cancelling their service. So it's official. I now live in village with no way in and NO WAY OUT.

In past years our mince-pie, mulled wine and singing on the green around a tastefully decorated Christmas tree was ogled by top-deck passengers - who probably believed they'd strayed back in time - or had had too many extra-strong eggnogs. No more. Now the only mechanical sound is the approach of Father Christmas on his decorated lawn-mower. And while we're on the subject of singing, what is the problem SOME people seem to have with carols? Every year a few of us (never more than a dozen, nothing like a mob) go around the houses and sing- for charity. We practise and we're not bad enough to set the dogs off. AND ITS FOR CHARITY. We're not talking anything controversial, either: just nursing care for cancer patients and a children's hospice. Most of our neighbours (even the music-lovers) welcome us to their doors and often inside to thaw around their also-tastefully-decorated fireplaces. They feed us and give us drink - and money. They wish us Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. It's straight out of Thomas Hardy, for God's sake. But at just a couple of houses, there's bad stuff happening- curtains are quickly closed and tv's turned up. In this way they manage to save a pound and only get one verse of Silent Night (OK, so it's not our best piece).

Here's something for them anyway.

A friend in our nearest town got a knock on the door, Dec 1st. A pair of bulging fifteen year old girls stood there and sang 'Away in a manger' three times. Not the whole thing, just 'away in a manger' three times over. It was all they knew. When my friend suggested they should learn a carol before they set out carol-singing, they suggested she give them money or they'd trash her car. Festive, huh? So for Christmas next year I wondered about arranging an alternative and exclusive to those people who can't be doing with 'The Holly and the Ivy' in return for a handful of change. What about a visit from the Cellulite Sisters?

You couldn't make it up

To Waverton this week to talk to the Waverton Good Read Award crew because Salvage is on their list. This is brilliant. Waverton is a small Cheshire village where reading is really big, mainly thanks to bibliophiles Wendy and Gwen. And they know how to treat writers. Firstly they feed you a proper three course meal (with wine). Then they make an awful lot of the village come out on a vile, wet dark night and PAY to hear you speak about your favourite subject (you and your novel). Then they ask intelligent, well-read sort of questions which give you an excuse to speak about your favourite subject for even longer. Rather than rioting at this point and burning down the hall, they thank you politely and give you more drink - and then they promise that they'll all read your book. And away you go.

Now I'm home again, I'm wondering if Waverton really exists. After all there's a nasty virus going around that gives you a high temperature- maybe a touch of delerium? If it wasn't for finding the mug next morning you might think Waverton was the sort of place invented by an over-optimistic fictioneer.

Gene-genie

October was a wicked month, dry of writing and then just dry.

I once had four uncles. As October breezed in, the last and dearest of them - Uncle George - found he was going to die. All of a sudden. No prologue and not much time for a finale. We don't mess around, we North Wales Prices. He accomplished the task stoically, in good order and with all preparations made, before the month's end.

Fittingly he had been born on April 25 - Shakespeare's birthday.(Some boring pedants hold out for the 23 but that's rubbish- it was 25th, trust me). Of all the word jugglers, language baiters and story-budders in the extensive Price family my Uncle George was most practised and best. His narratives, his contrary emotional postures and some of his
single lines I've hoarded all my life and ransacked often. Of course we never ever discussed my writing - though he was a great reader, Nicholas Monserrat was the man for him. And anyway I was family. That's a relationship that grows in the mulch of talk.

Uncle George would have been especially pleased to see a November now so mild there are still dandelions in bloom on the marsh fields down to the river- and on untended vegetable plots.

"How's the garden?" I remember asking him.

"Show quality, the dandelions are. A wonderful display. This year they're in every shade from palest lemon to a deep sunburst gold." Pause for effect. "But mine are the size of dahlias."

Predator

Back home - one of those days which makes you think you're going to pay for this in the next life it's so good.
What I don't want to come back as is a rabbit. They harvested all the fields that run down to the Dee marshes- everything golden and rolling towards the river, the colour of honey under a low sun. A few hundred geese are gleaning the fields, mainly Canadas but with few natives. To avoid putting them up I have to constantly change course with two dogs. The spaniel knows his limitations- these are out of his league but the LabradorX not so much. Perhaps both sides, dog and goose, carry a gene from across the ocean that responds to each. What to do? Try to leave them to feed in peace, or give them a real good fright by running at them with two yapping dogs so they get the message: I don't have a gun but somethings that look like me do. Don't get friendly. Don't forget to post look-outs.
Six buzzards over the unworkable bits of marsh. Too many even for the rooks to put up resistance- they go back to the tops of the oaks from where they can shout abuse safely.
Not a single rabbit out here today. The buzzards take a pass over the spaniel- small, well-fed, brown- it's a mistake anyone could make.
Rabbits might be in short supply soon and Jem will definitely have to watch himself. Up Pipers Lane there were rabbits sitting out in the sun, not caring if they became a meal for dog or buzzard- probably would have welcomed it. There's myxomatosis about- a nasty slow death. Everything out there needs to keep in mind even a woman without a gun can kill.
So here's to that good lady who invented this neat little killer disease! May you come back as a rabbit.

