Thank you, bloggers of this beautiful bloggy world.

This is, I promise, the last shameless flaunt of our little book this week! (On the blog... One reserves the right to be shameless on farcebook.)

There are lots of things I love about blogging, and one of them is the universality of the thing. Knowing that all across this wide and wonderful world, physical and virtual, there are women who sound a bit like me, hugging their cups of tea and trying to be happy.

Another thing is the kindness of bloggers: the lovely comments, the thoughtful emails, even the visits when they so incredibly manage to happen. And so many times over the last ten years have there been letters and gifts and advice and such love.

So huge gratitude tonight to the five of you who read a crazy email about a year ago and signed up with such generosity of spirit to a project that wasn't even on your landmass!

Alison at View from the Teapot; Angela at Tracing Rainbows; M.K. at Through a Glass, Darkly; Pom Pom at Pom Pom's Ponderings; and Sandra at Thistle Cove Farm. From the States to France via England!

I have to warn you five that you may be about to hear from some of the supportive folk who have been buying the book. I'd be interested to hear if you do hear from anyone! We've decided to have a little competition to see who can get the most contributors' signatures by the end of this year. There will be a prize!

Back to normality next time, whatever normal is around here, although I must also say that, incredibly, I may be meeting two bloggers in person, in the real world, very soon. These are very exciting times just now in the Meadowplace!

Low Sunday and a book plug

On farcebook I've just seen an excerpt from "A Few Green Leaves" by Barbara Pym where it says that the Sunday after Easter is called Low Sunday. Is this indeed true? It must be because we're all going back to work and school tomorrow...


I've had a lovely week off. The strawberries have been revising hard, but we determined everyday to do something out and about. We cycled into town, had lunch on ancient Navan, and marvelled at Tim Peake's Soyuz. And of course Mattman turned sixteen. 16!

I read two great books. I would have read three if I could make any decent progress whatsoever with Michelle Obama's "Becoming". I can manage a chapter a night, sometimes. I'm really not a fan of autobiographies, except for Stephen Fry's "Moab is my Washpot". They must be appalling to write. How could you avoid dry lists, unless you're Stephen Fry?

Anne Enright's "The Green Road" is brilliant. Told from the perspectives of an awful Irish mother, her four children, and a mysterious other who appears intriguingly in the narration at certain baffling points, it impels you to find yourself in the dynamic. I fear the characteristics of the bi-polar mother. The offspring of this banshee most certainly do not arise and call her blessed. On the other hand...


#31blessed is a very recent, self-published little book of which you will only have heard if you're a farcebook friend. I am biased but I think that it is brilliant too. It's been produced as a fundraising project for a friend of ours who works with the Christian organisation UCCF. Sophie supports Christian students' groups in Liverpool and Chester, and encourages them in their outreach. But in and of itself the book is a collection of what 31 women think about the Proverbs 31 Woman.

My friend, Karen, and I are deeply grateful to everyone who contributed, not least the five of you who gave us beautiful reflections. I'm going to blog-thank you properly tomorrow! In the meantime, if you'd like to have a look, here is the link x