Well, dear readers, I truly thought I’d die of stress and exhaustion, but here I am, to tell the tale. We have a pulse.  House moves are bad, we all know that. House moves with a dementia sufferer are bad with extra chopped nuts. It’s more than a month since I did a lick of work and my panic level is rising. So today, by way of a little limbering up, I thought I should at least blow the dust off my blog.

I have a designated study in our cosy new apartment and yesterday I actually stowed away a load of stuff and succeeded in uncovering its floor. The trouble is, now I’ve set it up I’m not sure I want to work in there. I find myself gravitating to the kitchen table, which is all very well  –  it’s where I started my writing career, after all   –  but it has two big disadvantages. For one thing, in the kitchen I’m visible and accessible to my husband. When my children were small they were easily trained not to interrupt my work but people with Alzheimer’s are untrainable. Every moment for them is a clean slate. So there’s that, and then there’s the sea view that keeps drawing my eye away from the page. I hoped it would be both entertaining and soothing for my husband. It turns out I’m the one it entertains. I’m tempted to buy myself a decent pair of binoculars and become an unapologetic bird-watcher but if I do I fear this novel will take five years to write. And that, says the bank manager, will never do.

The other thing about the study-designate is the inherited curtains. They’re kind of pumice pink. Maybe I should change them. Maybe I should just stop being a diva and write the damned novel.