Yes, yes – what with the heat, and so many people going on vacation, and work slowing down*, August is a lazy month: time thickens and slackens, and one wants to slow down as well.

It’s that time of the year when I begin to toy with notions of a reading week: Henry Treece, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Sabatini, and a few more are singing like paper sirens – or digital sirens in a few cases.

Read, Claaaaaara! Read uuuuus! Loooooook at us! We’re heeeeeeeere! Isn’t this why you hoarded us all year? Read uuuuuuus!

Also, one wants to make toy-theatres, or lanterns, or just sit in the garden with an ice lolly and watch the stars at night, and savour the full summer as September comes to stand on the horizon…

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Except, there are rehearsals for two different plays, and things to prepare for the HNS Conference at the end of the month, and books to review, and heaps of practical things I’ve put aside as I wrote like mad, and workshopped, and taught, and rehearsed, and chased deadlines… 

Same old, same old: appealing as it is, slowing down isn’t half as easy as book-sirens, concerned mothers, friends, and physicians seem to think.

Ah well, we’ll see.

Meanwhile, o Readers, have a nice, lazy August. Are you going to slow down a little?

 

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* Even the street beggar informed me that it’s a disaster, the village is emp-ty!