The Wooster Auntie's lost in Space

I’ve finished the VAT, and it’s been paid in - on the last day of the month. Thank goodness for an extra day’s grace this Leap Year. I needed it.

I’m still discovering what I’ve lost in my old computer and one thing is my website. That is to say - it still exists in cyberspace - http://freespace.virgin.net/jackie.luben - but I can’t access it to edit it. The only file that relates to it on my computer is about four years old. Another back-up failure. The only way I can update my website with info about Tainted Tree is first to download what was originally on it. Otherwise, I will almost certainly upload a great deal of ancient information by mistake. Unfortunately, I have also lost my FTP program, and although I’ve downloaded another one, I haven’t yet worked out how to use it. It’s probably necessary for me to enlist the aid of the 19 year old son of our neighbours.

We had a fun time at Anne’s launch on Wednesday. I was in charge of taking money and introducing Anne. Fine on the first front - and lots of sales, so that was good. We are also getting in orders to the Goldenford website. Thorn in the Flesh is a gripping read and deserves to do well. But quite without meaning to, I may have dropped Anne in it. I assumed everyone knew about Anne’s blog - she has thousands of friends, after all. Could her work colleagues really have been innocent of this? And oh dear, the photo of me doing the reading. I look like someone’s elderly aunt - undoubtedly, one of the sort of aunts who are always tactlessly saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. A sort of Bertie Wooster auntie.

This weekend will be quiet; we haven’t any plans. I still have some important letters to catch up with, but at least some of the urgent stuff has been dealt with. I will probably speak to the children. We were in Cambridge three weeks ago to see the family, and GD1 amused us by saying very earnestly to M, ‘How is the engineering getting on, Grandpa?’ However, we shouldn’t laugh, because I suspect her talent lies with relating to people. We walked together to Waggamamma’s for a family lunch out and she asked me what I’d been doing. I told her about the Reading Circle and the Writers’ Circle, the office work and the book which is to be published. I described the story, omitting the adult themes, just telling her about my adopted heroine’s quest to find out about her real parents. I declined to tell her the ending, as she’d be broadcasting it to the nation. Still if I don’t get some publicity out soon, GD1 may be the only person interviewing me on the subject.