Getting up in the morning can be a problem, but not one I suffer from fortunately. I've always been able to wake easily without an alarm, and am generally up shortly after 6.00 am. I don't go downstairs for quite a while. I start the day in my small book-lined study and write three pages of thought s and ideas, longhand and in ink, while I drink the first cup of tea of the day, made in a teapot. Classic FM plays quietly in the background. I feel very lucky.
Almost every day since March I have been able to sit at my study desk and write for an hour, sometimes more. I have planned a series of four volumes, which I am calling “Unreliable Memoir”, it being a third person account of my life. With that sort of discipline I have already finished the first volume, sub-titled “Childhood and Adolescence”, printed four copies at home, and then had the pages bound with those neat plastic combs at the local Office shop.
I had a forced break from the writing while I did my usual stint of exam marking, 6 weeks of it, but have now begun the second volume, “Keele and Vendome”, and expect to be in France in October to add local colour to the French bit.