Holiday reading...by Sheila Claydon

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I will be on holiday in Singapore when this is published and although it is a family visit, which I know will include more card and board games than I actually want but, as a good grandmother, I will play, my mind has already turned to holiday reading.

Some of the books I've most enjoyed I've discovered on holiday, not because I've chosen and taken them with me but because I've found them on the pre-loved shelf in a hotel or on a cruise ship, visited a secondhand bookshop in a newly discovered town or village, or, on one occasion, bought in a sale in a National Trust stately home. 

When I'm at home my book choices are mostly governed by conversations with friends, titles I've read about, what is on the suggestion table at the library or a book giftedly by someone. On holiday it is different. I go with the flow, open to anything that looks interesting, and over the years this has introduced me to authors I'd never heard of whose books have given me immense pleasure.  Whether such a laissez-faire attitude will be possible in Singapore I don't know, but I hope so. 

Often the books I write are set in places where I've been on vacation because my other holiday activity is taking in the atmosphere, the scenery and the people, learning about the culture and enjoying the food. So much so that the tagline on my website is a ticket to romance!

While nearly every one of my novels is linked to somewhere I have visited, the two that offer the reader the best means of holiday escape are Cabin Fever and Reluctant Date. I visited and enjoyed the places featured in the books so much that I just had to write about them. 

Cabin Fever takes the reader from London to New Zealand and then on a cruise to Australia and back again, while Reluctant Date is set on the North West coast of the UK and an idyllic Florida key, with a trip to the Swanee River thrown in. Sometimes I take these, and others, down from the shelf in my study and re-read them to remind myself of past times and why I had to write the story. I hope that while I am in Singapore I will be equally inspired...and maybe I'll find another of those serendipitous books as well.

Unexpected Consequences...by Sheila Claydon

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In my last blog I talked about Shakespeare and the pandemic that affected him all of his life, starting with a fifth of the people of Stratford dying the year he was born. It was, of course, the bubonic plague, and it rampaged around the world for several hundred years, coming and going seemingly randomly until its cause, the fleas in rats, was discovered. Even that plague had its positives though, and in Shakespeare's case it gave him time, while he isolated himself and his family during the worst outbreaks, to write much of his best work.  

The Coronavirus that at the moment is affecting countries around the world also has some surprising upsides. I know businesses that are unexpectedly thriving because, with the closure of many shops, people are turning more and more to online shopping. The same with take-away meals and the many smaller restaurants that previously only offered table service are now barely able to keep up with requests for meals to be delivered.  And there are new local delivery services too where, for example, local farmers have seen a gap in the market and started delivering their fruit and vegetables directly, while family run butchers do the same with their meat.

Of course there are many, many people who are suffering, people who are wondering if their jobs are safe, people living in overcrowded conditions where the virus is more likely to run rife, people with barely enough to eat, but there are many, many more who are enjoying the unexpected freedom that has come with being paid to stay at home until the worst is over. This has led to family time, new hobbies, DIY house upgrades, healthier meals being cooked from scratch, more exercise, more fresh air...the list goes on. Although we live near a beach it is a bit off the beaten track, so we tend to recognise most of the people who park near us and set off through the woods and sand-hills to the sea. In the recent warm weather, however, we have seen so many new families visiting and enjoying themselves, and so many strangers exercising, that we doubt whether life here will ever be the same again. 

And that brings me to our own unexpected consequences. Three days ago we had coffee in Sydney. Yesterday we had lunch in Hong Kong. This evening we are having a drink with friends on the south coast of England and we will be meeting up with more friends in the Midlands on Tuesday. There are plans to see cousins in San Diego and we have already walked around a friend's garden in New Zealand and admired their burgeoning fruit trees and newly planted flower beds.

When I started writing I needed a strap line and at the time it was that my books were a 'ticket to romance' because many of them were set in places I've visited over the years. The fact that all that travelling is continuing virtually is the wonderful unexpected consequence of how Coronavirus is affecting us.  Where we used to exchange emails and maybe meet up once or twice a year, or only every few years if the distance was great, now we are very active Internet friends, talking weekly in many cases. With so many social platforms available it is so easy, and with practice has become almost as pleasurable as seeing one another face to face. We all have so much to say that we quickly forget about the screen between us as we lift our glasses to one another or excuse ourselves for a couple of minutes while we make another coffee. Why it has taken a pandemic to set up such an enjoyable online network of weekly contacts I can't fathom. We could have started doing this years ago instead of just limiting online calls to our granddaughter in Hong Kong. Everyone says the same and I think, when live gets back to whatever normal is going to, be this is an unexpected and very enjoyable consequence that will continue.

Cheers everyone!