Toothache

I have now paid three visits to my dentist over the same tooth. The gum has been very painful for 24 hours but it appears that may be due to plaque and the beginnings of gingivitis. I need to keep really well this year, both mentally and physically so I can have a busy and fulfilling year. Not only do I have a new job but I have started writing a book and want to put more time into my art and garden.

I am still reading To Kill a Mockingbird on my VRS but heard that Harper Lee has found a book she thought had been lost and it will be published this year. While well written in that one is unexpectedly drawn in, I find her book a bit boring as it seems to be a blow by blow description of life as a lawyer's daughter in a small American town. It is very interesting to hear that she wrote the new book first but was encouraged to write Mockingbird and make her first book a sequel. It is interesting the way we take the advice of others who claim to know more about our writing than we do.

I am now reading Six Days in Leningrad   by Paullina Simons on my kindle.

This is a memoir of her journey back to her homeland to research St Petersburg for a book which became The Bronze Horseman. I have only read the first few chapters but understand that this book changed her life and provided her with another layer to a life filled with being both different yet belonging. Her description of the flat of her Papa's friends and their belief they were living in luxury opened her eyes to the deprivation in communist Russia.

Hearing an interview on the radio with Michaela De Prince saw me scrambling to Amazon.com to buy the book she has authored with her mother.

Orphaned by the war in Sierra Leone, Michaela is adopted by a loving American couple who encouraged her love of ballet, despite Michaela being told that the US was not ready for a black ballerina. Many years of practice and entering competitions has now paid off and she is dancing with the Amsterdam Ballet Company. You Tube videos show an athletic and not too thin yet very skilled ballet dancer who is obviously devoted to her chosen craft. I think this will be a very exciting read.

While I have begun writing a book I am in the process of putting together a literature review on street accessibility audits for CCS. Tomorrows meeting will be very interesting as I am sure they are unprepared for the extensive research I have already done.