Ah…. Vienna!

Ah Vienna indeed. After enjoying a brief visit to this city last summer, my bloke and I headed back there during February half-term to enjoy more of the city’s sights and to celebrate his birthday in grand style. Which we did do! We wore our shoes out wandering around in the frost and snow, ate twice our bodyweight in apfelstrudel and sachertorte (well I did anyway), marvelled at the magnificence and quantity of Austrian moustaches and nodded our heads appreciatively in front of the occasional Klimt.

It was brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that we want to go back. I’d fit in well there. I’d get myself an expensive shoulder bag, buy a little dog to carry around in it and generally be as cheerful as chips!

But the truth is - ich bin Schriftstellerin und Lehrerin. And that roughly translates as: Stop dreaming, Hayley, about wandering around Vienna with a little dog in a shopping bag and get your finger out and finish writing your book and mark some A level coursework.

Boo!

I work very hard but I’m lazy ;-)

But I have seen the finished pages for book 2. Hooray. They look beautiful. In fact, they are miracles of rare device and sunny pleasure-domes with caves of ice.

This month’s hello goes once more to Tracy and Melissa who took good care of Mrs Bunny while I was away – and also to my friend Kirsty who works very hard but is lazy too. Oh and also, a big hello to the girls at Weatherhead School in Wirral who I shall be visiting later in the year.

In WH Smiths I was nineteen....n-n-n-n-n-n-nineteen

And this month’s blog is a good one because it’s holiday time! To celebrate my freedom, I whizzed off to South Wales in my bumpy new car and picked up my friend Lynda for a girly drive around Cymru. En route, I stopped at a service station on the M6 to see if Lottie Biggs was available in the shop and was pleased to see that she had crept into the top 20 of kids’ / teen fiction at number 19. I was so chuffed I took a sneaky photo. 19 is loads better than 20.

Once I’d collected Lynda, we drove over some hills and by some ruined abbeys and reservoirs until we got to Aberystwyth and then we knocked on Gwen’s door and asked to borrow the keys to her caravan. Luckily she said yes because she’s generous and kind and then all three of us drove to the middle of nowhere and ate fish and chips and I drove my car around the world’s scariest uphill sheer-drop hair-pin bend back to the caravan and, thankfully, we all lived to tell the tale.

Then when we’d said bye to Gwen, me and Lynda drove northwards until we were up in the mountains and Lynda took loads of photos of the landscape so that she could paint it and I took loads of photos of sheep because I felt like it and then we drove back to South Wales and ate some more fish and chips and then I drove home back to Norwich.

Then, me and my husband flew off to Budapest and he spoke lots of Hungarian because he’s such a clever-clogs and I read some books and swam around in a lake and then we had a quick visit to Vienna and then we came home.So it’s been good! But before I go, I’d just like to mention Griffri in Aberystwyth who is so completely cool that he read Lottie Biggs IN PUBLIC – even though he’s blatantly a boy. And Meg who sent me a couple of very entertaining emails. And Vanessa from Manchester who chatted to me about the Twilight books while we were both on a bus to Vienna. And Melissa who did such a fab job of looking after Irma bunny while I was gone.

More in a month…