Things I learned at Highgrove:

1.      If it rains at Highgrove, the mode du jour is Barbour jacket and green Hunter wellies.

2.      No cameras, mobile phones or binoculars are allowed on the estate.  Sorry – no photographic evidence that I was ever there!

3.      There is a very nice policeman with unfeasibly large sideburns and a gun at the gate.

4       If you are a prince you can bang on all you like about being passionately ‘green’ while having a house the size of substantial hotel, employing a hundred staff and having eighty cars at your disposal.

5.      I am the least ‘green’ person I know and yet my carbon footprint is still a million times less than yours, Charlie Boy.

6       Highgrove is a stunning garden. Immaculately manicured yet very personal and whimsical at the same time. Highly recommend a visit.

7.      It is very tempting to eat the cream tea from the table next to you when the person hasn’t touched it at all! (My idea of recycling.)

8.      If you are an elderly, white-haired lady, it’s probably a good idea to shave off that black moustache, madam.

9.      When did two baked potatoes in a scrotty pub (one cheese, one bacon and cheese) and two diet cokes start to cost £16.00?

10.    If you live in a beautiful Cotswold stone cottage you should not be allowed to load up the roof with solar panels.

11.    A pot of Highgrove honey in the shop is £5.95.

12.    You can only be a guide at Highgrove if your name is Henrietta, Hortense or Hermione.

13.    This is what royal eggs look like from royal hen’s bottoms. One is from a Norwegian Blue – or something. Which is considered lucky. (Tell the tourists any old crap and they’ll believe it.)

I always loved the process of choosing books to take away with me on holiday, but it was always so difficult to whittle it down to a small selection. I’m a very fast reader and given a few days with nothing to interrupt them, can easily bash through a couple of books in a day. The dilemma was always books or shoes? A girl always likes to have a surfeit of both to hand on holiday. So the joy of downloading thirty-odd books onto my Kindle to take on holiday was a real treat. The 1-Click purchase thing is LETHAL!

So far, so easy. And I’m not the best with technology. I still stick Post-it notes to the front of my iPhone because I find the Note App too tricksy. The only thing I find really weird about a Kindle is that they make you switch it off when the plane’s taking off and landing. Why? Does an e-reader really have the power to bring a plane crashing to the earth? I’d be quite concerned if it did. I’m sure the man across the aisle didn’t turn his off.

I will confess that I did take an emergency back-up proper book with me just in case the Will Hold Its Charge For A Month claim was complete tosh. The marketing blah-blah about them working in bright sunlight is right too. They’re very easy to read, hold, love.

However, my choice of reading was a different matter. I don’t like to diss the work of other authors as we all put a great deal of effort into our books. Most of us do, in fact, open a vein and bleed on the page. But sometimes, even as an author, I do wonder what other people see in a book. So of the novels that receive the most critical acclaim are the ones that I just plod through. I can’t bring myself to Name and Shame – that seems so unfair. Like I say, we all try our best and, joyfully, the enjoyment of a book is so subjective. I once lent a friend a book that I’d completely adored and she ripped the whole thing to sheds. Hey-ho.

Anyway, at great expense – more than the paperback price  and don’t even get me started on that – I had downloaded one of the hottest books on the market. It has been talked about for months in the trade. It’s riding high on the bestseller list. It’s the book on everyone’s lips and, in my humble opinion, it was a load of pants. Clichéd story that I’ve read a dozen times before and with more plot holes that a colander. But I am a woman who never gives up. No matter what I think of it, I plough on to the bitter end, always hoping that things might improve. The only book I’ve ever given up on in my life was I, Claudius by Robert Graves. I came close with this. And yet everyone else seems to be raving about it. It must just be me.

Still, onwards and upwards, I moved onto my next book. An award-winning bestseller, nonetheless, also riding high in the charts. Similarly, I can only imagine that the judges saw something that I didn’t. I limped through to the end.  If it has been a real book, I might have been tempted to chuck it in the pool. But with a Kindle, I didn’t think it would survive. Though, surprisingly, my shiny new gadget did withstand a reasonable amount of suntan cream abuse. By now, I was becoming very glad that I’d taken my Kindle and hadn’t lugged these books round the temples and tea plantations of Sri Lanka.

I thought I’d also give a self-published book a go. The advent of e-readers has meant that many writers who have been unable to land a contract with a big publisher – no mean feat, these days  – or for those who simply want to go it alone, self-publishing is the new traditional publishing. The book I chose has been much lauded and the writer is a fantastic self-publicist. I admire her energy immensely. But I was so disappointed in the book. It read like a school essay and had some basic grammatical errors in it that should have been picked up long before it got to the point of being published. Three chapters in and I could stand it no longer. Even though the story sounded quite promising, the quality of the editing – or total lack of it – just made the story unreadable. I’m not just talking about a few typos here which – lets’s face it – now seem to be the scourge of all books,both  e-books and printed. And I so wanted this book to be fabulous. I’m a great champion of the self-published e-book. It gives writers a freedom that they’ve never previously enjoyed. Please don’t waste it! The only saving grace was that I downloaded it for free. A marketing ploy that many readers who are trying to build a readership for themselves are trying. But that only works if your product is fantastic. Readers need to love your first story to go back and buy another and then another. That’s the only way you have a hope of making some money as a self-published writer. If people can’t even read it when it’s free, then they’re certainly not going to go back and pay for a book. So sad, because I could tell that with a flipping good edit there might have been a nice book in there just waiting to get out. People, if you’re going to self-publish, please make sure that it’s of a professional quality.

