At the start of this year, I had a great plan. I was going to write a novel.

It would be a great novel.

It would almost certainly win the Booker prize.

There seemed to be no reason at all why I couldn’t put this plan into action. The littlest had started nursery two days a week, so I had two whole days to myself. Six blissful child-free hours, between 9.30am and 3.15pm, in which I could sit down and – hey, why not? – write my novel.

And so I sat down to write.

The blank page loomed at me.

And I discovered I had forgotten all the words.

Two solid years of doing nothing but child-rearing had wiped all of the complicated words from my brain. Straightforward concepts I could still deal in:

“Do you want a sandwich?”

“That person is feeling sad.”

But words with any nuance in them had disappeared. All the grey words had fled. And taken with them my grasp of syntax, any writerly turns of phrase, and – the real kicker – any belief in my own ability as a writer.

Turns out, it’s quite hard to write a novel if your vocabulary has been reduced to that of a seven year old.

I spent less time sitting down to write the novel as the weeks went on, and more time avoiding writing the novel.

I started to hate the damn novel.

Any time I opened my laptop, it seemed to mock me. “Write a novel…” it would wink. “Go on, I dare you! Try and remember all those words you’ve forgotten…”

I decided that perhaps writing the greatest novel of all time, after doing sweet FA with my brain for two years, was a slightly big ask. Perhaps I needed to start smaller. I realised that writing, like all skills, needs to be practiced, and I remembered this neglected old blog of mine with renewed interest.

And so, though I am pretty sure nobody reads, or even writes blogs anymore, I am returning to mine in 2019, as a place to re-learn what once came naturally to me, and a place, once again, to record those little bits of life that would otherwise be lost forever in the mind fog that comes of spending so much time with small people.

I’m not planning on changing the format in any significant way, if there does happen to be anyone here reading who remembers me from all that time ago. There will be posts on plants and gardening, books I am reading, London events, snapshots of an eternally partly renovated house and – because I haven’t really changed that much – definitely much waffle.

Thank you if there is anyone still out there, patiently wondering what happened to me. And hello! if you have stumbled on me freshly. I’ll be back with more, soon.

Sabrina Xxx

(Photo of me at the top from a recent trip to Paris, taken by my excellent friend Kelly Macnamara. This is the topic for a whole other post, but I have also been thinking a lot recently about being visible, especially as a woman over 40, and how important it is to stand in front of the lens sometimes, as well as hide behind it. So I thought I would start as I mean to go on…)

In something of a head-in-the-sand moment, we had a short break last week in the Cotswolds. A bit of time to unwind on a glorious glampsite (that’s a word, now, right?), admire the sunsets, wander round beautiful gardens and deal with the kids’ whinging as a parenting duo have a bit of quality family time together.

{We should have really been busy organising, for tomorrow we move house, along with all the weariness that brings, but enough of all that til another time…}

We stayed on a Featherdown Farms campsite, having really enjoyed our hol with them two years back in Dorset. It’s camping in name only: you live in a huge safari tent, with proper beds, mattresses and duvets, and a flushing loo. This year, not wanting to haul my gigantic seven-month pregnant body half-naked across a field to the shower block, I also insisted that we pay the £100 odd extra to stay in one their “frills” tents, which means the bathroom even has a hot shower (on mains water) that was actually better than our one at home. Yeah, it’s pretty blissful. The only downside is that the prices are, quite frankly, extortionate. We paid about £650, which is a lot for four nights in a field, no matter how nice the tent.

Still, this was the view of the field our tent was in at sunrise:

and this was the view from the car park:

So, you know, it was probably worth it, in the end.

The other huge plus point, for me, if not the rest of the family, was that our campsite was part of the Hidcote estate, and in a field just behind Hidcote Manor, to which we had free access for our stay. I’ll write a whole separate post on the gloriousness of the gardens there, but I took every opportunity I could to wander in and look around.

It was my first time visiting such prime Cotswold territory (we were just between Chipping Camden and Broadway which is, I think, pretty much peak Cotswold) and my god, it’s glorious there! I now see why everyone bangs on about it being so nice all the time. We were there in the middle of August, and there were certainly quite a few coachloads of tourists popping up everywhere, but I never felt completely overwhelmed by them (as I do in the centre of London sometimes…)

You can see the impact on prices, though. The Chipping Camden Co-op was noticeably more expensive than our local one in East Dulwich. It’s not often that I go on holiday and find the prices higher than London.

All the towns seem to sit on top of hills with the most magnificent views of glorious English countryside. I was particularly taken by Burford (above) as the main road that runs straight through the middle of town was a major thoroughfare and pulsed with traffic including lorries, tractors and huge combine harvesters as well as the cars and coaches. For some reason, that tickles me a lot more than a sleepy little village with only the occasional bicycle passing through.

As well as wander round honey-coloured Cotswold towns, we also took a day trip to Cotswold Wildlife Park.

Last time we went, I was bowled over by the planting and the kids’ playground. This time, perhaps because my expectations had been higher, I thought the planting was a little bit meh, for the most part, and the playground seemed to have simultaneously shrunk and become more over-run with bigger children. But I guess that’s all in the mind…

The walled garden was still spectacular though. I particularly liked the tropical section.

And it was interesting to compare the difference between the late summer annual planting with the spring display we saw on our last visit.

Oh and the animals enchanted us all as much as before. I’m not entirely sure it’s great to keep either giraffes or penguins in the UK climate, but I have to admit I was pretty pleased to spend time close up to them.

Of course, the only trouble is, I’m now slightly regretting our decision to move to another London abode and rather wishing we had decided to leg it out to the country after all. But peak Cotswold has definitely made it to the top of the list for the “possible places to move in 2018″…

Further info:

• Featherdown farms have sites throughout the country (and Europe). More info on their website: www.featherdown.co.uk.
• We visited the towns of Burford, Broadway, Chipping Camden and stayed in Hidcote Bartrim. It’s pretty flipping lovely all round the area, but if you have children then Broadway has a most excellent new playground (that took up an entire field), which might just tip the balance in its favour. It was also less noticeably touristed than Chipping Camden or Burford when we visited.
• If the animals or gardens of Cotswold Wildlife Park tempt you, there is more on their website: www.cotswoldwildlifepark.co.uk.

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