Get your Wales delivered

It's just not Welsh enough round here. So off to Pembroke/Ceredigion border for a week of the
REAL THING. Packed the JA (even though I knew I'd be unpacking it in a week's time with not a word added). Packed warm clothing and waterproofs. Packed green wellies and best black wellies for Sundays. Packed 'Great Vegetarian Restaurants of South Ceredigion' (I wish).

Very nice hotel: The Cliff. The cliff in question dropped a couple of hundred feet below our window so no one can say it didn't do what it said on the tin. This is the USP about Wales - it delivers. On our first walk out we're met with a notice. We were to make sure we didn't tread on the adders in the long grass. There is only long grass, all the sheep, presumably having been bought up by the Big T and turned into cutlets...then we're approached by a very bemused-looking South African man who says, "About so-big with marks along their backs?" "Those would be the adders," my husband confirms. We watch him stepping carefully back to the safety of the hotel like a man doing his first fire-walk. (But he's South African! Don't they wrestle poisonous mambas while still in their cradles?)

But South West Wales is wonderful and so are its adders. It's the place where you can plummet 200 feet off a cliff if you want to - and not be bothered by a sign telling you how a ten-second bracing plunge followed by a brief splat on the rocks may damage your health. It's the place where you can put your hand on the casket containing St David's bones (AND St Justinian's bones AND another second-division saint whose name I've forgotten) and have a quiet word with him. Like I said Wales delivers. I feel like running out of the cathedral and finding somebody English and going, "yeah, go on then, bet you can't do that with St George, can you? Can you? Bet you haven't managed to hang on to so much as his little finger, have you? Bet you haven't even got his fingerNAIL in a matchbox. Have you?

It's the place where you go to the man selling fish and laver-bread off a stall and ask for laver-bread and he says "The woman did the laverbread died yesterday - but her husband has promised to bring it in himself tomorrow."

Plenty more to worry about: blood and reading

The big-T's maltreatment of turtles still in top ten. Have now found more places to buy food AND whilst nipping into their outlet in Mold for the one item I couldn't find anywhere else- I'm not saying what it was, they'll be smug- I also made time to harrass them about a big-T trolley in the River Alyn. How did I know it was there's? Blue...big-T written on (rusting) handle -I can read it - bit of a clue.Will be checking on how that's going, soonest b-T. Oh and why have I started calling them big-T? Because using their name too often got blog frozen as Spam (tinned, surely?). Just one more thing, big-T and don't think I'm not keeping count.

Anyway now there's food in the house again got down to business on the JA- autopsy very satisfying- some lovely sites to browse...then find that someone called Grumpy Old Bookman has posted some writing advice for me. While he likes my name - oh good - he thinks I shouldn't try to be too clever and should up the blood and thunder quotient in my work. Acutally there's a fair bit of blood in Salvage and a huge Tescoing (it's my new expletive) storm. What's the matter with this man? If he's really a 'bookman' - I thought that was a typeface - why not make the ultimate effort and try reading the things? There are many more effective products on the market for lighting fires, say, keeping out drafts and eating off. All of them on sale at the bog-T. But don't go there.

Tesco boycot

Having managed to add an extra 2 hours to every day by avoiding neighbours I've now had them taken off me again by my Tesco boycot - it's to do with turtles and China - so this week have had to make good on my threat to Sir Terry somebody that we'll be shopping elsewhere - in fact, we'd rather starve than give him any more of our money. This is already an exaggeration. Only I'd rather starve. The husband and dogs would rather go on supporting an organization who refuses to take seriously the rights of turtles everywhere so long as they can carry on eating. It's bad timing because this would normally be a great season to boycot Tesco in. The allotment I run with Vivienne could certainly feed vegetarian me (though prob. not husband and dogs). Sadly rain has caused exposion of slug population so it's nurturing giant slugs and their families instead. Today down there we have a sort of rainbow coilition of slug-kind in every shade. All boycotting Tesco quite happily thank-you very much. They have left just a couple of spring onions and one of those dark-red lettuces Vivienne insists on growing for people to leave on the side of their plates.

I press on to find shops that sell food. Wander round looking in windows at cameras, novelty figurines and pictures of houses that look nicer than mine. I now find that apart from Tesco all the local shops sell non-edible stuff, if you don't count shoes. Good news for dogs who do count shoes. Bad news for husband.

