My First Typewriter

"How many hours do you spend at your computer?" said my eye doctor, Dr. Richlin. When I answered a minimum of ten per day during the week and at least six at weekends," he practically fell off his chair.

I'd gone to see him concerned with this weird sensation I have in my right eye. It seems daft to say this but for those of us who have both eyes (my dad only had one) we're not usually "conscious" of our eyes sitting in our head. For the past few weeks I've been really aware of my right eye. I've also been getting horrible headaches. Turns out it is severe eye strain.

I didn't have to wear glasses until I turned 45. But as a writer, I suspect eye strain goes with the territory. I suppose I could write longhand, but I enjoy the speed of the computer; the ability to cut and paste and mess around with all different versions of the same draft. My mistakes and typos vanish with the click of the delete button.

Like many people born in the middle of the last century (gasp) I l grew up using a typewriter—or tripewriter as we liked to call it at my first reporter job at the Tiverton Gazette in Devon. My typewriter was an old 1945 Remington Deluxe. In those days articles were typed up on small rectangular pieces of paper separated by carbon paper. Four pieces of carbon paper actually so any typo was a pain to correct.

Although I enjoy the speed and efficiency of using my computer, I miss the noise of busy typewriter keys  and the satisfying ding as the carriage reaches it's end-stop only to fly back in the opposite direction for the next sentence. Most of all, I loved the feeling of satisfaction when a piece was finished and I could pull it from the roller with a flourish.

Lovely.

Tea On My Mind

I know I've blogged about "Tea" before and hopefully I will be forgiven - I am British, after all. It's part of our culture. So you can imagine my excitement when I  was invited to an "Afternoon Tea with the Ladies of Mystery" hosted by the Friends of the Lomita Library in Lomita, California.

Co-ordinated by the effervescent Evelyn Moore from Sisters in the Crime Los Angeles, I joined fellow panelists, authors Kate Carlise, Dorothy Howell and Laura Levine for a fabulous afternoon of delicious food and fun.

Ruth Herbert, President of Friends of the Lomita Library, confessed she spent most of her summer devouring mystery books, selecting various dishes from favorite authors for the tea. Ruth also created beautiful name cards by hand to accompany each one. The icing on the cake (no pun intended) was a fabulous glass cabinet displaying all the books she used along with bone china tea cups and teapots.

As Kate Carlisle's character Brooklyn remarked bravely in The Lies That Bind, "I straightened by shoulders and gritted by teeth.  I could do this.  I approached the buffet table..."

Here was the menu:

Scones from the Vicky Hill Mysteries by yours truly. (And very very yummy they were too!) 

Chocolate from Bleeding Hearts by Susan Wittig Albert.

Lemon tea bread from The Silver Needle Murder by Laura Childs. (My favorite).

Cecile's brownies from The Cat Who Blew The Whistle by Lillian Jackson Braun. (I ate 3).

Chocolate chip cookies from The Cat Who Dropped The Bombshell. (I ate 3 of these as well).

Sugar cookies from The Sugar Cookies Murder by Joanne Fluke.

Chicken salad from Fatally Flaky by Diane Mott Davidson

Edible fruit arrangement from Purses and Poison by Dorothy Howell.

Molasses cookies from The Darling Dahlias And The Cucumber Tree by Susan Wittig Albert.
Cucumber sandwiches from The Darling Dahlias And The Cucumber Tree.

Gingerbread cookies from The Gingerbread Cookie Murder by Laura Levine.

Lavender flowers were on the table, taken from Susan Wittig Albert's book Lavender Lies and

Constant commit tea and lemonade from Jamie Ford's book The Hotel on The Corner of Bitter And Sweet.

And the English tea was excellent!

Although I am now on a serious diet, this fabulous event is a reminder of how wonderful our libraries are and how much they need our support. Just donating a few books or becoming a "friend" really helps to keep our libraries going.

Termites! Yikes!

As usual, all my best laid plans to write a regular blog post have flown out of the window ... if only the termites would fly away too! I'd never heard of the wretched things until I moved to California.

This weekend my husband and I are being banished from our home whilst the fumigators come in. I'm not happy. My husband's not happy. Mr. Tig the cat will definitely not be happy but hopefully, when he realizes he's going stay with the amazing Joanne O'Brien from Sittin Kitty, he'll forgive us.

Agatha Christie once had a problem with termites—or rather, an exotic bug that stowed away in her luggage.

According to her wonderful autobiography, it started during one of her travels to the Middle East. She had fallen in love with a gorgeous chest of drawers in Damascas. The chest was inlaid with mother-of-pearl and silver and is exquisite—I've seen it in her bedroom at Greenway in South Devon. ANYWAY - apparently it took nine or ten months to transport the heavy chest to it's new home but when it arrived, Agatha Christie said she'd be woken in the middle of the night by a strange noise "as if large teeth were champing something." Agatha Christie examined the chest, took out the drawers but couldn't find anything. "Yet night after night, after the witching hour of midnight, I could hear crump, crump, crump."

In desperation, she took one of the drawers to a place in London that specialized in tropical wood pests and lo and behold, after three weeks, she was summoned to the shop and proudly presented with "a repulsive cross between a worm and a slug. It was large and white and obscene, and ... obese." And that was the end of that.

I've never heard the termites gnawing away within our walls, nor have I seen any evidence of them. I'm worried about the friendly spiders that I am quite happy living in harmony with but all that will change --along with oceans of bougainvillea that surround our home.

There is an up side. We've splashed out on long weekend in a hotel that is supposed to be seeped in exotic splendor. Unfortunately, after making a non-refundable booking, an online reviewer remarked that  the rooms don't share the same splendor. I quote, "If you like the smell of stale socks ... you're gonna LUV staying here!"

I can't wait.