I’ve been working on this blog-site for most of the weekend, and I’m gradually getting my head round some of the weird codes on the admin pages behind the scenes. There’s an amazing difference between these, and the effect they have created on the visible site that you’ll be looking at. Click here, and admire the spaces between the authors’ names - it took me hours of trial and error towork out how to do this!

Anyway, enough of that for the time being - I’m meant to be telling you more about my writing course on Kithera. It was organised by Andy Mullett, the driving force behind The Greek Experience – he used the local facilities, (including the tutor of the Greek course, whose main occupation was running his own delicatessen). The creative writing workshops and tutorials took place on the sheltered terrace of the small hotel, or outside one of the local bars. The art tutor lived in a nearby village, and her course took place outdoors, wherever there was an inspiring landscape, ruined farmhouse or small church.

The students on all the courses were allocated accommodation scattered around the little town of Chora. This itself was not one single place – the old ‘town’ of Chora was up at the top of a hill, and the other part was the harbour front, a long, steep road of at least a kilometre, though when walking uphill it felt like more than double that distance.

Tutors for writing courses came mainly from England. Mine, was a novelist called Helen Carey. I’d sent her parts of the novel I’d intended to work on at Arvon, and also the first few chapters of my new novel. By the end of May, I’d already won the prize of a free read from TLC, so, since I was about to get feedback on that novel, it made more sense for me to ask Helen to discuss the new novel with me. At that stage, I hadn’t got a title for this book which was to become my first published novel, The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society
Helen offered me some useful suggestions, and pointed out some possible pitfalls that I needed to be aware of, if my main character, Agnes was to keep the sympathy of the reader.

The sun shone, the mountain slopes were crisscrossed with narrow winding tracks, the air was scented with wild thyme. The sea was clear turquoise above the flat white rocks. It couldn’t have been more different from the Midlands urban setting of the novel whose characters were beginning to emerge.

It was one of the best (and most productive) holidays of my life. I was lucky enough to have another week there the following year, and that opened up yet more opportunities - but I’ll come to that later.
(Unfortunately, Andy Mullet stopped organising these activity holidays a few years ago.)