I hadn't really planned to post an update today, but having harbored a suspicion that the opportunity might arise I took the precaution of emailing myself one of my more recent scans from my desk computer before leaving home yesterday. Right now I am in a coffee bar in Muswell Hill, North London and quite close to Alexandra Palace which I will be visiting tomorrow at some point in order to look around the antiques fair being held there (I collect American Depression Glass, you see - quite apt you might think, considering that I suffer from depression). I have a couple of hours free which I intend to dedicate - once I have completed this - to working on the new volume. I am presently working on a piece provisionally entitled 'The Spiral Stair' which revolves around (revolves around - spiral staircase - get it? Ha, Ha,Ha!) a woman 's visit to a the not-so-humble abode of a certain clergyman in order to get some idea of the workings of his charity offering shelter to young women thought in danger of falling into moral peril. Later i have to go off and earn a crust doing a little paid work - oh well!Meanwhile, I thought many of you might appreciate this scan taken from the reader's letters pages of a 1980s Janus magazine. It is another example of how that mag so often helped formulate and develop my interests and the direction of my writing. Bear in mind as you read through it, though, that I was never very happy with the idea of the involvement of parents (at least genuine biological parents - by proxy seems fine) or other blood relatives then or now. In my mind's eye I would change the circumstances to involve step-relatives of various flavors - or later and better still, as my ideas developed and I became more widely read - a court appointed legal guardian or strict governess in the employ of a grasping stepmother.
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