No, I haven't dropped off the edge of the world, but I have been quite ill during the whole of January. Hopefully I'm on the mend now - mind you, they say the older you get, the longer it takes to recover!

My little chap book, 'Tongues in Trees' (that's the one where all the proceeds are going to the Friends of North Lodge Park, Darlington, so that replacement trees can be purchased), is selling rather well. We're hoping to have a big launch in the park towards the end of March, at which time the main anthology of community writing will also be published.

For those of you who are Newcastle based, I'm doing a reading at the University of Newcastle, (Percy Building) on 2nd March at lunch time. I'll try to read a couple of poems from all my collections including 'Tongues'

What I really have to do now is get back into writing mode. My fifth collection is about half completed and I'd like to think I could have it finished (and hopefully accepted for publication!) by end of August.

I've been invited to a 'do' by the Arts Council and another by an Irish Group in Leeds by way of a thank you for reviewing some poems for their latest anthology. These are two events to look forward to and hopefully they'll help get me back into the swing of things.

I'm continuing with a project for Equal Arts and hopefully starting a new one soon, based at Preston Park. 'The Works' is still bubbling, but nothing official to report as yet!

It's lovely to know that people visit the web site and read this blog. Because of finding my web page, I had an email this week from a colleague I worked with nearly twenty years ago. It was great to hear from her and to learn that she too is getting into writing.