Southwold...

A library is good for writing (except when there’s a class in circus skills going on, as happened one day in Otley). And any old lay-by will do for tapping out a thousand words. But for intense concentration, without distractions, the middle of the night is the best place to be. Last night I propped the laptop up against my knees, and edited the book for about three productive hours. I’m up to my estimate now: 90,000 words. The keyboard on my Macbook Air lights up when it’s dark, so I don’t need to turn on the light or use a torch.

I was parked up in Southwold, having taken lots of pix. I saw a fish & chip shop and went in: a big mistake. The shop’s method of dealing with customers was rather quixotic. I gave my order, paid, was asked my name and then ushered into an alleyway to wait. Most busy chip shops cook loads of fish, loads of chips and get customers in and out as quickly as possible. But this place worked on a different system, and the alleyway was full of hungry people. We looked like a load of well-heeled heroin addicts, waiting for a fix.

Names were called one by one. It took about twenty minutes for them to call my name (maybe giving my name as Rumplestiltskin was a mistake). If any chippy in West Yorkshire made people wait like that, they’d be out of business within a week (if an angry mob hadn’t already burnt the place to the ground).

Southwold, the home of Adnams’s beers, is quite posh. There were plenty of people out and about, enjoying the sunshine on the first day of the bank holiday. As I was taking pix, I saw a guy in a fancy yellow sports car. A few minutes later I saw him again. And again. On a sunny bank holiday the best thing this guy could imagine doing was to cruise slowly around the streets of his home town with the top down. Ownership of a fancy yellow sports car makes a distinct statement. Unfortunately it’s not a very profound statement, just “Look, I’ve got a fancy yellow sports car”…