Happy Easter!

...whatever your religious tendencies, Happy Easter/ Passover/ Eostre/ Spring Equinox (okay, the equinox was over a fortnight ago, but it all ties up together as one big spring festival if you're broadminded). Here in the UK we now have a four-day weekend, and as I am finally not in a job that follows a seven day flexible rota I actually get all four of those days off! This alone is cause for celebration. I'm going over to my mother's for a little break, probably too much to eat, and some healthy country walks, and possibly some sketching. Must remember to pack binoculars and watercolour box.

Note to self; try to get to an internet café at some point to investigate possibilities for my holiday in May. I wonder if I'll be able to afford to go to Greece? I'd love to go back to Thassos again.

Did some writing last night. I've got the laptop settled in, in the pull-out writing drawer/shelf thingy of my new desk, and I put on a "Dead Can Dance" album and got stuck in to one of the New Pieces - henceforth to be referred to as "Café Tano" - and wrote half a chapter. No idea if it's any good; time will tell. I can't see these things clearly for myself (neither when I first start nor half the time later either). I had realised a few weeks ago that this story would - might - work better as a first person narrative, and so far so good, at least as far as writing it instead of scratching at it fruitlessly in my brain. "Ramundi's Sisters" is slowly getting typed up, with assorted tweakings as I go. "Fortitude" has just moved on again after a hiatus; light dawned and I realised that the PoV had to go back to a different character, after a whole chapter of being bounced around inside Iain Siward's tormented brain. It feels so good to do some writing. It always feels SO GOOD...

One fun thing I forgot to mention last weekend - tired out after all that gardening on Saturday afternoon I made myself a cup of tea and sat down to watch "Robin Hood" for a laugh. It isn't what I'd call required tele, but is highly entertaining stuff, and features the handsome Richard Armitage (who always reminds me rather of pictures of my late father as a young man) as a snarlingly villainous Guy of Gisborne, which is reason enough in itself to watch a bit of harmless-fun tv. But oh joy, I got a real treat - the actor I dream of seeing play Simon Cenarth, William Houston, was in it. He came leaping out of a bush waving a sword, and my heart nearly popped out of my mouth. Quite what an actor of his calibre is doing in a piece of happy-but-dumb twaddle like "Robin Hood" I don't know - his intensity fair burned off the screen, and he certainly makes the insipid Jonas Armstrong look ten times the wet blanket he usually does. Okay, that's rhetoric - I know perfectly well what Mr Houston is doing in "Robin Hood" - he's paying his mortgage and keeping his kids in shoe leather, like every other working actor. And he was a joy to watch doing it, too.

Couldn't find a still of him in action to post here, so I've made do with a fairly normal looking shot instead - see above, since I've never managed to get pictures to go anywhere but at the top. I do not yet have the mastery of blogger, not by a long pull.