One or two of you noticed that my website was down over Christmas and thought I had perhaps grown tired of life. Thank you for your concern, but nothing so dramatic. My domain name (search me) apparently lapsed on Christmas Eve without a murmur of warning and I was on the road, unable to do anything about it. On my return to Ireland I discovered that I had zero record of my GoDaddy username (search me again) so I was still up the proverbial without a paddle or, more accurately, a domain name. The Marines, aka my webmaster, Steve Bennett and his trusty lieutenant Ken Wiesner, stormed to my rescue  –  thank goodness Americans don’t take two weeks off for Christmas  – and all is now restored. So three cheers for Steve and Ken at Authorbytes and nul points for Laurie Graham’s filing system.

January already. And where am I, book-wise? Well. When I was a kid in post-war England, most houses had a best room, usually called the ‘front room’ which was only ever used in extraordinary circumstances such as a funeral wake or your Dad’s need to take his bike to pieces and carefully lay all its components on an old sheet.

That’s where I am. My next book is disassembled. It is in a hundred pieces and undergoing major structural alterations, lubrication and nut-tightening that will leave it greatly improved. Says my agent and a few other people wiser than me.

I played Cluedo with two of my grandchildren over Christmas. Great fun in spite of, or perhaps because of their cavalier attitude to the rules.  So to describe my current work position in the language of Cluedo, it’s Laurie G, on the floor, with a lot of pages, a pair of scissors and a red pen.

Happy New Year all y’all.