Rebels without a cause - our teenagers

All's back to normal here. Since last week, the appearance of my eye has improved, and you can hardly tell anything's happened to it. Last Friday, I drove the car for the first time by day. On Tuesday, I drove at night. All was well.

I went to the orthoptist last Monday, and did the usual stuff, pointing at a chart with a long pointer. The resultant graph which the orthoptist takes from this, was much improved from my pre operation attempts. I have no doubt that the operation has greatly improved this aspect of my vision, and I am very pleased to have had it done.

Tuesday was Guildford Writers, and I squeezed out about 500 words of my current novel. A good evening, with diverse offerings from the group. Later, having a drink, we discussed a TV programme from the previous night - The World's Strictest Parents. Irene and I had both watched this and were equally dismayed at the two young people, who appeared to have given up completely on obedience, respect for parents and any desire to make their way in the world. It was a revelation to see the contrast between them and the Indian school children they met when taken to India to the supposed 'strict parents'. The Indian children were bright, hardworking, enthusiastic - and pretty horrified by the British teenagers. I was not totally convinced by the magical change in their attitude, which occurred some time in the middle of the programme. I suspect that this happens each week, a bit like Supernanny with the ghastly brats she comes across. However, if you subtract that from the total, it was interesting to see the totally different attitude to learning and ambition in another part of the world, but pretty depressing too, to realise how low are the aspirations of many British teenagers.

The previous Thursday was the reading circle, to which the OH transported me. We discussed The Other Hand by Chris Cleeve, and I'm afraid the majority view was that it was not a great book. One or two people were impressed with the description of life in an immigrant centre, but most of us were unconvinced by the contrived plot, the poor characterisations of the main characters, including the four year old child, and generally underwhelmed. A lovely expression - a pot of message - was expressed by one of our group.

Today, we the Goldenford girls met up for a discussion over lunch of our next few projects, at a local pub. We keep having email discussions, which result in one of us answering the previous question, and it never quite catches up. Today, we were able to hash out a few things. We have postponed our musical event until Thursday, 15th April - we hope to see some Guildfordians there, but it's best to book in advance - contact frances@goldenford.co.uk. We also discussed our next workshop - Sense and Sensitivity - to take place in May at the Brighton Fringe Festival, and a further workshop in October in Leatherhead.

After lunch, I went to Guildford to return a sweater which was miles too small for me - I can't believe it had the correct size on it. I would have to go back to a 1980's me, to get into it. I bought something else completely different - and this time I tried it on at the store.

I then went on to Waterstone's High Street branch, to see if they'd got in more copies of Tainted Tree, which had sold out, last time I looked. Pleased to say, that when I pinned down the buyer, he found they were already on order. So if you're in the Guildford area in the next couple of weeks, look out for your copy - if you're interested in a fictional account of a young woman's quest to find out about her family - this is the book for you. At Waterstone's, at Amazon and from www.goldenford.co.uk.