The gazebo has landed!

It does sound so dreadfully like a kind of antelope, but at last my gazebo has arrived and been constructed from a heap of bits of wood by two men who scratched their heads a lot! I have even had a first cup of coffee in it with a writer friend staying for the weekend. And the cats are very intrigued, especially the new pale ginger cat on the block, who was chased off by Lila.

I had a very exciting trip up to Edinburgh to see the musical Only the Brave, which was playing at the fringe. My daughter is one of two Associate Producers on it. It was very strong and memorable with some excellent singers. But the friend I went with and I were both emotionally wrung out at the end and had to fortify ourselves with a very good vegetarian meal at David Bann where I was taken by my publishers a couple of years ago.

So I was also able to go to my friend's launch party two days later. She has written a book called Writing for Children which I and other members of the SAS had given suggestions for. It was a great launch (I had make a cake for the iced cover picture to sit on), followed by an Italian meal for 17, so it was a bit of a high calorie trip all round.

I had a day in a health spa, using vouchers my oldest daughter had given me for Mother's Day. It involved a full body massage, swimming, lunch and steam room and jacuzzi. And I even got some work done!

Excitingly, my husband's half-brother is over from Mexico with his partner and baby girl, who is not quite one. She is quite enchanting. Next weekend we'll have them all plus my husband's half-sister and her partner and two little boys aged one and two. We are praying for sunny weather so it can be a picnic!

I've not written much of the new adult novel since getting back from Edinburgh but have been writing proposals etc. The Centre for Cathar Studies in Carcassonne has agreed to read Troubadour! I hope they don't find any howlers. My consultant on women troubadours has been very helpful about names and Occitan spellings.

We have been watching the DVD of the BBC programmes called "Tiger - Spy in the Jungle", the ones where the cameras were carried by elephants. The two girl cats have watched it all with us, transfixed.

I read Philip Reeve's Here Lies Arthur, which has just won the Carnegie Medal and was a tad disappointed. For a version of the "real" Arthur, I much prefer Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset.

Transfiguration and taxes

We went to my sister's Big Birthday party in London and ran into no problems. It was a grand reunion as our youngest daughter was just back from Japan and Australia.

London again for a successful meeting with twelve YLG librarians about Stravaganza. Bloomsbury had decorated the boardroom with posters and postcards. It was a very hot day but we had the windows open on to Soho Square.

On 26th the Times published the interview I did with Amanda Craig before leaving for Florence. It was a very flattering piece and a nice photo but the sub-editor had given it the headline "Veteran in her Prime"! I can only think this was revenge for my having asked them not to use Tales of Hoffman yet again. If you read it on line, there is no such backhanded compliment: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/children/article4397362.ece

Then we had to spend all Saturday afternoon doing my tax. It was just dreadful but at least it's done.

We had to spend all Sunday having fun in order to make up for it.

I heard Messaien's Transfiguration at the Prom on Sunday. Some people left after only five sections - no stamina! But I think it's a bad idea to follow the text; you should
really read it and then just close your eyes and listen. Because the pace is VERY expansive. But wonderful gongs.

In a traffic jam on the way up we also heard on Radio 3 Joe Cutler's Music for Cello and Strings which was very good. Must follow him up.

I saw two episodes of Can't Read, Can't Write. It's compelling stuff though I don't admire the teacher. It is so clear that phonics just doesn't work - you notice Kelly had to phone up to find out what "touched" was - because you can't make "ch" by blending "c" and "h" and the strategy they'd learned for vowel digraphs - "When two vowels go out walking the first one does the talking and says its name" simply doesn't fit so many words.

I also saw the John Barrowman edition of The Making of Me, about his homosexuality. I liked his dry, English partner and loved the way he became Scottish every time he talked to his parents.

Tried The Culture Show on BBC2 because they had advertised a piece on the Vasari corridor. That wasn't there but we got Cy Twombly's exhibition - ghastly- and Paul Weller, who couldn't be separated from his shades or beer bottle. He played a very ordinary though not unpleasant song with one idea in the lyric and perhaps two and a half in the melody.

The piece with theatre director Katie Mitchell (Traces of Her) was quite interesting, because she seemed really intelligent but the whole presentation of the programme was SO puerile that it did make me despair if that was BBC2's idea of culture.(the Corridor next week, I am promised).

