Postcard from Pollensa

I am always at home by the sea. Here is no exception. Yesterday we strolled, sleeping toddler in tow, along the beautiful pine walk that hugs Puerto Pollensa bay. We were hypnotised by the gentle shush of the lapping turquoise waters. It was, said my daughter, ‘very zen, like being in a spa.’ The sea here is a world away from the brown, silted, tidal swell of the Bristol Channel where I grew up, but which we always referred to as the sea.

The beach between Burnham and Berrow was long and sandy. We walked there by the four legged lighthouse, avoiding the quicksand, waiting for the tide to roll in, trailing our thoughts, wishes, sorrows, joys, as we paddled at its edge. It knew us in all our colours. It manifests itself still in my dreams and appears in my short stories. Water is my element and it is wonderful to have it close by but perhaps an even greater cause for celebration is the warmth of the sun…

Here are five things from my early morning notebook:

Waking to the pitch dark of a shuttered room and the smell of citronella and jungle formula

The pines lean over to drink the salt water of the bay

In the garden a feral cat and her three tortoiseshell kittens lay half hidden in the shade of the hedge

My three granddaughters- Elsie, Lilah and Freja stomp about on marble floors in their jelly shoes

A novel changes its title - who could have known? If you’d told me it would happen to my novel I would not have believed you…!

Even on holiday there has been work to do. I received the first full length reviews of my new novel - published in August - and they were beyond anything I had hoped for! I could not have wished for better. My editor referred to one as a ‘rightly swooning review,’ -

‘totally immersive, exquisitely constructed and utterly heart- rending,’ can this really be my book?

But long story short the recommendations have been to reconsider the title- I have taken heed and I’m excited to say ‘A Little Madness in the Spring,’ has become, ‘The Silent Women.’

More about titles, this very late change! and why, next week because I’m on holiday now and I need to go and contemplate the sea…

Thanks for reading, Avril x