Primary teachers at the end of June in Scotland are exhausted, totally.   I know this because yesterday we had two of them, Laura and Margaret, daughters, for an evening meal after their heavy day in schools.   Maybe there is something to be said for the days when women teachers were not allowed to be married.   To have to teach all day and come home to household responsibilities and often more young children is a heavy burden, especially in June at the end of three terms.   This comes from one who knows from experience.   Yet in 2012, the job, the profession seems to be a lot more onerous, time-demanding and wearing.   Who has an answer or is this just a sign of the times?   Woe is me!  

Here's a joke I heard that cheered me up:  One year I decided to buy my mother-in-law a cemetery plot as a christmas gift....  The next year, I didn't buy her a gift.   When she asked me why, I replied, "Well, you still haven't used the gift I bought you last year!"

It is not raining today, so that is something in this damp June here in Inverness.   Gerald and I are lucky in that we are warm and dry inside our bungalow in this backwater, and we have some really lovely plants and flowers in our garden.

The news this morning that  Alistair Darling is going to launch the campaign to keep Scotland within the UK. is very heartening.   I do not believe in splitting up from England, Wales and N. Ireland.   We are too small, and what is the point?   The history of Scotland and England, when they fought, and when it was best that they came together are well-known.   If not they should be.   The main  thing is it is all history.   Now we are British and Europeans.   We want to part of a peaceful, happy world.

Heard from one of the two of my grandchildren who are backpacking in Australia.   Laura Martin thanked me for my birthday present of MONEY of course.   She has got a job in Darwin as a receptionist for four months.   Since she is living with Emma, the other one, and two others in a tent in a camp-site, I hope it works out.   Laura says she is trying to promote my book 'Blind Date in Gibraltar', so she is in my good books.

Must dress now 10am. (really turning into a bohemian) to continue with endless organising of books, photos etc. and to get ready for the Daily Politics with Andrew Neil.   He is one of the Andrews in the media in my life.
 
Thought for the day:   Life is a garden in the rain!

Blind Date in Gibraltar

Sunday 17 June 2012

Does a four-year gap between blogs qualify for a record in the Guiness Book of Records?

But that is also the gap between publication of my first novel 'Marching in Scotland, Dancing in New York' and my new one 'Blind Date in Gibraltar' available as an eBook.  As I might have said in my school-teaching days: 'tries hard, could do better'.

And so I shall.  There is so much to blog about: the dismal state of the economy, whether Scottish independence is a good bet, why I spend more time cooking than writing, why Glasgow is better than Edinburgh (a wife vs. husband issue).  So, look forward to more blogs on any of these subjects or none.

I hope you will want to read 'Blind Date in Gibraltar' and will like it.  Information about it and where to purchase it (from any eBook retailer direct to eBook readers or to PC) can be found on my website www.margaretdunlop.com

The novel, starting off in Gibraltar and then set on the Costa del Sol in Spain, has an authentic feel as I got to know the place well from living and holidaying there.  You will get to know the charm of the country but also its shady underbelly.  You will feel the hopes, fears and emotions of people and empathise with the protagonists in the story.  They find that the road to love - or to a 'new' life in the sun - is not straight, most especially among hedonists and when crooks and drug dealers are around. Also, problems from a life thought to have been left behind can rear up and intrude on the new.

Blind Date in Gibraltar