What a week!

Thanks to everyone who came along to the on line launch event on Facebook for Passionate Harvest. It was fabulous to see so many of you there. There will be some more opportunities to win copies soon for those of you who haven't bought your copy yet. The day job is keeping me out of mischief too as we're hugely busy. On Wednesday our team went to the National Trust's inaugural Octavia Hill awards at St Martin-in-the-fields in London. We were second in our category out of over 300 entrants. Thank you again to everyone who voted for us. In the few hours before our train back we slipped into the National Gallery to ogle some pictures. I got a postcard of the one chap - a Monsieur de Norvins painted by Ingres in 1811. At first glance he reminded me of Mr collins from Pride and Prejudice but there was something about his eyes. He had the eyes of a man who has seen too much and is trying to hold on to his humanity and inner self. I must look him up and find out more about him.THIS IS HIM if you want to take a peep. We ambled past the House of Commons through the Bangaladesh demo, paused to watch a Bollywood movie being filmed in Trafalgar square and sat by the Thames for a while to cool off before heading home. This week is equally mad - it's exam season for the belles. Mocks, GCSE's (early!) and A levels. Tomorrow if you're near Brownhills library at 2pmish then Phillipa Ashley and I are reprising our I love Lucy act with a talk about books, publishing, life and anything you might want to ask us. Wednesday is mega exciting - it's another trip to London for another awards event for the day job. I now possess a blue maxi dress for the event which makes me look like a galleon in full sale. Youngest belle refused to let me buy the purple one because she said it made me look like Barney the dinosaur. The reasons for the excitement - 1) it's in a posh place with very posh people. 2) Vogue, the Guardian and the Observer are involved and 3) There is a possibility that Colin Firth may even be there. I promise I'll tell you all about it when we get back!

Who turned the heat off?

Just home from a lovely few days at Burnham on sea where it was sunny and relatively warm. Here it's cold and there appears to be bits of frozen white stuff lying on my lawn.
I visited the Jane Austen centre in Bath, very interesting - got a Mr Darcy fridge magnet and a large postcard of Colin Firth as Mr Darcy for my office. Purely for research reasons of course. We also went to the Fleet Air Museum to look at planes and got to stand on a simulation of an aircraft carrier. Mmm, none of the belles fancy the Navy as a career. It was all terribly macho and BBC plummy voices but great fun.
I did most of my Christmas shopping and bought a lovely Radley handbag in cream - it's a kind of half moon shape and very pretty. I must stop visiting Kate Hardy's blog, I think she's a bad influence rofl.
When we arrived home, the lovely Sara from Little Black Dress had sent me some cover flats of Animal Instincts and they are very gorgeous. I plan to frame one but I think I may hold a contest for one of the others after Christmas.
I managed a little bit of writing while we were away, not as much as I'd planned but enough to make me happy. Now, it's back to the grindstone and the laundry mountain.

In search of Mr. Darcy - part two

Monday's weather was still mixed so we decided to leave Tenby for another day and went to Pembroke instead. Pembroke castle had the knights of Longshanks there wearing armour and staging fights. The sun came out and we had a lovely day.

Then our quest resumed - were the rumours true? We headed to Tenby in the beautiful sunshine to find out.

(Photo's from The Western Telegraph) The house seen above was apparantly used for some interior shots for the film and the other pic is of Cillian Murphy on set. We roamed around Tenby on our search but couldn't find the filming or any proof re: The Colin Firth rumour. There were people who'd seen Sienna Miller and Keira Knightly though.

The males in our party were not very fussed about looking for either of those two ladies and when we couldn't find Colin the females kind of lost interest too, and we abandoned the quest. So, is Colin Firth in the film? I really don't know but it was fun looking for him.

In search of Mr. Darcy - part one

We arrived in Wales to the news that Keira Knightly and Colin Firth were filming a new movie about Dylan Thomas just down the road from where we were staying. Naturally in a party made up of eight females and only two males the vote was quickly decided that we should investigate. The latest rumour had the film crew at Newgale beach - unfortunately the weather on Sunday was atrocious but when the rain lifted for an hour on the evening guess where we headed. Not that we expected to see them but just to see if there was any sign of a film crew around there. We trudged along the sands in the most incredible evening light, shafts of sun radiating through the clouds onto the cliffs and sand. No sign of Mr. Darcy. When it began to sleet we went to the Mariners arms and consoled ourselves with hot chocolate.
Rumours persisted however that the filming was still going on and there were some mentions of Tenby - so guess where we went next?
To be continued