Sunday, January 3rd 2010

Happy new year to you. I can’t believe it’s 12 months since I last said that. This year has gone faster than a teenager’s Christmas money.

I have to say that it’s been a tolerably kind year to my friends and relatives. I haven’t had to go to a single funeral. So many have been in hospital and had operations which they have graciously come through - Praise God and the NHS.
Thinking about it, I haven’t been to a wedding either.

2009 has been a great year for me. I had two new Angel books, THE WIGMAKER and CUCKOO CLOCK SCAM published in hardback and MURDER IN BAREFEET published in large print, also a CD audio version of it recorded for the blind.
I am highly delighted at the continued success of my Inspector Angel books and I thank all you lovely people who buy them or borrow them from their libraries. A few – only a very few I hasten to say – are kind enough to email me and tell me they like them. Special thanks to you for going to the trouble.

It is sad that in 2009, I noted that two book publishers have closed their doors for the last time and I hear that two multiple book retailers have also ceased trading. All, no doubt, a result of the recession.

You know, the government are trying to tell us that the recession is almost over. They blind us with statistics to which we have no access. We’ll know when the recession is over when everybody who wants a job has got a job.
While I’m chuntering on, I do wish they’d stop this ‘quantitative easing’. That’s fancy talk for printing more money at the Royal Mint. Everybody knows where that leads to - INFLATION on a grand scale.

Well, as a good friend of mine says, ‘Life may not be perfect but it’s better than the alternative.’

The queen is in good fettle and has been bustling me around these last couple of days, so there is not a lot different here in 2010. We are almost cut off with the snow and it is still coming down. It is very picture postcard, but if it doesn’t stop soon, I shall have to mount the hill in my snow skis, harness the huskies and fetch us some victuals.

Take care in the snow, and come back here soon.