Does anyone have time to blog?

Fearlessness. That’s what’s required. The compulsive need to squeeze another task into the lycra pants of time.

This is to remind me of the time when I remembered things for more than one day. I can read it and think: Crikey. Did I do that? I have no memory of it. At all. Fancy that.

Quick recap for myself: I am Flinty Maguire. I have just moved to the coast with my husband, Padraig, and my mum, Olive. Olive is 90. No need to be coy about age – it’s a definition of survival. I am 59 on Sunday. Yay. I look much, much, much younger. There are no delusional traits in my family’s genes. Ever. Back to the apes. They were all realists.

Moving to the coast was a decision that took years of pondering in an anguished kind of way. I am extremely good at anxiety and rationalizing anxiety, and feeling it, but knowing why I feel it – and explaining it to my poor, patient husband, who was never anxious before he met me – a pure coincidence.

We have two dogs: a wilful Labrador called Bronte, who has cloth ears near water and food; and a rescue dog with issues which she acknowledges openly and often in public. In the privacy of her own home she is only mildly damaged. They are both so charming and lovely, astronomic vets bills have been paid for with a mere gulp.

I have worked. I do work. I work, work, work. I like work. It distracts me from the guilt I swim in every day.  I must have nudged the elbow of the guilt soup server when I was trying to push into the sticky toffee pudding line.

Anyway – that’s enough for tonight. I intend to pick up book three of my Ellie Booton’s Journal series very soon. I WILL. I WILL FINISH BOOK 3 AND IT WILL BE GOOD. Good, good, good.  And don’t look like that.