On a quiet day in the studio...

...Tilly snoozes on the sofa as I work, while outside the cabin's windows rain and mist has swallowed the world.

Friends keep asking, Are you and Howard all right? And the answer is, yes, we're doing okay. He's finding ways to do theatre work online, and for me, the days are much the same. A writer's life, or at least this writer's life, is one of semi-isolation anyway, for how else would the work get done? Here in my woodside studio, it's just me, Tilly, a blackbird calling, rain tapping on the cabin's tin roof as I tap words onto a laptop screen. The same thick mist that veils the hills also blots out everything beyond: the news, the noise, the gathering clouds of the world pandemic and economic collapse. It's there, but it's invisible, while I'm enfolded in fog and rain. Doing my work. Tapping out stories. And living with uncertainty as best as I can.

"Listen to me," Jean Rhys once said. "All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake."

We are safe and well on our green hillside. Still working. Still feeding the lake.