I MISSED A WEEK AND THE END OF OLIVER

Did you miss me? Probably not, but I took a whole week out (and I may be a bit erratic for the next few weeks as well, due to a multitude of reasons). No, I was not on my new mega yacht, nor scaling Mount Etna, but desperately trying to get Amie 2 perfect. It doesn’t matter how many times I proof read, there is always another mistake. I think the only answer is to keep the length of further books down to a couple of hundred words.

From reading lots of blogs, I’ve discovered there are two ways of writing a book. Either you have this grand idea lurking at the back of your brain, and you sit at the keyboard and away you go.

The other is to plan out the story, flesh out the characters, list the chapters, carve up the action for each section and write to plan.

The first appears creative and the second more organized. You can guess which kind of writer I am. While the words flow and the scenes tumble out one after the other, I might change my mind about something, or the characters take over, or an extra twist appears out of the brain matter. This leads to a lot of mopping up afterwards.

So I mop up and make corrections and follow my editor’s advice and correct and then I make mistakes in the corrections and so it goes on and on and on.

As soon as I get my first film offer (yeah right), I shall simply lie back, nibble grapes, dictate my books from the sofa and instruct browbeaten secretary to check out the facts. This will save me so much time.

I already have the plan for Amie 3 in my mind, but when I will be free to start it is another matter altogether.

Hopefully, Amie 2 should be out about mid September, if DH can remember the formatting formulae.

But we’ve left Oliver in charge much too long, and it’s time to move on. He was a busy man, or rather his wife was, as they had 9 children. This is surprising as she can’t have looked too alluring, since her husband believed that women and girls should dress in a proper manner. Make-up was banned. Puritan leaders and soldiers would roam the streets of towns and scrub off any L’Oreal products found on unsuspecting women. Too colourful dresses were banned. A Puritan lady wore a long black dress that covered her almost from neck to toes. She wore a white apron and her hair was bunched up behind a white head-dress.

(c) Cromwell Museum; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

“Elizabeth Cromwell” by Robert Walker –  in a puritan outfit?

Puritan men wore black clothes and short hair. (The Primark ones remember?)

Despite all these rules, Cromwell himself was not strict – and obviously from the picture above, neither was his wife. He enjoyed music, hunting and playing bowls. He even allowed full-scale entertainment at his daughter’s wedding. Isn’t that just so typical of politicians? Say one thing, do another.

This is Oliver’s house, but he may have had the wedding at some posh place down the road.

Now it would be thrilling to write that Oliver came to a sticky end and there is huge doubt about his death. Was it kidney stones, a urinary infection, or even the rumour it was malaria?  (in England!)

Of course there was the usual state funeral with all the trimmings at Westminster Abbey. But, 3 years later they dug him up again to rummage around doing a post mortem. Then the body hanged in chains at Tyburn and thrown into a pit

.

Now, and I find this amazing. His head was bought and sold several times before being buried in Cambridge. Now I can understand buying and hoarding Rolling Stones records, or Elvis Presley’s toothbrush or even Red Rum’s favourite saddle blanket, but a head!! How gruesome can people get?

Anyway, enough of this boring man, whose boring son took over, but he only lasted 9 months, and with a nickname like Queen Dick, I suspect his heart wasn’t in it.

So, it was time to bring back the next king – till next time.