I finished reading Un Italiano in America and have started Racconti della Resistenza.I've been working on my workshops for the CWIG conference and the teaching week |I'm doing at Ty Newydd with Celia Rees. She came over for lunch and we had a brainstorm (sorry - "thoughtshower").Must get on with my next novel really but am so trying to have an easy summer.

How Nelson Mnadela spoilt my birthday party

Actually it wasn't mine but I was organising it for my daughters. Because their birthdays fall in February, June and November, and 2 of them never had good weather, we tried for a couple of years to have a joint summer one in July.

It worked fine in 1987, when there was a Pink Picnic in Highgate Woods, even though my half brother-in-law had turned up to stay unexpectedly and, at 18, was not keen on wearing a pink shirt!

So the next year, when the girls were 11, nearly 9 and 6 respectively, we booked a big swimming party for their three groups of friends at the Hornsey Road Pools, followed by a tea party on three floors at our house with three separate cakes.Money was a bit of an issue 20 years ago so this was a considerable outlay for us.

We set off in the car, plus my sister, in good time, and then ran into a traffic standstill. The minutes ticked by and after a lot of stress, we realised we were never going to make it to the pool before the end of the booked session and turned back. This was pre-mobile phones of course.

One or two guests made it to the pool and most got to the house at some point.

The reason for the delay? Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday. He was still in prison and there was a big demo in London. I think there was a concert in Wembley too but maybe earlier.

It was difficult to explain to three bitterly disappointed little girls who this man was and why his birthday party had taken place at the expense of theirs. It's hard to take the long view when you are six.

But as time went by they did understand. Only we never had another "joint birthday" party after that.

Happy 90th from us all, Nelson Mandela. And I hope nothing happens to disrupt your celebrations.

Stendhal syndrome

This condition was named after the great writer of Le Rouge e le Noir and means something like "an overactively nervous state of being overwhelmed by the city of Florence" so I thought it appropriate for this post.

I stayed for over a week in a very good apartment in Santa Croce and would go there again. I've always been a bit against it because I dislike that church so much but it's OK from the outside and the smart money is on it is a district. It's a bit like Hampstead. And it's where Sarah Dunant has her flkat though we didn't see her.

But we did find an English bookshop just round the corner from us, where City of Secrets had just arrived, so I did some signing. I was there for publication day. And before I left, I heard that my editor loves Troubadour too, so travelled with a light heart.

Also because I managed to solve one of the worst e-mail problems I had ever had - no thanks to BT who rang from Bangalore and spent an hour and a half giving me wrong information. In the end I had to delete 25,000 e-mails from my Inbox on the BT website, which could be done only 200 at a time. But it worked.

In the end I took William Boyd's restless to Florence because I'd started it and it was so gripping. And then bought and read Beppe Severgnini's La Bella Figura which, in spite of its title, is in English. But I am also reading his "Un italiano in America" which genuinely is in Italian.

I saw the Fra Angelicos at San Marco,the Pieve churches in Borgo San Lorenzo and Scarperia, the Bargello, where I talked to the restorer of Donatello's David about a piece I'm writing for Italy magazine, and the Benozzo Gozzoli chapel in the Medici Palace. We also spent a lot of time in the Piazza della Signoria and the Piazza Duomo as well as Oltrarno.

But we also had a lot of days outside Florence - Borgo San Lorenzo, the Mugello, Forli and Villagrappa and a memorable last day by the sea in Viareggio. We visited a castle at Castrocaro, so named "expensive camp" after Galla Placidia had visited there and found the cost of lamb too high!

Since coming back I have seen an open air production of The Winter's Tale, which was better directed than acted. The director had the idea of acting it out as a told story, among and by a group of gypsies. This worked better than expected, apart from the storyteller saying at the end "and they all lived happily ever after" which Shakespeare is very careful NOT to suggest. Hermione addresses not one word to Leontes.

It always makes me laugh when the king sees the statue and says that his queen looks so much more aged and wrinkled than he remembers her. How ungallant! But even more amazing were the number of white heads in the audience (it was Senior concession night) who did not know the story!

I heard the demo tape of the new musical Only the Brave, which my daughter is going to Edinburgh with as Associate Producer. It will be a big hit, I'm sure.

Home Sweet Siena

I can't believe I haven't blogged for a month!

My agent is crazy about Troubadour - still waiting for Bloomsbury's response. And the stravaganza website has had its re-vamp.

Am just back from my two weeks in Siena, which feels more like home every time - this is our fifth. Unfortunately not there for the Palio but I'm going to Florence on Thursday for another trip and will make it over to Siena again. I saw my Contrada friend from Valdimontone and there were lots of occasions of drinking prosecco in the Campo, or eating ice-cream and watching contrade practise their flag-work.

