Francesca's Thoughts

Good evening lovelies,

I hope you’re all well. Today is the fifth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, so here’s to another five years of national stability!!!

(Seriously, though, did that go very quickly or very slowly?) I do not have any news or suchlike for this post; I am working on some bigger ones and today thought ‘it’s been a while, let’s say hello.’ Again with the wonky time, but it feels strange to have already passed midsummer. I usually feel more awake and generally more alive and plugged into nature this time of year, but this year it hasn’t really happened. I’m consistently swinging between insomnia and excessive sleepiness. I don’t think the weather’s extreme changes has helped, or the constant yo yo-ing of Covid restrictions. Everything feels a bit unbalanced at the moment, even though this time of year usually feels very together.

Still, Lorde is back! With a song about the sun, no less (she gets it). I’ve helped several bees leave their accidental prison of the kitchen window. My remaining courgette plant has survived the latest deluge of rain. I had Christmas dinner with some extended family last Saturday. We ate in the garden; it drizzled. It felt weird but also right to be eating Christmas pudding on an overcast day in June. My friends are getting vaccinated by the dozen. Things are… finding their way towards an equilibrium? Maybe I’m putting too much emphasis on Lorde as the saviour of 2021. I mean, I have also been listening to Månneskin and although they are sonically quite different to Lorde, they give me hope for the future of rock music. I think they might be as good at bonkers music videos as MCR are.

I‘m going to overlook that they are all in their early twenties and I am no longer in my early twenties and am, in fact, racing with alarming speed to what could be considered your late twenties even though we should all be allowed to take at least two years off our age to account for the time lost to Covid.

I am getting tired and distracted. The Great British Sewing Bee is finished so I don’t know what I’ll do with my evening – I guess I could… try sewing? – but it’s time to turn off the internet and look at the sky now it’s not hidden by several thousand clouds.

Thanks for reading. If you’d like to read my short stories and see behind-the-scenes work, you can sample? the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon for a month with this link. No pressure to stick around! Think of it as trying a miniature dessert with no requirement to eat the whole menu. You can also find me on Ko-fi. Thank you for your support – you’re helping to fund this space and pay for other costs of running a creative business, like paying editors.

Here are the books I’ve published so far and where you can find them. If you enjoy my book recommendations, browse my Bookshop.org page here.

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