Right. Hello. I’m alive. Just — hibernating, basically.
I’m not going to pretend I have a good excuse for going quiet. The truth is it’s been cold and grey and relentlessly, insistently wet here in Tasmania, and I have discovered that when the weather is sufficiently miserable, my entire personality collapses into approximately three-metre radius around the fireplace. If it’s not within that radius, it doesn’t exist and I have no opinions about it. The outside world? Theoretical. The writing? Getting done, somehow. Leaving the house? A concept for bolder souls.
The animals have, as a group, been coping poorly with this arrangement.
The chickens have become a roving disaster. The yard is so slippery that they’re basically surfing between the garden beds, absolutely soaked, wildly offended that the sky keeps doing that wet thing, refusing to go inside and shelter, and loudly blaming me personally. The ducks, characteristically, are having the time of their lives. Geese are somewhere in between — philosophical about the rain, opinionated about the mud, unhelpful in every situation.
Then there are the sheep.
We’ve been hosting seven of them while they mow the lawn, which has been working out extremely well, right up until the afternoon I needed to get the car out of the driveway. I opened the gate just enough to squeeze through, which one sheep immediately interpreted as a personal invitation. Out he went. Fine — I thought — I’ll just circle around and push him back in. Logical. Sensible. What happened instead is that the remaining six, who had been watching this development with great interest, collectively decided that this was the moment. All of them. Through the gate. Down the street.
Which is how my neighbour and her five-year-old daughter ended up rounding up seven entrepreneurial sheep as they made their way through the main street of the village. They were absolutely magnificent about it, both of them. The sheep made a brief detour through the neighbour’s yard — seemed to feel it warranted inspection — and then, miraculously, the whole situation resolved itself much faster than it had any right to. Everyone back in. Gate secured. The five-year-old was thoroughly impressed by the entire performance and has since asked when it will happen again.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’m doing my absolute best to make sure it doesn’t.
Yesterday was partly sunny. Today is actually sunny. The ice rink is slowly becoming a yard again, which is good news for everyone involved, including the chickens, who remain very angry about the whole season.
On the writing front, because things have quietly been happening even while I was crouching by the fire pretending to be a comfortable medieval peasant: the developmental edits and line edits are done on the first three books in both the Pioneers and the Compass Point series. I’m half through the first draft of the magical realism and the first rural romance. Which means the first three books in each series are down to final proofreading only — and then it’s just the remaining forty-five and thirty-seven respectively to see through. Only. Only. Artwork is happening too, which means things are genuinely, really, actually moving, even if I’ve been doing it from the general vicinity of the hearth rug.
Jo went back to Queensland on Saturday and is reportedly finding it considerably warmer. Given that I watched her leave into the horizontal rain, I can only imagine.
The fire and I are doing fine.
More soon. 🖤
thestationhousenotebook 