The administrative team of this year’s Preditors & Editors Readers Poll have alerted me to the fact that my short story, Seagull Inn has been nominated! I am totally surprised by this! People have until midnight tonight (Jan 15th) to cast their votes. To vote for my story, visit:- http://www.critters.org/predpoll/shortstorysf.shtml where the entries are listed by alphabetical order of title. To vote for me as an author, visit:- http://www.critters.org/predpoll/author.shtml As you may recall, Seagull Inn featured in an anthology titled Ruins Terra , edited by Eric T Reynolds and published last year by Hadley Rille Books.

On Friday 4th, I attended a supporters' event at the new Echo Arena in Liverpool. Due to my role as an ambassador for the city throughout its status as the European Capital of Culture 2008 , I had been invited, along with other ambassadors and volunteers, for a preview of the building. Several local bands, including Major Major, Forsaken and The Farm, performed on stage, with local radio DJ Pete Price introducing both them and braving the mic to sing When you Walk Through a Storm – a rather clichéd choice, in my opinion. This event enabled the arena staff to have a dry run prior to its official opening celebrations. While the plain interior is entirely utilitarian, this new arena can seat 10,000 people, and will herald a new era of entertainment in Liverpool, which apparently boasts the fastest growing economy of any other British city. However, a cardinal crime was committed by the catering, which ran out of milk. No milk for my cup of tea? Bah! Sooooo, what else is new….

A busy day, yesterday. I spent much of it in Liverpool, wandering around the elegant Met Quarter with my mother. It’s not a particularly extensive designer shopping mall but we weren’t in a hurry to brave the sub-zero temperatures outside. We entertained ourselves by poking fun at spectacularly hideous party dresses. I still don’t see why a designer label warrants such silly prices, when the garment doesn’t look much different from high street merchandise. Certainly the quality of sewing or fabrics weren’t noticeably better. It was rather amusing, however, to see an old acquaintance of mine scowling dramatically from a huge photo in Guess ’s window...! We wandered into Mathew Street and had coffee in the John Lennon Café . There was only one other group of customers in there, but the coffee was good.  Mum's flying out to Australia soon where she'll be for three months, visiting various relatives. From there, we headed to the Christmas Market in Williamson Square. The fou

The vet has just phoned me to say Emily's operation went well, and I can collect her at 4pm. This house feels so empty without "Little Mouse" leaping all over the place! (We nicknamed her that when she was a very young puppy, because she wasn't much bigger than a mouse - well, a hamster, perhaps). I can recite all the phrases about responsible pet owners and unwanted puppy litters bla bla bla, but I still feel like a total meanie, booking her in to be spade by the vet. I know she'll be frightened and in pain, and wondering why I've "abandoned" her... Poor little mite. ***   "I don't like Wuthering Heights," Cat said. "It's soppy." Then we coaxed her to watch Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Bi noche in the lead roles. She likes it now. "Isn't he the one who played Voldemort ?" she asked. "Yes," I said. "He looks different with a nose."   ***   4.20pm, and finally I get to re

The electrician was here at 10am, to see if he could discover why the downstairs power kept blowing. Four or five times in the last two weeks, all the electrics for downstairs have blown out, each time when we were right in the middle of cooking dinner. As this hasn’t happened before in all the time we’ve lived here, we figured we had better call in an expert to take a look at it. There are some things you just don’t mess with unless you really, genuinely know what you’re doing. An electrical power supply is one of these. So the electrician deduced that too much power was going through one fuse. How come it hadn’t blown before now? Well, the only thing we can think of is that we have a new deep fat fryer which is more powerful than previous types. Each time the electrics had blown, we’d been using that – at the same time as using the oven, hob rings, kettle, two lots of ceiling lights, the electric fire and running the DVD player and TV, plus the music system which the TV speakers wo