January
The year began for me with some good walking, including regular Monday morning walks up the Deri with my friend Mary. I calculated I’d done more than 30 miles on the hills by the end of January.
Horses breaking the ice on the dew pond on the Deri to get a drink
February
Plenty more walks, in between periods of stormy weather.
Sign of a Welsh trig point
March
By March daffies were out and trees budding. But OB and I both caught Covid. Neither of us was very ill but the tiredness put paid to walking for a while.
Ladybird on medlar
All this time I was editing my circus novel, Thistles in the Cirrus. That was the focus of my writing. Such flashes that I got published – Big Top in Roi Fainéant Press in February and That Yellow Bedspread in the Flash Fiction Festival Anthology, Volume Four in March, were extracts from the draft novel. Over this period I also entered the first chapters into a number of novel competitions.
Read what happened next in Part 2, coming on Christmas Eve!
Cath Barton 