Today’s scour around the shoe shops of Sutton Coldfield was borne not of a desire for pretty footwear, but – I’m not proud to admit – pressing necessity, since so many of my shoes were falling apart and destined for the bin.

Our as yet fruitless (when will it ever be fruitful…?) quest to purchase a house has been ongoing for almost a year, and what you might think of as frivolous concerns like buying shoes/clothes, booking holidays, and writing, have been shoved to the proverbial back burner.  Hence I have started to resemble a homeless person of late.  Also, in fairness, I have never been one of those women who is besotted with shoes and owns, say, 200 pairs.

In truth, a new pair of walking boots or trainers is apt to set my juices flowing more readily than, say, heels or Uggs.  In fact I have never been a fan of high heels.  I am tall anyway, and would feel like Miranda Hart in stilettos.  I tend to be sensibly shod, believing in flat-footed comfort before tottering glamour, which probably sounds hideously frumpy but there you go.

Talking of writing, I have ambitions to self-publish.  I have had three of my novels bound professionally (which is not the same as self-publishing, of course, but merely a means to convert my scribblings into actual “book” form) but am now seriously considering producing The Four Matthews as an eBook.  I know a few fellow authors who have gone down this route, and it seems very much the way to progress nowadays.

I have devoured this article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2040044/Kindle-How-make-million-writing-e-book.html

(which I have added to my Links page) and started to entertain ambitions to get my work “out there” – and perhaps make a bit of money in the process.

Right, there’s a few random meanderings for a Saturday afternoon for you.

Tomorrow I am looking forward to attending Strictly Come Dancing in Birmingham.  I am still suffering cold turkey following the conclusion of the latest – and, in my opinion, best – TV series.

May I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and leave you with the wonderful Judy Garland.  The lyrics from this song resonate with me: “Have yourself a merry little Christmas / Let your heart be light / Next year all our troubles will be out of sight.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g4lY8Y3eoo

I hope against hope those lyrics will hold true for us and that next Christmas we will be drinking a toast in our wonderful new house.

xx

I have persevered with zumba and am thoroughly enjoying my “journey” through it.  I have done about six or seven classes now.  I can have the crappest day at work, and then burning off the day’s comfort-food calorie intake with a few dance moves cannot help but buoy up my flagging spirits.

Here are a couple of my favourite tracks from the instructor’s playlist:

In my fantasies I like to think of zumba classes as my first step towards going on Strictly Come Dancing and getting 10 from Craig Revel Horwood (disregarding the small impediment to that goal, i.e. my lack of celebrity status).

In the meantime, I am absolutely “revelling” (see what I did there) in the current series of Strictly.  That programme is the best thing (in fact probably the only good thing) about winter; as cosy as a hug or a bowl of soup by the fire on a December day.  This crop of celebs is the best ever, in my opinion.  Go Team Dobbin!!

He talked, among many other things, about how he could never get it together with Gok Wan because if they had kids they would bear the unfortunate surname of WanCarr!!

I must admit seeing Alan at the massive NIA in Birmingham wasn’t quite the same as the intimacy I experienced four years ago when I first saw him live, at the Wolverhampton Civic Hall.  I was on the front row then (fatal, you might think, with a comedian on, but he doesn’t pick on people – only hecklers).  This time around, his image was projected on to big screens.  Ah, he’s gotten far too famous.

Here’s a behind the scenes clip of Alan on this Spexy Beast tour (“I pull back me flaps”):

I am in a Peak District walking group, and the dates for the walks (we do one each season) are actually set at the start of each year.  This one really could not have been planned better.

We followed part of the Monsal Trail, the old railway line now very popular with cyclists and walkers.  We later crossed the River Wye to Litton Mill, through to Cressbrook Dale and the village of Litton.

But in recent years I’ve grown fonder of my lazy Sundays.

That sinking “I’ve got to go back to work tomorrow” feeling (which has long replaced the age-old “I’ve got to go back to school tomorrow” utter dread which used to attack the tummy usually around the time Bullseye finished) aside, Sundays deliver simple joys.  Lazy breakfasts, Elaine Paige and Paul O’Grady on Radio 2, reading, clearing out long-uncharted cupboards, cooking the Sunday dinner, indulging in a nice glass of red with said dinner.

This weekend I have had a good clearout of my bedroom wardrobes.  There are few activities more cathartic getting rid of stuff.  A load more of my ancient clothes are charity shop-bound.  I tried a few outfits on which I bought when I was a young waif of a thing – some looked as though they were made for two-year-olds when stretched over my enlarged frame!  It was really rather alarming.

It was – dare I say it – better than the one I’d been going to for the previous two weeks.  There was an atmosphere, for a start, with more than 20 of us as opposed to four(!) at the other one.  The routines were far less complicated – though I doubt all the tuition in the world would ever make me a coordinated mover.

It was a brand new class too, so there was no sense that I was the “new girl coming in halfway through.”  There were ladies of all age groups, which I think helped somehow.

Hmm, think I may end up persevering with this one…

I have decided to share a few of the photos I’ve taken on my travels over the years. They are not necessarily in date order, just a few random landscapes for you to enjoy.  I will add to them as and when I take some more nice piccies.

Here is the link:
http://leighmathers.wordpress.com/leighs-gallery/

You’ll find the links over there on the left as usual, but to get you started off here is a quick link to the blurb:
http://leighmathers.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/the-four-matthews-by-leigh-mathers/

And here is Chapter 1: http://leighmathers.wordpress.com/category/novels/the-four-matthews/chapter-1/

Don’t be thrown – it does start with a faux Wikipedia entry, followed by a few other “pre-chapter” bits, before launching into the narrative proper.

To jazz things up a bit, I have added a photo to each chapter, each one representative of the area in which that particular chapter is loosely set. All part of my campaign to reach a wider audience with my writing.

As a Brucie Bonus, you win a bag of crisps if you can guess the “real life” location of each picture.