Julie Phillips - writer and freelance reporter.

A pleasant day spent in Ludlow with Julie and her husband. Julie was kind enough to interview me, and I enjoyed the experience very much, especially as she brought a sunny day with her after the misery of so much rain. It was good to be able to talk about our shared writing experiences and to hear about the work she is doing and to share her husband's interest in history and expecially in the so-called dark ages of the Anglo-Saxon period and Anglo-Saxon poetry. I am hoping that she will join Women in Rural Enterprise , a useful networking and social group, and that I shall see her at future meetings of Wire in Telford.

I'm hoping that my books will be on sale at Berrington Hall National Trust property in the Gatehouse during their Christmas Weekend, the 5th and 6th December. A very kind friend has offered to sell them for me.

Book signing and Tanzania

A happy but tiring time at the infant school yesterday and realised how I could no longer cope with the bounce and energy of the little ones around me. Watching the teachers at the end of the day reminded me of my own twenty five years in a primary school with four hundred and fifty children - at a time when I bounced along with them. Some of the little ones remembered me from my last visit when I spent a morning reading my book to them, and they shyly waved a hand at me at they left the hall. One pleasant surprise, the recent Tanzania visitors to Ludlow had called at the school and were given a copy of my book. Now my little African folk tale, set in Zimbabwe, is being read to children in a school in a neigbouring country, a lovely thought.