Jackie’s daughter, Mel, who had been giving me the computer lessons (and also mouse-sitting when I was away), pointed out to me that compulsively visiting my book page on Amazon is not so much surfing as dabbling my feet in the smaller waves. So she showed me how to access Google and other search engines, where I found hundreds of mentions of me! OK, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration, but lots anyhow. Only it was just like opening Pandora’s box and I couldn’t resist checking all the time to see if anyone had said something new (and flattering) about me …

On the Amazon site there were some new readers’ reviews of my books, and one woman said she and her husband had always been keen gardeners, but my novels had changed their lives, but she didn’t say whether for better or worse. Another one said she had now read all my novels and was indescribably appalled by my depraved and warped view of sweet innocent nature, though goodness knows there was nothing innocent about nature that I’d ever noticed. But apart from these two, all the reviews are unambiguously enthusiastic.

My email address book was still pitifully small and it was mostly just Linny who filled my inbox, with the odd missive from Salubrious and Miracle. Mel said if I went on Facebook I would soon have lots of friends, but there are friends and friends, aren’t there?

Mel’s definition of ‘friend’ seemed pretty loose to me – but then, her mother’s was even looser, so I suppose that wasn’t surprising. Mel was now writing a novel too, which she was reading to me in very short chapters, and I could see it was actually just a day-by-day description of what it was like to live with an ageing upper-class hippie with a good accent and connections, a series of dodgy boyfriends, and just enough private income to keep you one tin of beans above the poverty line.

Ten

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