The final novel in THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER series is out at last, slightly later than originally intended, but my somewhat unusual excuse is that I’ve only just returned from the trenches. No, I haven’t been at war, just trying to make some order of the chaos that is Great Ground Farm.

First there was the comparatively small job of digging a trench to plumb in the loo…

Then there was the trench for the “Great Wall of GGF”…

Then there was the small matter of landscaping the garden…

Not content with that, I then set about trying to find the water main in order to lay on water to the stables…

Before I’d recovered from that, the new electricity main and water pipe for the workshop needed yet another trench…

And the spring in the paddock needed to be rerouted to the water troughs for the alpacas…

By which time, planning had been approved to build the house…

And then there was the little matter of digging trenches for the rainwater drainage…

And then another trench for the foundations of the steps…

And yet another trench had to be dug (this time for the loo in the fleece workshop)…

And finally (I hope) a very long trench to take mains water down to the top alpaca paddocks, which involved getting out the dowsing rods to find the original pipe….

It would be fair to say that I was all trenched out and more than content to be ensconced at my desk in the Book Shed for a while to finish THE SKIPPERESS’S TALE…

So if anyone needs a cure for writer’s block, one option is to dig a trench or two!