Today

7.30: woke up to a pale window. Listening to radio 4 in bed while watching the painted cows appear from the mist. It's warm in here, cold out there.

7.55: deep breath, slippers and wrapper on, downstairs. It's still dark enough to need a light. Light the fire, make tea, draft writing plan for the day and tidy up last night's notes.

9.00: wash, dress, make breakfast; bacon and eggs. It takes almost an hour to get the fire hot enough to cook.
I'm still looking for a way of warming plates without cracking them or knocking them flying. There isn't a good place by the fire.
I suspect a hot water container may be the key... will have to look up the reference books to see what devices were being used in the 18th/19th C and improvise around that.

10.00: Write

11.00: Fetch water, top up the filter, wash up and clean kitchen. The mice are slacking. Perhaps they are having lie-ins too. Or maybe they have moved on to pastures new for the winter.

11.30: Writing again - a whole new scene, a whole new character, distilling pages of backstory and exposition into one short conversation that also sets up the next scene and drives my character on. If I've got it right - result!

12.30: Stack firewood. I have a log pile in the yard, and another in the porch, where it dries out before I bring it in. Looks like I will have to order more within the next week - and start sawing my own to make it go further.

1.00: lunch: Chilli beans. The chilli powder is red hot - my nose is on fire! Very satisfying.

1.30: writing again. The next scene is a very old one, a set piece love scene, but it now sits better in the whole structure and drives the plot. (I hope).

2.30: clean pheasants for tomorrow's soup. They are a gift from the ruggedly handsome landlord who happens to be my brother-in-law, and leant the cottage a rural film set look for a short while, hanging beside the porch. I've no use for a whole bird, and no way to roast them anyway, so I skin them and take off breasts and legs to cook with raisins and a little wine.

Then I sat and finished a curtain to hang in the bedroom. I bought the fabric in Kelso 10 months ago; curtain making has been a very stop-start project, slowed down still further by problems with a borrowed sewing machine. The onset of winter is more than enough encouragement to finish them by hand.

5.00: write - almost completed a whole section today.

7.00: The Archers, supper, book of the week (The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney. Read an interview with the author, who is famously agoraphobic, and so researched the entire novel, which is set in Canada, without being able to visit the country. If she hadn't been open about her illness would anyone have commented on this? The novel is set in the 1860s - she hasn't visited there either. That's what writers do. I like her.
"Why is one of the characters gay?" "Some people are you know."

8.00: write - finishing up for the day.

9.00: Connect up the disc drive and watch the second half of The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

Tomorrow I have a lift to the swimming pool at 7.30. This means getting up and down the hill in the dark. Could be interesting!