The RGO had a massive funding cut, and I was made redundant. I planned to teach English as a foreign language, but I found it extremely stressful. Without really meaning to, I backed into tour guiding. Now that did suit me – if I’m honest I enjoy the sound of my own voice. Even better, I became a tour guide specialising in astronomy, a Starlight Guide.

Tour guiding is erratic work, so I took up my old passion of writing, and finally published a guide book to the observatory for none-geeks. You can find details here. I followed this with an anthology of children's stories set on La Palma.

Nobody planned the COVID-19 pandemic, did they? It did at least give me time to finish the third edition of the observatory book, then the thriller set in the observatory that I’d been fiddling with for years. (There are such interesting ways to kill people in a professional observatory.) I started to submit it to literary agents, and planning the plot of another thriller when -

Plot twist!

The muscle contraction in my thigh turned out to be cancer. No, I hadn’t planned that. Obviously.

Nor did I plan on having my leg amputated almost at the hip, but the cancer had spread too far for less drastic treatments.

I’d like to say that I planned my post-traumatic growth, but I’m so puzzled that I’m writing a memoir, H^oppily Ever After to understand how it happened. I'm hoping that other people will find it helpful.

I have rather scattershot interests, but you can use the tags and categories to find the bits of the blog that interest you. You can find stuff about writing, the gorgeous island of La Palma, astronomy, disability and the daft things I’ve been getting up to lately, like my attempts to have an entire market garden on one balcony.

I've given up trying to be normal. I’ve largely stopped planning. But I'll keep writing, gardening, making things and learning. Would you like to keep me company for a while?