Stars, swords, and fake Kate Winslet

Well, I'm back from Center Parcs, and to a massive great big shiny dollop of lovely news: the first review for After The Fall is a Gold Star Award from JERR! I'm so happy, because I really loved this story, and practically nobody bought it, but at least now I know someone other than me and my editor liked it!

Now, to celebrate, I'm going to post lots of holiday pictures. I know, I'm just too kind. My friend Alysia was determined to photodiary every minute of the trip, starting with (and I'm not kidding) a picture of the cat boot as we loaded it up. Thankfully, the rest of the pictures were a bit more interesting!

The lovely woodlands outside our villa.

One of the many lakes. As you can see, we had glorious weather.

The Three Musketeers (I'm the one in the middle, having a bad hair day). Foil Fencing was so amazingly fun--and amazingly hard work too! Aside from the mask and the glove, there was that sexy blue body protector, which was dense enough to stop the point of a foil, and so definitely dense enough to make me pretty damn hot. And under that, an even sexier plastic bra type thing, because even with the body protector there are certain bits that need more protection! By the end, we were all roasting hot, but learning to stab someone with a sword was definitely worth it.

Silliness abounded, especially on the 'Wreck of the Walrus' play type thing by the crazy golf course.

This was directly after fencing. See what a natural I am? I can even fence with a golf club!

"I'm on top of the world!"
"No, I'm on top of the world, you're Kate Winslet."
"Oh, okay then. I'm flying!"
"Better. Although you do know this isn't a real ship, don't you?"

"Land ho!"
"Who're you calling a ho?"

This is me, apparently getting very excited about making tea.

We had our own sauna. I really miss the sauna!

This is Trevor the Squirrel (Alysia named him, in case you're wondering). After posing pathetically outside the patio doors, we let him in...and see what happened...





After a while, Trevor just wandered in when he felt like it, and took monkey nuts out of the packet.

The girls decorated the place for my birthday, and although you can't really see it very well here, the candles on the cake each burned with a different coloured flame, which is ridiculously neat.

My parents came up on the day for my birthday. See how the wrapping was all coordinated, even down to the butterfly motifs? Love that, Mum!

Archery, or perhaps me trying to be Susan from the Narnia films (mostly in the hope that Prince Caspian will turn up, because, yum). Unfortunately, despite this not being the first time I've tried archery, there's one thing I always forget to do. Well, okay, there are two. The first is that I always forget to be any good at it. The second is that while I'm trying to remember to be good, I forget to keep my arm flexed, and therefore the bowstring thwacks my inner arm at somewhere between 40-110 mph.

See? It was originally a lot more purple.

(It's actually surprisingly hard to take a picture of your inner arm).