On Friday, I finished the first draft of the fifteenth book in the Windy Bay series. (Please note, this is only a rough first draft, so it won’t be along for a while, but there are some new ones due this summer about the setting up of a little school in Windy Bay) This next trilogy is about a group of girls finding home and love and I was crying my eyes out as I typed an unashamedly slushy ending. I don’t think I’m giving away too much by saying that the title is ‘Weddings in the Village.’
It seemed very appropriate to finish it then because it was also my thirty-eighth wedding anniversary. As my husband has been known to say when I’ve been particularly innovative and experimental, he’d have served less time for murder. He regularly asks me ‘What did you do that for.’ I say ‘I wanted to see what would happen.’ He sighs and helps me clear up the mess or shares in my triumphs.
He is the most wonderful man, my rock and anchor and the star that I steer my ship by. He is as stable as I’m excitable and emotional, as practical as I’m imaginative and as disorganised as I’m organised.
So when I write about happy marriages and relationships that evolve from friendship to love, I write from experience because I met him at a self defence class and we never planned to fall in love. I was partnered with him because I’d fenced (with swords not panels) for years so I was better with a knife than the other girls. This means that I threw him over my shoulder and kicked him the first time that we met, and he invited me for a drink afterwards, which proves what a brave man he is.
There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then, but here we are, happily together and thanking God for every day we are lucky enough to have. So I cooked him his favourite meal. (Steak, chips, mushrooms, onion rings, bacon and sausages followed by syrup sponge and custard made with a good dollop of cream.) He put up the tinplate posters in my favourite bit of the garden. See what I mean? We’re very different, but that makes it work all the better.
Here’s a picture of it now it’s done, and all cut back for now and the azaleas that remind me of my mum on the table and windowsill and coming into flower.
I can only wish you all the same luck and love I’ve found, today and every day. Take care till we meet again.
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