Finally back home again, a neighbour offers some runner beans. After re-telling me all her favourite slug-stories. Takes ages. The one about her Uncle Sidney and the Eccles cake makes me feel sick.

with waterside access

Since coming back to the village I've noticed a few changes. We seem to have several new water features. Walking the dogs this morning and agonising about what to say at looming book launch (of Salvage) - for example why out of all the words in the English language did I go and call it the one that sort of defies launching? - I find the grass I'm walking on has gone. It's turned into something that slops over my wellies. Obviously the whole wetness-theme has leached out of the text and is overtaking so-called reality (you never know with this village) in that Philip K.Dick style that you can use to get any plot out of a dead-end.

It's not as if the village didn't have everything in the way of natural hazards already: barbed-wire that someone does macrame with and then drapes over farm gates - as though that was going to stop me - then there's the filthy stuff they spray on all those fields of 'finest' vegetables, smells like Domestos and strips the polish off your boots. I am SICK of decontaminating two dogs morning and afternoon as though they both worked in the nuclear industry. If I didn't have that to contend with I'd write an extra 500words a day.

And now the place is semi-flooded. Not flooded note so you can stop normal life altogther and go to the shops in a dinghy - just very very soggy.

Wonderfully sinister

Back to the village after Oxford jaunt to research for the JA. How do other people do research? I wandered about a bit though I needed- really needed - to look at Logic Lane off The High but got so involved in that oo-oh that wasn't here six months ago where's that really strange shop that used to sell...? that I forgot to measure how wide Logic Lane was- immensely important point this - then had to go back later. Then there was the Turl Bar. Easy that one - just wait till
11am when it opened go in have drink(s) jot down current colour of walls, etc- except it didn't. Into the Mitre Hotel at the front- who owns it - to ask why? Nobody knows. My character HAS to go into the Turl Bar at lunchtime. Is it often closed now I keep asking every member of staff in the whole place. It isn't closed they all say. Yes it is! It's locked but with a sign saying it's open. But it's really closed! Is it the man who brings the coffee says, why's that then?

Go back to rented place to rethink chapter.

Walk along Southmoor Road, where I spent my seven week honeymoon in a bedsit on the first floor of No 80. From the pavement I note that the bay window which once was at least eight feet wide is now down to five and a half, maybe. In a local magazine I find Southmoor Road being described as 'wonderfully sinister' by a more successful writer than me.

There's nothing sinister about Southmoor Road, mate. Not like a bar where you're trying to set a scene but locks itself up everytime you try to go in it. Compared to that Southmoor Road's got a touch of Disneyland.

A date with your ex

That's what it's like when you really want to be getting on with the JA - new book - but the proofs of the last one arrive. It's now nearly three years since you did the first draft of what's just dropped through the letter box. Some bits - some very few bits in my case - your editor didn't object to so they're now completely unfamiliar. Did I write this? Those are the best bits though. Most of the proofs are so like that person you once thought interesting but now...well, you've heard the stories, you know how they end. You know what they want to drink.

Finished the proofs yesterday. Can't just go back to the JA today. That's tacky. Decide to have another day off. Get out of this village. There's an added reason to do this. At home this terrible howling noise is making it hard to write a note to the milkman never mind anything new. The noise is coming from my dog Jem who has just had his second birthday. He's not celebrating -he doesn't know, after all, there wasn't a cake - but what he does know is that in dog terms he's now a man. And there are two female dogs in the village who are definitely up for it. Wild-eyed dogs that are complete strangers are appearing on the green and risking death by tractor just to find these bitches. Bitches is exactly what they are- they're making Jem's life and therefore my life a misery. Not exactly feminist this thought: why must people have female dogs at all? Without them, all the village companion animals could live in this sort canine Cistercian retreat, pleasures of the flesh not on the agenda. Well not that pleasure. There's still long country walks. And bones.

As it does every year, the eggspiracy interest has finally folded - we live at the end of a lane so it can take weeks for something else to come along. Last recorded mention of eggs from neighbour was that this time the eggs seemed smaller than previously. They weren't. But who do you complain to about a falling off in quality of anonymous gifts?
What I promised myself I'd do today is not spend any more time wandering round out there soliciting hot news of somebody's trip to the gym (You're going AGAIN today? - long pause - Yes, it seems just the once won't do it) and more time working on The J.A.

I've been thinking I need somewhere else to say things rather than to friends and family. Out loud. Over Easter what happened for the last three Easters happened again. Someone in our village left a chocolate egg on the doorstep early Easter Sunday. Not quite everyone in the village gets on but most do. This gives the inhabitants two things they can do. 1. eat the egg and 2. develop their conspiacy theories about who does and who doesn't get an egg. Me and my husband have eaten our egg by mid-afternoon. I don't need a theory. I know why some people don't get eggs. So I was telling someone who doesn't live here about the egg-gift (o-oh, nice they say) but I can't stop there. I have to say if I was writing this on the fifth year...I tell them what would happen. There's silence. Not even nervous laughter. Got to stop saying things out loud.