The world from my window

They say that good things come in threes... Well, two good things have just happened to me, writing-wise. There's a feature about my year in Corfu in the October issue of Good Housekeeping magazine. One of their feature writers contacted me after reading this blog. I didn't make the front cover but then Tess Daly is rather beautiful, even if I've never actually watched Strictly Come Dancing . And then I had jaw-dropping news that I'd won a holiday for two to Peru (to Peru! ) in a travel writing competition for Saga and The Daily Telegraph. There are two things I'm waiting to hear about, but I won't jinx them by saying what they are.  The moral of this story is you have to be in it to win it - you need to put yourself out there, here and everywhere, if that's what you want. Yes, you'll get rejected - lots of times - and wonder if it's really worth carrying on. But if you love writing, you're passionate about it, you just do it - as w...

I don't wish to pile more gloom and doom on an already saturated gloomy and doomy situation. But someone asked me a couple of weeks ago if I actually knew anyone who had been affected by the recession. At the time, it was only my daughter who had been hit. I say 'only'. As a young mum with a mortgage and a wedding later this year, she wasn't expecting it. But the people she worked for had to trim their cloth according to their sails and, woomph, Number One Daughter was pushed overboard. She coped, of course. She always does. Got herself work within days via Facebook and now juggles three jobs and breeds rabbits for a living. A few weeks on and I hear more friends and acquaintances are suffering. Well respected people I have worked with for years are suddenly made redundant, or expected to do the jobs of three people. Others whose contracts just aren't being renewed. And there's me, with about a month to go at the Death Star and then what? Who knows. Something w...