A short update today, after the traditional long radio silence. The first part of the post is as customary an explanation for the long gap between posts – I’ve been busy on a new novel, which does not even have a working title (Novels, like children, should only be named once they’ve been born), but which has been pouring out of me at a rate I’ve never known before, and which is still interesting me even in the middle section where the excitement of a new beginning or of nearing the end seems remote. The joint protagonists are Oswald Pimpernel Drake, an effete Victorian aesthete with ties to the supernatural world, and Miss Miranda Byrne who has come to the capital to seek her missing younger brother. It’s going well so far and I particularly enjoy writing Pimm who is developing depths in the course of writing that I could only have guessed at before beginning.

In other and far more important news, my son applied to a specialist maths college that is opening in Leeds this year (though sister-colleges exist in a handful of other cities across the UK and are showing excellent results) and for which there were only 80 places to accomodate the whole county. A gruelling sounding two hour interview process (gruelling sounding to me, he enjoyed it thoroughly) which consisted also of an hour long examination and a one-on-one test with the Vice-Principal who presented increasingly difficult problems to see how he’d go about solving them was undertaken. We got the news last week that he’s been offered a place and we are all incredibly thrilled.