The view from my room in Finca el Cerrillo says it all really: luxurient gardens, blue pool, olives and vines on the ochre hills, and the mountain tops of the Sierra Almijara beyond.
That's my room, beyond the white jasmine (believe me I'm not gloating, just... smiling.)

My writing group is small but perfectly formed; we have all morning together in the cool studio as a 'master-class', then meet again before supper for what's become known as the 'aperitif session'.
Although this course has a fiction focus, the gorgeous gardens, rural architecture, and distant mountains all inspire lyricism, and our evening readbacks are filled with poetry as well as stories, so thanks Elaine, Collette, & Helen for a wonderful week of word-exploration.

In the afternoons... well, there's the pool to laze beside & within, there's cushions beneath the big carob tree.... and there's the meals for which this place is famed, along with the wonderfully relaxed hospitality of our hosts Sue and Gordon Kind.



And now I'm leaving all this & heading back to the Real World, where it's not 32 degrees every blue-skied, blue-pooled day, - and where there's a plinth in Trafalgar Square I'll be standing on next Saturday, and where like Christopher Robin and his bear, the web-link is forever playing.

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