At last, at last! The daffodils are out, the sun is out, and you know what else is out? My NEW BOOK that’s what!

Here she is, isn’t she a beauty?

As always, the joy of seeing my book available to order is undermined by the impulse that keeps telling me I now need to start my next one. I hate starting a new book as you always think it’s going to be terrible and I suspect my latest idea (a family’s adventure when a holiday goes badly wrong) might be a bit odd.

In the Warrior household nobody is impressed by the publication of my new book; they are focused on nothing but the state of everyone’s hair after months in lockdown. Rob is enjoying – rather too much for my liking – his silver fox version of the Farah Fawcett flipped fringe, and Son’s hair seems to be growing upwards, like a bushy hedge. Last week he could bear it no more so Rob had a go with his hair clippers and Son’s topiary was tamed to his satisfaction with no ears cut or the wrong bits shaved off. Success!

Meanwhile I have found the only solution is to wear a hat whenever I can. The only one that is remotely suitable is one of Joe’s woolly hats. It is bright green and emblazoned with the words ‘SKILLZ’ but for someone reason doesn’t fit on my head properly so I look a bit like this.

But anything is better than the horrific realisation of how very grey I am under the dye I have worn for years. The last time I did my own dye as a rebellious teenager I managed to coat everything in s sludge of glistening blue-black that ruined everything I was wearing and my mum’s good sofa, so I daren’t do it myself again. Roll on 12th April.

Dog is very much in the Dog house at the moment. A few days ago I was at work when an unexpected fire drill began sending a riot of sirens and bells throughout the building silencing Rob, who was giving a live lecture at the time.

He explained to his students he would have to leave for a moment so he could get himself and Dog out of the building which may be on fire.

‘Run, Dr Rob, run!’ they typed as Rob raced from the room and found Dog’s lead. He then called her to attach the lead so they could flee the possibly burning house. This took a good ten minutes as she is so stupid and gets so over-excited when she sees the lead, she pirouettes about, jumps up and down, and does a few zoomies around the sitting room before calming down enough to let you put it on.

(As an aside she is also like this when we play fetch. Despite years of training she simply doesn’t understand the concept. She will race after any ball or stick you throw, but then refuses to give it up, just runs in circles around me as I shout increasingly loudly, ‘just DROP IT, Dog, you stupid animal’. So a game of Fetch with Dog is a very short one.)

By the time Rob has got the lead on Dog the alarm has stopped. Panicking about keeping his students waiting for so long, Rob returns to them forgetting (and this is a key point here) forgetting to PUT THE LEAD BACK IN THE DRAWER!

Now as you may have read here on this blog Dog has an obsession with leads. As a pup she got through more leads than I can count. Even when I got a lead made out of a thick, steel chain, she rendered it useless by chewing through the handle.

So you can imagine my despair when I returned to discover what must be the hundredth lead between Dog’s paws and teeth on the sofa. It is a retractable lead that looks like this…

They are hugely expensive. The only consolation I had was that as she looked up at me with a guilty grin, the hook bit fell from her mouth and the lead itself whizzed itself back into the body of the handle at 60 mph thwacking Dog in the face so she blinked in bewilderment. I hope she’s learned her lesson, but very much doubt it.

The Easter holidays stretch before me, I am convincing myself the skin care products I bought last month have taken years off me (I’m not looking in mirrors any more). The temperatures are going up and work is fading into a faraway blur (I am not looking at the piles of marking I have to do just yet) and things are OK.

I have a whole pile of books on my TBR pile, I joined three Facebook Book Clubs and it has had a terrible impact on my bank balance. Have a look at my Good Reads reviews if you’d like to see what I’ve thought of the last lot of books I bought.

The Woman and the Witch is still out, see link below, and here are two videos to whet your appetite!

Stay safe and enjoy the Spring Sunshine xx