Sorry about the pun–couldn’t resist. Nor could I resist putting up more than one photo, as we had an exceptional morning and I couldn’t choose between my favorites. We had three to four inches of snow last night, which for McKinney, Texas, on the 3rd of March is quite something. It was certainly our only snowfall this winter, and probably ranks right up there as far as overall snowfall in our temperate clime.

And as you can see, the dogs LOVED it. Neela (on the left) wasn’t too sure about putting her paws in that nasty cold white stuff last night, but once she learned she could run in it, there was no stopping her. This morning dawned crisp and perfectly clear, and we went out for a romp early to make the most of our snow day. This was one of our usual walks, on a dead-end hike-and-bike path called Preservation Trail, but transformed into a white wonderland!

The dogs ran and rolled and played and took big bites of snow, and I snapped away with my little Canon IXY like mad. Not bad action shots for my little pocket camera, although I had to delete the snap of Neela with a big glob of snow on her nose as it was too out of focus.

The dogs look so fierce with their teeth showing, but it’s pure play. The snow and cold make Hallie, who’s ten, feel like a puppy, and you can definitely tell who’s top dog.

After an hour we went home wet, cold, and happy. By midday only traces of snow remained, and the town square was running with rivers of melting slush.

But just for a night (another post to follow with photos from last night) and a day, we got to pretend we lived in New England . . . or perhaps even England.

Just wanted to say thanks to all those who have posted and sent emails the last couple of months.  I’ve been writing like a mad person since October finishing Where Memories Lie, which is now in the very capable hands of my editor at William Morrow.  Not that I wasn’t writing before that, it’s just that the first part of the process tends to be slow for me, and it took my trip to London in October to really kick start the second half of the book.  For all the impatient readers out there, I’m trying to find a way to speed up the research/plotting part, so that I can write a book in less time (and not have to work quite so hard at the end.)

I’ll be going to London in March, doing the preliminary scout for the next book, which will be #13 in the series.  Hmmm.

In the meantime, I thought others might enjoy London Daily Photo as much as I have the last few months–it’s the next best thing to being there.

A beautiful autumn day yesterday. This is a Texan’s reward for suffering through the summer–we breeze through October and early November in seventy-degree bliss, until the first Arctic cold front dips down from Canada (in Texas we call this a Blue Norther, not sure why) and the shorts and flip-flops are abandoned in a scurry for our stored woolies. But in the meantime, walking the dogs in the woods with golden leaves catching the sunlight as they drifted through the trees, I thought, ah ha, photo op, and so this morning took along my camera. And discovered that it goes against the laws of physics to freeze two big dogs, running happily loose in the forest, in the same frame. If you call out to them, they run towards you and you get snouts in the lens. If you try the candid op, you get waving tails and furry behinds. In the end, this was the best I could do, one in focus and one a blur of motion, and in the process I discovered why professional photographers are so agile. To get eye (or nose) level with a moving canine requires putting one’s body in positions a professional trainer would envy. The motto, I suppose, is that while I tried to capture a moment, the dogs lived in it.

I visited the new Whole Foods Market in Kensington High Street with great anticipation; after all, this is a Texas store that has morphed into a giant, and this is its first venture into the UK (gobbling up any rival natural foods stores in the process.) It’s a beautiful building, tucked just in front of The Daily Mail, but rather than the comfortable familiarity I suppose I was expecting, I found it rather scarily corporate. The first floor has a sushi bar, an oyster bar, a pizza station, a juice bar . . . and a DJ, along with lots of green and very expensive spa and decorative items. A long way from the early funky stores in Austin and Dallas, when you could have a contest to see which cashier had the most piercings and tatoos. Still, later in my visit, all over London I saw shoppers proudly carrying WFM bags with their groceries or dinners, so it looks like WFM UK is on its way.

This is my favorite Portobello Market photo–a juxtaposition of the traditional grocers’ van parked perfectly in front of the Starbucks near the bottom of Portobello Road, new meets old. In fact, I have this print framed in my kitchen. Portobello’s traditional fruit and vegetable vendors are struggling to hold their own against the influx of chain stops, and I can’t bear to imagine the market without them.

Continuing my love affair with the Albert Bridge, here at dusk, taken looking east from Cheyne Walk. This was my last full day in London. I’d walked miles and was so tired I could barely hold the camera, but still shot the bridge until the light was gone. My favorite photo from the previous trip was taken looking west, into the setting sun, as my character does in Where Memories Lie.

Unfortunately, I had to pass up taking a peek into Gordon Ramsay Royal Hospital Road, but collapsed into the welcoming bustle of the Oriel Cafe in Sloane Square–very French, very busy, but they always seem to be able to make room for one tired writer. And provide a glass of wine.  Or two.

I just made another disastrous pie–maybe I should give up pastry and stick to writing. It definitely pays better. I’m a “throw things in the pot and hope for the best” sort of cook, even in my finer moments.

I refuse to use the word blog, partly out of contrariness, partly because I suspect it will be horribly dated sometime in the near future. And the idea that anyone would want to read what I have to say on the most random of subjects strikes me as a great conceit, but then we would all be the poorer if diarists of the past, both major and minor, had felt themselves limited by such constraints. I am at the moment reading Vere Hodgson’s Few Eggs and No Oranges, a fascinating record of the author’s day-to-day life in Notting Hill during the Blitz. I’m sure that Vere, who comes across as a practical, no nonsense sort of person, didn’t think of herself as important, but felt that her account might be of interest both to her relatives outside of London and to any future readers. There is a frightening immediacy to the entries–no revisionist history here–as she didn’t know if she, or London, would survive the war. I, for one, am glad that she took the time and trouble to record her experiences.