Maggie Cobbett

Reasons to be Cheerful

This was the theme at Ripon Writers’ Group this week and I found that I had plenty to be glad about. Below is a random selection: 

After a couple of years of drama, disappointments and upheaval, our elder son is now happily settled in York. I shall miss my visits to Bath, but that is more than compensated for by having him much closer at hand – and not just to solve my technical problems!

Our twelve year old ex-feral cats have just been for their annual jabs and been given a clean bill of health. The vet weighed them and, once he’d navigated his way through all the fur, assured us that Tom – three times the size of his sister Tabitha –  really isn’t overweight. He’s just a BIG cat.

The Smartphone I was given for my birthday last month is gradually becoming less of a mystery. I still don’t understand all its functions by a long chalk, but at least I can send and receive coherent messages (since I was shown how to turn off predictive texting), get onto gmail and Facebook, take photographs and – oh yes – even make calls. (My trusty old phone was confiscated to stop me from giving up on the new one at the first hurdle and going back to it.)

I’m still several years younger than Mary Wesley was when she had her first novel published and became ‘an overnight success’, so I can continue to live in hope.

Sales of the eBooks I brought out last year have inevitably begun to dwindle, but The Little Ripon Bookshop is now stocking copies of the paperback.

It’s good to see RWG in the safe hands of a new committee, which has given me more time to pursue my own writing. I’m working on several new projects and hope to bring them to completion before the end of the year. Watch this space!

I’ve been given a whiteboard for my study and I’m finding it very useful. Gone are the days of jotting down notes on the backs of envelopes and promptly losing them.

My Scrabble rating on Facebook has gone up to 3rd amongst my dozen or so regular opponents. Playing regularly has certainly increased my vocabulary, although I still shake my head at some of the words that are allowed in the on line version.

The Spanish ‘self help’ group I joined when it first began continues to flourish and Thursday mornings have become a high spot of my week.

I’ve given up swimming, which I’ve always loathed but convinced myself was good for me. After years of crawling reluctantly out of bed on dark mornings and waiting outside the Ripon Spa Baths for the doors to open at 7 a.m., I now snuggle happily under our duvet until I actually want to get up. Emmerdale days are the exception to that, but then working in the studios or out at the village is something that I still enjoy.

22 January, 2014 - There are 2 comments on this story