Writ small

It’s been a Big Week here at Bah!, and I don’t know whether the attendant adrenalin/caffieine/lack of sleep has made me hyper-aware, but alongside all of the Big Things a lot of small things have happened that have made me glad.

- I watched my cousin dance at her engagement party and felt happiness coming off her in waves.

- I’m knitting up some of my hand spun yarn and it’s soft and beautiful and, well, not unlike Actual Yarn.

- Ned is here for a few days, which means that both of my children are living under this roof, and I get to see both of their sleepy, crumpled faces in the morning.

- I bought sensible, red fur-lined boots for tramping about in the winter, and they are so cheerful and bright and have banished the spectre of last winter when I either froze in wellies or slid in warmer footwear. (Yes, even with hand knit socks on.)

- After interviewing me on BBC Radion Newcastle, Anne Leuchers asked me what I’m writing now, and when I told her about the novel she said, very matter-of-factly, “Yes, you look as though you have fiction in you.”

- A Bah! reader emailed me to say that she loved the Bah! book… and that she’d told her sister about it, and her sister turned out to be an old college friend of mine, who I’d lost touch with. And then I had an email from the old-college-friend-sister.

- At the meal-after-the-launch, I sat with Ned on one side and my cousin Beth at the other, and all of us are left handed, and we had a lovely little left-handed chat. Afterwards, I bought Beth a left handed tin-opener and vegetable-peeler, because she’d never experienced these joys, and to say thank you, she made me a lasagne.

I’ve written before about how, although Exciting Stuff is great, it’s the small details of life – and the ability to see them – that make us properly satisfied and happy. I’ve loved the Exciting Stuff this week, of course. But I really can’t wait to get those boots on.