Pen & ink drawing by Richard Cosgrove-Bray I have just arrived home from an enjoyable walk with my dogs through the meadows between Hoylake and West Kirby, which stretch around Gilroy Nature Park.  The spring sunshine was bouncing off pools of water lying half-submerged beneath drooping tussocks of winter-bleached grass.  A small flock of goldfinches was flitting around the bare trees.  The birds are back early after wintering abroad.  On the duck pond were the usual mob of Canada geese, mallards, coots and moorhens, plus a large flock of redshank who prefer the pond in the flooded field on the other side of the public footpath. Richard and I are still waiting for the conveyancing on the house sale and purchase to complete.  I went into our estate agents' office on Thursday to enquire into the delay, and asked if the process usually takes this long - 10 weeks and counting, now.  The delay has been caused by our buyer's buyer, who had to wait for a divorce settleme

For the last three years around New Year, I've created a list of goals which I hoped to achieve within the following twelve months.  This is one way to keep track of the progress of various projects and it's a bit of self-entertainment. My goals for 2014 were:- Finish Fabian. Publish a 3rd free ebook anthology which will be called Travel Stories . Write one short story per month (minimum). Continue to collect dolls, swim and have more fun! The bad news is that Fabian:  An Artisan-Sorcerer Story still isn't finished.  The good news is that there remains less than 10,000 words to go, and so the completion of the 100,000 word first draft is well within sight. The proposed free ebook anthology, Travel Stories , has been cancelled as I'll be moving to another area of Wirral and so my involvement with Riverside Writers - the main source of contributions to the ebook - will be greatly reduced.  For the same reason I recently resigned as the group's Chairperson,