As I am at home this week and in relaxing mode, I am spending my time playing Yahtzee on the computer (fun and totally addictive) lying on the sofa asleep and reading the odd book or two or three. I am feeling very relaxed and laid back so picked up one of the books from what I shall now refer to as Whopping Great Pile (WGP) which lovely Em at Snowbooks sent me.
The one I decided to read is Plotting for Beginners. I was sifting through them all, opened this one up and 
within a couple of pages had started to grin so then settled back on sofa and more or less stayed there for two hours while I read the book straight through. The only time I moved was to put the kettle on and make a cup of tea.
This book has two authors, Sue Hepworth and Jane Linfoot about whom I know nothing but who I will now keep an eye out for. This book is simply, great fun. Sally Howe is seeing her husband Gus off at the airport. He is going away for a year to live in the Rockies in the wild and do a 'Thoreau'. Sally sees this as a trial separation and thinks her husband wants to get away from her and so resolves to spend her husband and child free year finishing writing her novel and becoming a famous writer.
She is assailed on all sides by local lotharios who think that because she is on her own she needs comforting - in other words, she must be desperate for sex. Sally fights them off though she is seriously tempted by Ian, tall, handsome and immaculately dressed though she is slightly put off by the fact he owns his own Vidal Sassoon hair dryer and keeps checking himself in the mirror. However, when she hears that Gus has been entertaining Emily, a friend of her son, in his cabin in the rockies she is not a happy bunny. Even when she is reassured that Emily is only interviewing him for her PhD on 'The Male Menopause in post modern literature and contemporary popular culture' she decides Gus is having an affair and decides that what is sauce for the goose.....
What I enjoyed about Plotting for Beginners is that Sally is in her 50s, is going through the menopause, has a great sense of humour and has aspirations and dreams. When I am sitting writing this blog I, like Sally, sometimes think 'Oh wouldn't it be great if I could write and get a novel published' and feel like firing off articles to all and sundry. Of course, I don't. I enjoy what I write and when I write it but know full well my limitations. Sometimes I wish I didn't. Sally just decides to get on with it.
A few months back I wrote and blogged about Uphill all the Way by Sue Moorcroft, one of Transita's books, in which a 50 something heroine called Judith, had to deal with the death of her lover, the loss of her income and her life in Malta, and buckled down and got it sorted out. On the surface of it Judith and Sally have different lives but they are sisters under the skin. I have come to the conclusion that us women of a certain age are a pretty good, interesting bunch of women who are not to be underestimated. We are capable of great things and are now at the stage of our lives when we are not too bothered about what people think about us and know what we can do. Sally is great fun, determined and feisty (I really loathe using that word, makes me cringe but I cannot think of an alternative at the moment) and willing to take life full on.
Loved reading this, fitted my mood beautifully and I will be absent from blogging for a day or so as this Old Age Pensioner is off to London tomorrow for a day or so of fun. Speak to you all soon.
