missing days

Although I was alert enough to remember the Chinese New Year a few weeks ago and make a semi-relevant post, my mind has been full of the general rubbish and rubble of life and I seem to have missed a lot of “days” recently: St David’s Day, International Book Day, World Wildlife Day, International Women’s Day, and no doubt at least a handful of others.

So here are some daffodils for St David’s:

And I think this rather splendid pair of mallards will do for World Wildlife Day:

I refuse to post a picture of myself, although I suppose I count as an international woman, and as an author, too, which might kill two birds with one stone. (Not the two ducks in the previous photo, of course.)

But perhaps this is a good time to mention that I have finally got round to putting into book format all the Capital Letters columns that I wrote for The New Entertainer, an English-language newspaper based in Mojácar, on the southern coast of Spain, and edited by Lenox Napier.

The column was written over a four-year period from Autumn 2004, so even the most recent pieces are almost ten years old. There have been many cultural and lifestyle changes in the intervening decade, politicians have been ousted and policies have been reviewed, so the essays are no longer topical and can’t claim to reflect the current situation. I made only slight adjustments to the texts, but even so, re-reading them for publication, I was surprised how vividly they conjure an ex-pat’s view of Spain in the early twenty-first century.

In some ways a companion book and in others a prequel to Los vecinos and other animals – which features the Outside the Box columns I wrote for The Reader – Capital Letters, is available as an eBook from Amazon.

Author: don't confuse the narrator

Exploring the boundary between writer and narrator through first person poetry, prose and opinion View all posts by don't confuse the narrator