A couple of months ago my MS took a swing at the optic nerve in my left eye, blinding it. This wouldn't normally be disastrous except my right eye has always been very weak. I haven't been able to read since except by a magnifying 300 per cent on the monitor. I have regained a small amount of sight in my left eye, but all that's done is given me doubled vision.

It's been almost a year and a half since my last blog entry, there's been a lot of keeping on keeping on, and some dark times.

Sorry if I've been a bit quiet of late, but writing's been on the backburner for the last few months. I'm still doing bits and pieces occasionally, though not to any great intensity.

Well that was a bit of a dark patch.

Apologies to anyone who's waiting for the next instalment of 'On Her Own Petard' but I've been mired in office politics of my own, and just haven't felt like writing.

I've finally reached the end of Stevie's Tuesday, and it only took 6000 words - eek - I'm too tired to go through final checks tonight so I'll post it in the morning.

I know I've been a tad quiet of late, but I've been hard at writing the next part of OHOP... since I've abandoned daily parts I decided to make each new part an entire day in Stevie's life... unfortunately she packs a lot in to her days - I'm 3000 words in and it's not even tea time!

I have written nothing this week and have no real excuse for not continuing Stevie's adventures.

I'm having a spot of bother with OHOP - it's not that major really, but I think I'm more than a little bit in love with Stevie, and it's affecting how I treat her. I fear giving her too easy a ride, or making her too perfect.

Does this happen to everyone, or am I being singularly weird? :)

I've just come back from a long weekend in my home village, and my best intentions of writing the next few parts of OHOP went by the board very early on. I'm not sure why I couldn't write in my mother's house - a little guilt perhaps for the mother character in the serial, or possibly just another case of me compartmentalising my life... I write in Hampshire, I don't in Wales.

When I first came to BCTS you may remember I was rather demoralised by the place where I had been posting my stuff before. Although all my new work is primarily posted here, I still post some in 'the other place' for a few readers who like my stuff, and haven't wandered over here.

Has anyone else been following the spat between Times food critic Giles Coren and the paper's subeditors? Highly entertaining stuff, tho not for the faint hearted, as Mr Coren's opinion are rather pithy.

A good summation from the Guardian here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/25/pressandpublishi...

I'll leave the bears in peace...

I'm sure everyone's bored witless with my bowel gazing by now, but I thought I'd say that after visiting my GP this morning, and changing meds, I appear to be over the worst... fingers crossed while touching wood. Now to more creative outpourings :)

I've coped with a fair bit over the last six years of health troubles, so why have just spent the last half hour sitting in my living room crying my eyes out.

As I've been a bit preoccupied with other regions lately I thought I'd treat my brain for a change. My old Chambers Thesaurus has begun shedding leaves at an alarming rate, so I thought I'd buy a replacement (as opposed to wandering down to the warehouse and thieving another).

There'll not be an episode of OHOP this evening, as I'm a tad rough. There was a certain room in the flat I hadn't visited since Thursday (first time experience for me), and my GP provided a very thorough remedy... I'm not feeling very creative right now :)

So there I was, no longer a slave to the tobacco corporations, free from the addiction that dictated much of my day.

The last competition entry of the year went in the post yesterday so I'm free to write fiction (I'm poetried out for a few months - I don't write long works but the distillation process is very draining).

Ever since I was very young I have told myself stories before going to sleep (though sometimes I get so involved in them they keep me awake).

It's that time of year again, when there are quite a few poetry competitions for Anglos like me. I've not entered any for the last couple of years after being placed in one, and getting outed as a poet in work (definitely non-U in an IT department). I have a few to get ready, a fairly painstaking process, so no new fiction for a couple of weeks at least.

Although I'm from Gower, and would vigorously oppose anyone calling me a 'Swansea Jack', I have to admit an attachment to the 'ugly, lovely town'. In the ten years since I moved away it's managed to smarten itself up a bit, and returning as a tourist I spent much of last week trying to photograph it.

China has, eventually, begun to appear on my shelves, although it's somewhat different from what I started searching for more than a month ago. It didn't take too long to discover that I have an innate expensive taste in porcelain, the imari patterns I was most attracted to were art nouveau Derby pieces, beautiful but impractical for use.

Don't know if anyone's seen this yet...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7350099.stm

Hope it's a bit more sympathetic than the Little Britain TVs (tho they were frighteningly accurate)

I've spent the last fortnight alternating between the throes of nicotine deprivation and guilt from succumbing to it - I am too weak.

I've written nothing, though I've had a few new ideas, and earlier this week I - accidentally - half sold the idea of 'Midnight Angels' to one of the commissioning editors in work - like I need the pressure!

Since my last blog entry I've been immersed in the world of English porcelain patterns (or at least the eBay window on it), and have started placing bids.

Another meander through the trivia of my life, but then I don't really worry too much about the big stuff.

Sad news, another great gone. Feels like a little bit of the future has gone with him.

The town where I live was expanded from a small market town during the nineteen sixties, spreading out into the surrounding countryside. As the newly developed areas were built on greenfield sites finding street names has been something of a problem - one area has streets named for composers, another for islands and another for Roman emperors!

GRAND SLAM! I can't believe it, I can't see for the tears

I'm writing an SF story set in the near future, but written in the past tense (if that makes sense). The problem is, although not written in the first person, the 'author' must be in the future to write in the past tense, but some of the things written about would/will still be the same when the 'author' is writing, so should they be referred to in the present tense?