Before we went, I saw the Brilliant Women exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. And on the way into it admired Paula Rego's painting of Germaine Greer.

In Siena I saw the Duomo, Duccio's Maestà and loads of good stuff in the Pinacoteca, including three Simones!Also went into the Duomo and Sant'Agostino in San Gimignano.

I read all those books I bought to take on holiday. The Anne Enright was pretty good and the Florentine Death was terrible! Bill Bryson on Shakespeare was REALLy good - just very plain and clear. It was good preparation for reading The Shgakespeare Secret by J.L.Carrell. The scholarship in that was all good but the plot hopelessly sub-Dan Brown hokum.

I also read The Resurrection of the Body by Maggie Hamand, which was pretty disappointing,The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, which was highly amusing but had that old howler "flaunt" for "flout" again. Also Dissolution by C.J.Sansom. This was very readable - and reminded me of The Falconer's Knot - but I didn't absolutely love it, which I was hoping for.

Since coming back, I've finished reading Meerkat Manor - those adorable little mongooses can be really vicious. The females kill and eat other females' babies!

I'm going to take only Italaian books to Florence as I've had my assessment from my tutor and I need to keep up the good work.

Demob happy

Troubadour went off electronically last night. Just as well, since my non-colour printer has decided to go on strike. It will limp through 30 or so pages then halt and say "no job printing" which is pretty insulting.

I have been working flat out to finish,so have not done much else. But I've learned a new skill - how to use Document Map - which is so fantastically useful I shall never write or submit in any other form.

I read four books published in the US by Penguin - Peeled by Joan Bauer, who is a great favourite of mine, Savvy, which is a first book by a new writer, and one called Antsy does time and another called Paper Towns. It was a relief to read something I didn't have to judge for a change! And I enjoyed all these.

Today I've bought some holiday reading - Dissolution by C.J. Sansom, who is an author Adele Geras is always urging me to try, Bill Bryson on Shakespeare, Anne Enright's The Gathering and A Florentine Death by the man who used to be head of police in Florence. (I should really be reading that one in Italian).

I heard Turangalila by Messaien in Birmingham, played by the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Ivan Volkov. It was the day I finished Troubadour (though it's taken a further week to revise)so perfect. And a stunning performance, badly attended. It was our first trip to Birmingham's Symphony Hall and we were very impressed by the acoustics. There'll be another Turangalila at the proms and 2 more Messaien concerts there too.

I'm now really looking forward to the holiday - Siena, here I come!

Georgia on my mind

I've been back from Atlanta for nearly two weeks and walked straight into having to help organise another trip to Italy, in July. We'll only just be back from Siena and five days later I'll be setting off to Florence again.It's a tough job but someone has to do it.

Then it was Guardian judging and it took a while to get back into Troubadour. But I'm now half-way through the last chapter and it's looking promising for submission at the end of next week.

Everything went well at IRA and I signed lots of books and traded on the novelty of my English accent. It was very good to meet my new editor at Penguin and spend some time with her; she came to the two schools with me, which were way out in the countryside. They were very clean and attractively decorated State schools, with extremely polite and well-behaved children. One little boy wanted his poster of Princess Grace signed, even though it was all pink and girly!

I found it a strange city - very spread out without any coherent centre. Everyone was in a car (the public transport is sketchy) and I had to go everywhere by taxi. I did visit its Aquarium and admired the two Beluga whales. But I think Atlanta must have a huge carbon footprint.

Guardian judging was fun and it's a pity I can't say anything about it,except that it was good to meet Mal Peet and Jenny Valentine, the other two judges. Jenny's book Finding Violet Park, won the award last year and I had just read it and thought it very good.

I spent the weekend writing new material for the re-vamped Stravaganza website; it's so peculiar to keep wrenching one's head round from one book to another.

We went to a party in London on Sunday. Only one "You could be the next J.K.Rowling" - must be losing my touch. I heard lots of Chopin, though I did NOT like the box piano or even Chopin's own. I think he would be very happy to hear his works played on a modern instrument.

I saw Midsomer Murders on TV, which I quite enjoy - especially the theramin - but I don't think it's any good. John Nettles and his screen wife look as if they've both been Botoxed and the plot lines are absurd. But I've given up Doctor Who and ER so occasionally want something distracting.