Stylish Blogger Award

Thank you, Lucie Wheeler, for presenting me with a Stylish Blogger Award!

I'm now supposed to tell readers seven things about me:

1 I've studied Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, and when I was a teenager I wanted to become an archaeologist. But then I got distracted, and that ambition is being held over until I retire. Now I'm getting on a bit, I'd like to contribute by sitting in a comfortable Finds Tent, cleaning up trays full of artefacts, rather than crouching in a muddy old trench doing any digging myself.

2 My all-time favourite novel is Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, closely followed by David Nicholls's modern day take on the same story, One Day.

3 I've written all my novels and everything else sitting at the same desk, a Victorian one I bought nearly forty years ago, first of all on a Smith Corona typewriter, then on a green screen PC, then on a more modern PC, then on a laptop. It doesn't get any easier.

4 My children haven't inherited my story-telling DNA - one is a physicist and the other is a doctor. My grandson hasn't yet decided what he's going to be, but since he's only five he has time to make up his mind.

5 I'm not sure if I really believe in ghosts. But a few somebodies out there talk to me, and sometimes I quite like having them around.

6 I was born in a Victorian workhouse, like Oliver Twist. But by the time I put in an appearance, it had become one of the first NHS hospitals. Its address was Workhouse Walk.

7 I celebrated Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation Day in the same hospital, having cut my head open by falling off my tricycle into a rockery, ouch. I had rather a lot of stitches!