Yes, it’s heading for summer but here in mid Ireland flaming June is, quite frankly, flaming awful. I know Ireland has a reputation for bad weather but this year it’s been all over the place. January, for example, was very nice. Sunny, mild and promising the earliest of early springs, we were ready to enjoy it. Colin, our redoubtable postman, soon crushed our enthusiasm. A warm January always meant a cold and stormy few months to follow, he said gloomily. He was right, but even he didn’t predict this flaming awful June.
A lot of it is down to Storm Alex that sent high winds and cold showers across to us for a couple of days before the storm itself hit. Since then we’ve had ten days of storm force winds, icy rain and sudden, short, bursts of tantalising sun. We’ve still got the heating on morning and evening and actually lit the fire a couple of nights. Here’s hoping it turns into flaming June soon.
Everything is growing, of course, and we have been waiting for our wild flower bed to burst into life. It did, putting forth what we hoped was the first of our 60 Irises. Alas, we got one. One beautiful but solitary flower in a sea of unidentified leaves. A few more flowers have poked their heads out in the last few days including some lovely poppies but they appear to be surrounded by some sort of wheat or corn. I suspect this is due to the bird feeder. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea putting the bed just underneath it. Still, we may be growing some of our own bird seed for next year.
We have had some problems with deliveries despite the nice new road (although that only reaches half way along. The rest is still a farm track). After waiting in all day for a courier we received a message saying they called but there was no one home. We spent several minutes stamping around the house, muttering and cursing. Apparently the parcel, due by 8.52am, was back at the other end of the county by 9.22, which is total nonsense. Jacqui sent a furious and scathing reply as all deliverymen use the Eircode and satnavs, generally with no problem. Without it we are almost impossible to find.
When we calmed down we decided it was a good thing nobody could hear us. They might send the men in white coats to take us away as mentally deranged. Though they probably wouldn’t be able to find us unless we sent them the Eircode. We had a lot of fun imagining the phone call.
‘Can we have your Eircode please?’
‘Er, no.’
‘Ah come on – we can’t find you without it.’
‘Absolutely no!’
‘Don’t be difficult now. We’re paid by results and we’re below our quota for this month.’
‘Goodbye.’
One good thing about the flaming awful June should be I have no excuses for not getting on with my writing but this has become a dispiriting exercise recently. My publisher has been very ill and in a small firm this makes progress extremely slow. I signed the contract for “A Long Shadow” (Alex Hastings 5) fourteen months ago but there has be no progress at all since then. There is an eighteen-month deadline on “exploitation of rights” but I don’t want to evoke it yet. So I’m stuck unable to write book six as I don’t know what will happen to book five – or the others. There’s no publicity and book four isn’t linked to the series on Amazon. This is despite requesting it and the relisting of the e-book over a year ago. It is rather depressing as I feel all my work is just fading away.
After a long talk Jacqui and I came up with a new strategy. Some of you may know I have Irish relatives, the Cooneys from around Cork. They include a cousin, Jem, who is a bit of a writer and a dog lover. We have swapped stories and shared experiences and together come up with an idea for a new book, maybe several books. As I am already published and have more experience I am doing a lot of the writing and editing but we will publish under his name, “with” me. I know there is sometimes resistance to writers swapping genres from some readers and I do hope to return to Alex Hastings soon. This arrangement allows Jem’s stories to get out there. And there is a bit of a mystery/crime element to the books, especially if we get to do the second one.
So there we are, still toddling along. I’ve pulled my shoulder again and can’t use the strimmer. You can almost hear the nettles sniggering with delight. Little do they know I have acquired a weed burner and as soon as the wind dies down I’m out there to settle their hash! I don’t think I should try it in this weather. I’d probably burn down the wood. That would really make it a flaming awful June.