Finally . . .

About five years ago I got out of a swimming pool with a new writing idea sparking in my head:

Woman in the future, living in a London church with a horse called Kafka.

Many, many, many drafts, edits and readings by wonderful readers later, my novel has been taken on by an agent. Still work to do but after her last comments I can see the shape of the book so much more fully now.

One of my early readers was a young man called Charlie and he just texted me this reaction to my news.

The wellest of well dones!! This book is unlike any novel I've ever read - optimistic, anarchistic, post-capitalist, Francophile, sci-fi - yes please!! A publisher would be mad not to bite her hand off.

I can now say: Kate A Hardy is represented by Sandra Sawicka at Marjacq Scripts, Holborn, London.

Wheeeeeeee!

                                                           

                       St Leonard's Church in Sureditch (Shoreditch) where the book is mainly set.

Two ferrets and a Soda Stream

Nope - not a new Curtis film, the result of going early to a Vide Grenier (car-boot/yard-sale) this morning - not that perhaps anyone else would have bought ancient taxidermy specimens. (Except Andy, if you read this). Five euros a piece - s'got be a bargain! The soda stream has yet to be tried but I can't see there's much to go wrong there.

                                 

So, what else has this season's scavenging unearthed? It's been a good few Sundays - last week procuring several shirts for Mark at a euro each. Actually, this is odd - how we always seem to find him shirts as he's not exactly a standard Southern France man shape, more Nordic, Viking, even.
Last weekend also resulted in clothes for me, a huge salad platter, an exceptionally nice etching for 5 euros, teapots to replace broken ones, a 1970s wall-hanging to funk-up Mark's music room and various other (mostly) useful items. Why anyone bothers to shop for new stuff is a mystery to me - OK I draw the line at certain things like . . . underwear, and . . . that's about it. Maybe not a second-hand pressure cooker - bit scary.
 A bit scary, is also how much stuff we, the human race - or at least the members of it who have manufactured all these non-vital things - have managed to accumulate over a relatively short period of time. This was just one small amassing of a few folk's spare room rubbish, in one small French village. Imagine all the millions of boot sales and variants of, all over the world. Eek. We are indeed heading towards a possibly not too distant new Earth-Epoch - Plasticusgallusossum era, perhaps. A plastic and chicken bone sedimentary layer. The end of the consumers.
Oo, dear, this is getting a tad dark.
Time for a cup of tea in one of our new 1970s brown teapots.



                 Suitably apocalyptic and lovely etching from a couple of Sundays back.

Housewife guilt relieved by the April Freshness of Lenor

Part of last post rant.

Plastic rant . . .

I have to have these from time to time, and THIS really warrants one.

We all (or most of us) now realise that endlessly producing billions of plastic containers every day is totally unsustainable and polluting - to say the very least.

We all use plastic  - this keyboard I'm typing on, the car bumper I tied back on with wire this morning (rather proud of that), train seats, plane seats, televisions, audio-equipment, fridges, washing machines, guttering, drains, food containers, the everywhere water bottles and just about everything else. Should we not be cutting back on unnecessary products rather than producing more and more CHOICES, to thus use plastic for essentials like medical equipment?
Yes, there is an argument re jobs in such sectors as body-care products but maybe there just isn't a choice any longer. Hair = a shampoo product, and it's now possible to buy solid shampoo in a cellophane wrapper. We have some and it's great. Clothes = a need to wash them. Get a refill at your local eco store. It's less expensive and does the job.
And we move on to the subject of this particular rant. Fabric conditioner - with a big CON. This must be one of the cleaning companies most heralded products. An extra substance to dunk clothes in for really no reason. Meadow Sweet, Island Oasis, Snuggle, Final Touch - quite an appropriate name, perhaps - Downy, Fluffy, Fleecy, Comfort, Lix (ugh), Purex, and of course the massive Lenor range.
One or two products might suffice? Nope. A whole new range in even more shiny thick plastic bottles has appeared in our local supermarket.
I only went in to get a cube of yeast and some dog chews but stopped transfixed by the in-your-face and will-be-in-your-bag display featuring (bizarrely) a wolf and an erotic version of Little Red Riding Hood - I think.
Imagine the meetings, the trays of Danish pastries, the gallons of coffee consumed while ad-execs agonised over the names and colours of these useless and planet-knackering products.



The perfume of secrets - whaaat? Covering up some old poo stain on a toddler's trousers? Séduisant - seducing fabric softener? I Suppose they are trying to move away from cosy, soft and comforting?

                           

                                                                            Kiss.
              This really should being in Ann Summers shop and be called Sweat Liqueur

                                          

                                                             Charm and mystery.
Come on . . . you could have been a little more imaginative, surely? Alien-craft sex-chamber; the lost jewels of the Queen of the great oceans?

                                          

                                                                           Blush
                                                And you should, Proctor and Gamble.

Governments should ban this water-polluting, land-fill garbage. Iron clothes if you want them soft, and if they smell a bit unlike a spring meadow, a woman dressed in a red cloak or a wolf (?) so what.

I've just found an old Lenor ad I recall from way back featuring a housewife wracked with guilt over her daughters' prickly nightdresses. Will post for a comparison . . .