Off to Exmouth tomorrow morning by train. It will take me, and the train, 5 hours so I’ll have plenty of time to prepare. The main reason for going to Exmouth is to meet up with Dave Haslett, who runs the excellent Ideas4writers website. We are to have a conversation exchanging our experience and views of how to win a short story competition. CDs will be cut and so some of the mystery can be revealed to budding competitors. watch this space – or one later.
Reason number two for visitiing Exmouth is to visit to a house my dad and stepmum lived in about 6 years ago. More a holiday chalet. Appropriate then because my dad moved house every two or three years telling me he was on a constant holiday. The single-story dwelling in Hartley Road was a happy place for him in that he used it to walk to the beach and to visit the Devon seaside villages and their endless charming cafes.
It will be a nostalgic trip for me. He died just over two months ago – I wonder if his ghost will join me looking for lost spoons. I hope his potted plants are still there. Several didn’t make it onto the removal lorry. Come to think about it, a box of cutlery didnt either. Umm. I wonder if I’ll find my dad’s ghost hunting for lost spoons?
