Writer’s Monday

8.30 am
Feed starving cat and pony. Muck out stable. Note that it has snowed, but the snow is thawing.

9.00 am
Sit down at computer.
Send email to wife of celebrity asking for article for charity publication which I had volunteered to edit.
Condole by email with elderly friend in Australia, who has paid me previously to do various editing jobs, but is feeling very poorly today.

9.30 am
Check writing forum web site, another volunteer job. Discover 11 spam messages selling kitchens and one sarky verse from a member about same.
Grind teeth.

Go into admin panel and delete spammers and messages. Reset 4 lots of forum permissions to disallow new members from posting without approval.
Breathe sigh of relief.

10.00 am
Discover that resetting forum permissions doesn’t trickle down to individual categories. Go back into admin panel and reset seventeen categories.

10:30 am
Email forum owner to tell him what I’ve done. The only writing I’ve done so far this morning.

10.45 am
Catch husband on the point of departing with neighbour’s Land Rover and give him two customer book orders to be posted (pre-paid order, packed yesterday and postage paid online). A GOOD THING.

11.00 am
Field phone call from one of son’s idiot friends who would like to bring a 45 foot wagon trailer and do a changeover in our yard. Tell him that said trailer will not fit, and so neither will its changeover friend. Discourage idiot boy from calling again. He will.

11.10 am
Postman delivers, snow having melted sufficiently to allow him to get here in Royal Mail van. Retrieve post, hoping to find parcel of paper bags ordered a week ago ready for a farmer’s market bookstall on Saturday. No bags.
Open envelopes.

Elderly archaeologist with a fixation on a Roman cavalry settlement in Lancashire sends 2000 word article for perusal and comment. Last corresponded 8 years ago.
File in pending tray.

Legal Deposit Library communication from Edinburgh requesting 5 copies of 2 books for Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Oxford and Cambridge. This is A Good Thing, but it’s at my expense, not theirs – A Bad Thing. Luckily just to one central address so postage not horrendous.
Contact Print on Demand service and send order through for delivery.

Local Literary group requests me to go and talk to them on topic of my own choice. They will PAY me! A VERY GOOD THING.
File in pending tray.

11.30 am
Email from Pony breed society asking me to update their web site with advertisement and photos. A Moderately Good Thing – they pay. Update site.

12.00 mid-day
Need coffee. Discover husband’s melted snow boot prints across kitchen floor.
Clean floor and redecorate tracks from door to Rayburn to fridge to chair with thick glossy, coloured pages of health products catalogue. I knew they’d come in useful.

12.30 pm
Sit down with coffee and oatcake to write blog – the first creative thing I’ve done all morning.

1.00 pm
Blog written. Must write back to the Literary group.

1.15 pm
Email from web client, with photos, requesting update of site with offers for January.

1.25
Phone call from Pony breed society requesting photos from  last issue of magazine, which I edit - another volunteer job.

1.30 pm
Thinks: Will the Literary Group believe this?

I'm delighted to have been asked to do a guest spot on M M Bennetts' blog. I drive a good deal, as you will know, and in this case, I'm looking at coaching, both stages and Mails.

I've been researching this history extensively for a good many years. Praise be for the Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, and places like the Post Office Museum and archive, which have all provided contemporary material or first-hand accounts from people who actually drove commercially in the 1830s and knew the proprietors of the great coaching businesses which, within a few years of Victoria's accession, had vanished from most of England.

I've now completed my historical novel, "Coachman!" George Davenport is a young, ambitious driver whose move to London coincides not only with the Coronation of Queen Victoria but also with the completion of major railways which marked the beginning of the end for coaching. Of course, being a novel, I've further complicated George's life, with Lucy, his pregnant girlfriend, and Sarah Chaplin, his boss's daughter, who is as ambitious as he is, and with far fewer principles.

I hope the Chaplin family will forgive me for having taken liberties with their history, but Sarah was the one member who never married, so there are no direct descendants to protest. My excuses are that the one Chaplin I know well was happy for me to write a novel about her famous coaching ancestor, while George, the coachman, and Lucy, are my own great-grandparents, albeit transplanted a couple of generations back in time ...

I like the results and I hope readers will too.

But first I need to complete the polishing and find an agent - or decide whether to go it alone and self publish.

Are opinions libel?

Interesting problem. If a blogger publishes a critical opinion, having described accurately something that has happened, is s/he libelling anyone? I seriously doubt it. The defence against libel is that the facts are true.

Why then should someone ask for a blog to be "scrubbed" of recognisable names or further posts not published until they've been scrutinised and approved by that someone? Someone, I might add, who is not the blogger's employer?

I'm not the blogger involved, incidentally. The blog is probably just going to change to a private status.

But it does make me wonder.