kate thompson

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It is the first day of July as I write this, and I should be in the beautiful Madejski gardens in the V&A museum in London, sipping champagne and snacking on canapés at the annual Harper Collins Summer Party. Instead I’m sitting in front of my screen making my fingers bleed after another day at the coal face. This is the second lovely event I’ve missed this week – my friend Quentin Fottrell held a Gay Pride & White Trash party on Sunday, and what was I doing? You’ve guessed it :(

Occasionally my body screams at me to get up off my arse and take some exercise, so I drag it off hill-walking every now and again (we did five hours on Luggala last Saturday and since Tony our esteemed team leader had promised me that it would only be three and a half, the poor old bod got a bit of a shock) and the other day I went out into the garden and spent eight hours feverishly sawing logs like something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We’ve cut away all the dead wood, and at this rate we now have enough fuel to last us two winters. The big plus is that every time we cut away a branch, more and more light streams on to the rear of the garden where we've built our deck. In fact, there was so much evening sun streaming on to it last week when we had friends round for dinner that we had to move into the shade. But do you know what the really weird thing is? Somebody from an apartment above and beyond our garden wall has started lobbing lumps of bread at us. I have concluded that this  person is geting revenge for not being invited to dinner. Perhaps the random chucking of stale bread from a window is a form of therapy. Maybe I should try it as I hang out of the window of my study, watching the unsuspecting world pass by below. Being a nosy neighbour has become my new hobby, you see. Every time I hear something exciting going on on the terrace, such as a human voice speaking, I rush to the window and peer out. Except I don’t peer, I dangle out unashamedly, feeling no fear that I will be unmasked as a busybody, because nobody ever looks up. However, if someone were to look up, I could justify my behaviour by claiming that I am exercising my eyes the way computer experts advise you to do on a regular half-hourly basis when you’re stuck in front of a screen all day. I have to say that I never bothered when I was working in the attic, but then, there was no window in the attic.

I haven’t been entirely anti-social this month. I’ve had a couple of really lovely lunches - one on the terrace of the Merrion Hotel, where Russell Brand was staying (you should have seen the entourage parked outside! Numerous shiny Mercs with blacked out windows took up the entire parking bay in front of the joint - but alas! I didn't get a gander of the main man, just his goons), and another with the fragrant Cathy Kelly and the equally fragrant Fiona O’Brien in the peerlessly fragrant Fern House in Kilmacanogue. Fi had celebrated the launch of her latest book, Without Him in Il Secreto on Baggot Street a couple of evenings previously, and it was one of the loveliest launches I’ve been to in ages. Lovely venue, lovely evening sunshine on the terraces, lovely grub, and lovely book. Another launch was in the Gutter Book Shop in Temple Bar, where we celebrated the publication of Sue Leonard’s book Keys to the Cage: How People Cope with Depression. It was another gloriously sunny evening, and you’d wonder how anyone could be depressed when we’re granted a reprieve from the usual grim Irish weather, but of course, as Liz McManus (who did the honours for Sue) pointed out, depression can hit anyone, any time, anywhere: it is an affliction that does not discriminate between rich and poor, the well and the unwell, the young and the old. And I am very proud to have been asked by New Island, who published the book, to write the endorsement for the jacket. Anyway, both Fi’s and Sue’s books are excellent in their own ways: do check them out on Amazon.

July will continue for the foreseeable for me in the same vein: exercising my not-so-nimble fingers and exercising my poor failing eyes until I head Westward with a ho ho ho! I cannot wait! I have been working non-stop since January, and am overdue a break. I hear the dulcet siren song of Ballnahinch Castle calling me, and as you know, siren songs are pretty damn hard to resist...

Enjoy the summer, all of you! And enjoy feasting your eyes on Nadal on the last Sunday of Wimbledon. With heartfelt thanks to you for taking the time out to read this, and for your lovely letters: they're keeping me sane at the coalface.  

Love, as ever,

♥♥♥