Still Here!

I am still here even though it seems like ages since I last wrote.

I have n't finished a book in ages because I've been really busy and when I've not been then the guitar has been getting a pounding! I did finish Johan Theorin's The Darkest Room which I need to write up on here.

I've given in notice on my rented house and the first thing they said to me was that it is going to be sold anyway so it looks like I would have been getting kicked out again. The purchase of my new place has not been without it's frustrations but it seems as though we'll exchange contracts shortly and then within 2 weeks it will be mine. Warboys here I come!!! The contingency is that the very lovely Kate has said I can move in with her for a while.

Somebody poke me if I ever again think about buying a house right in the middle of appraisal season when I'm leading three projects at work and one of them, the site's most advanced project, is approaching handover to Japan. Unfortunate.

So, I spent a lot of time over the weekend in the garden, which has n't had any attention (apart form lawn cutting) all year. Kate was here and was a star, as ever. But the sun shone and it was wonderful :-)

Speaking of Kate, we've passed the 1 year anniversary since we met. I took her up to Yorkshire for the weekend and we had a day in York and then went to stay at my Mum's. Their first meeting, and everybody got on grand.

A Room for the Dead by Noel Hynd

Quite enjoyed this but when the living, that you can touch and make love with, turn out to have been dead all along, then it gets a bit bizarre!! Still, a couple of quid for a cheao Kindle download helped kill the hours in Premium Economy over Northern Siberia!


New Hampshire state cop Frank O'Hara, approaching 50 and close to retirement, is given a case--a young woman is beheaded, her right hand cut off--that duplicates the M.O. of serial killer Gary Ledbetter. But Gary, a "low-rent Lothario" nabbed by O'Hara, was executed months ago in Florida, after political machinations moved the killer to a state with capital punishment. Since then, O'Hara's life has turned to ashes. He's taken seriously to booze, his wife has left him, his partner has committed suicide--and now, deep into another hated winter, something seems to be haunting his house: floors creak, doors slam, an empty rocking chair rocks. A tangle of right-wing state politics, skinhead thieves, a mysterious young woman and, increasingly, dialogues between O'Hara and what seems to be Gary's ghost lead the cop through past police corruption and malfeasance to a shattering conclusion. Throughout, the atmospherics are excellent and the local color first-rate: "There's ten months of winter and two months of bad skiiing. The state animal is the skunk, the state bird is the black fly, the state citizen is the deadbeat, and the state sport is petty larceny."