I can’t believe that it has been two months already since we got back from India. I know this because today is the day I am supposed to taste the lemon pickle that I made and was supposed to store for two months before eating. I shall make a curry tonight especially to go with it. It brings back memories of Shiva and our Indian cooking lessons. I actually thought about him yesterday as a Great Spotted Woodpecker appeared in the garden and was pecking the fat. Up until now it has been tits and blackbirds that have been the main visitors, so the flash of red, black and white was exciting.

I am feeling poorly with a persistent cold that won’t go away. It comes as a sneeze, an itch in the ears, a tight chest, and feeling of aching and weariness. Oh, woe is me. It has been five years since my last one, and I’m frustrated that it won’t disappear with a pill. I need it to be GONE by Wednesday when we are off to sunny Spain to climb Moorish trails and don our hiking boots and drink wine and nibble tapas under a sombrero. I can’t wait, but must shake the tissues and inertia before that!

I did meet up with Sheila and Iniz yesterday in windy Edinburgh, and instead of seeing the sights we spent the day trying on clothes in John Lewis. I came away with one yellow T shirt and severe depression from the changing rooms. I shall maybe forego the Tapas in Spain.

Later, I idly flicked channels on the TV and came across Iain Banks’ interview with Kirsty Wark.

I was drawn in and just loved his dark humour, his wry take on the world and his cheeriness. At the point of the interview he had been given the news of his terminal cancer; in fact he died two months later, but listening to him, it was with a sense of joy at his life and his achievements and what he felt about life. I went to bed and glugged a mouthful of Benylyn and slept the sleep of the drugged. I am enthused. I must get back to that book that is sitting there, waiting to be written. It is at Chapter 10.

I met four wonderful women this last week. Bridget Biagi (who has just written an account of her life as an actress and mother and just a ‘liver of life’), and Alma Cullen, a writer of screenplays for Inspector Morse and many more TV dramas. It was lovely just listening to their memories of a time when they shared a car to go through to Glasgow for an episode or whatever. But now, they still retain that joie de vivre, and Bridget especially a childlike enthusiasm for the next adventure.

She turns eighty in November. My third new friend designs gardens and is involved in all sorts of other ventures. When we talked it was like a new world was opening up, where anything is possible. I met the fourth new friend at a random meeting at the bus stop. She had just bought a new sewing machine and immediately my beady eyes spied her purchase and then it was ‘chatter chatter’ all the way into town. She is Canadian and a quilter. We shall meet again!!!

I came home and again I had that feeling that I must get on. I must finish my silly books. The characters are all in my head, but need to get out. I saw an advert in the paper for a pavilion summerhouse (a glorified garden shed) in a soft turquoise shade.

It would be perfect. I could sit in there and write. I could sit in there and sew! John just growled and said it would be good for storing the bikes. Sometimes I long for a garden with a view to the sea where escallonia grows like red jewels, and each day the view changes with the mood of the sky and the clouds, but then I fancy trying on clothes in Marks and Spencer and it is just so easy to walk into town and see people and do whatever. Iain Banks maybe had it right as he lived in North Queensferry just across the bridge – so easy to get to the city if he wanted.

Here is the cow parsley growing like soft clouds by all the pathways. A harbinger of summer, of bumble bees and promises of all that summer brings. But it just feels like a false promise at the moment. I am still in my puffer jacket with scarf tied tight around my fragile neck.

I have also just ordered the House with the Green Shutters, written by George Douglas Brown at the turn of the century, about a small Scottish village with all the warts and cracks showing. No soft romanticism like Sunset Song and the idealist folk of Kinradddie. So once I have read it, I shall comment. I remember reading The Land of the Leal, by James Barke, set in Galloway in the Borders; that book was just so full of misery and hopelessness it affected me profoundly. It was my father’s favourite book and he read it regularly all the time he was a rubber planter in Malaya. Maybe he missed the freezing hail on a winter’s morning, when he went down to the byre to muck out the cows.

So, here’s to friends – old and new. They are warm, exciting, and inspiring. They bring out the best in us, and encourage us to do our best. And I shall! ….