Next I chose a book that’s become a modern classic by an accomplished author. It’s much raved about and has been made into a stage play and now a hugely successful film. I confess that I’ve seen Woman in Black by Susan Hill seven times as a stage play. Yes, seven. It was when I was a corporate wifey and my husband’s company used to sponsor a touring company. Every friday we used to take along a party of his clients to entertain. By the end of the run, I could have got up on stage and taken the main role. But I wanted to read the book and, eventually, fifteen or more years later, got round to it.

Perhaps the fact I’d seen it performed so much could well explain why there were no frights in it for me. Or maybe it was the fact that I was reading a ghost story set in the windswept up t’north of England while lying on a sunlounger overlooking the India Ocean and sipping a pina colada meant that the atmosphere didn’t quite move me. Don’t get me wrong, the book was really well-written, but there were just no surprises and I wasn’t at all spooked by the spook and, can hardly bring myself to say it, but the ending was a bit predictable. It was also barely a novella. I finished it off in an afternoon and just felt a little bit… well.. let down.  Perhaps I’m just more difficult to scare in print form these days. I haven’t read a book that’s truly frightened me for years. Or perhaps it was jus the setting and I should read it again when I’m on my own on a dark and spooky night with the wind whistling round the rafters. But, of course, I’m still going to see the film because I’ve heard that’s terrifying.

Then I moved onto a historical that had been recommended to me and it was a great rollicking  tale about naughty Nell Gwynne – The Darling Strumpet by Gillian Bagwell. It covered her life right from a pretty miserable childhood, to her controversially becoming the long-term mistress of King Charles II. It’s a very interesting read, all very raunchy goings-on in a debauched court, but it’s by an American author and some of the English history didn’t quite ring true to me.  I didn’t quite trust her like I trust Philippa Gregory – who is the Queen of Historical Fiction in my eyes. But it was a jolly readable romp even so.

The saving grace of my holiday reading was a book that I’d chosen just because the cover was pretty. Shallow, I know. But sometimes you just can’t help it. This one was French Lessons by Ellen Sussman. It was a huge bestselling book in the USA but, if I’m not mistaken, it sort of slid out in the UK without any hype or great promotion. Apologies to Ms Sussman, if that’s wrong! It’s Ellen Sussman’s second novel and it was a joy to read. It features three inter-linked stories roughly centred round a few days at a language school in Paris and the relationships that develop between the staff and students. I enjoyed every page of it and whipped through it in no time.  It was a really lovely story  that sparkled along and would make an interesting film too, I think. I’ll definitely be looking out for more of her books in the future.

I think the moral of the tale here is that if you’re going to go on a holiday that involves a swimming pool and colourful cocktails – and I’m not sure that there’ll be any other kind for me now! – then take chicklit books with you. Nothing beats a nice, light-hearted romantic comedy. It’s what sunloungers were made for. Simples. That’s all you need.

So I hope that  some of you will be taking me and Summer Daydreams with you this year.  Whether you’re an e-reader convert or a traditional paperback girl, make sure I’m in your suitcase! And don’t forget to take a photo too!

Love Carole : ) xx

ps: wear sunscreen!

Having spotted a day booked out in the diary, I managed to torture out of Lovely Kev where we were headed to just the night before! So early doors on friday saw us – somewhat bleary-eyed- driving across to Clay’s Printers in Bungay, Suffolk to see them printing my book. WOW!  PRINTING. MY. BOOK! And what a very fabulous experience it was.

It sounds so stupid, particularly after writing for so long, but I had no idea how a book was printed. Well that’s all change and I now know what a very complicated process it is. The lovely Production Director, Paul Bullen and Account Director, Vicky Ellis, gave us all a splendid tour of the factory. The printers was established nearly 200 years ago and has grown into a massive rabbit warren of a place over the years. It now employs 650 people who together produce 180 million books a year!

I saw the whole process from the cover being printed, laminated, embossed, collated, joined up with the inside pages, trimmed, pimped  and, finally, zooming all round the factory on the production line. The whole placed just seemed to be filled with my books! Quite a moving experience even for a long-in-the-tooth author.It was quite simply brilliant!

Then, to top it all, they gave us butties and chocolate! These people certainly know how to treat an author. I went away armed with fab souvenirs of all the different processes for my authors’ collection of memorabilia and memories of a unique day. It also made me realise that, really, as a writer I have the easy bit of the deal.

When I thought that things couldn’t possibly get any better, Lovely Kev whisked me off to Southwold, just a short drive from the printers. We had a lovely cuppa on the pier while the rain sheeted down.  But, as soon as we’d finished our brew, the sun came out and we had a lovely walk along the front admiring all the pretty beach huts. We wandered up through the little town, looking aghast at the property prices (a property porn fix too!) and wondered who would buy a one-bedroomed cottage for £285,000. Eek. To round off a perfect day we had the most excellent fish and chips and drove home tired but happy.

Big thanks to Paul, Vicky, Manpreet and Tom. And to Lovely Kev – I’m going to be checking your emails more closely now, matey.

Love C : ) xx

If you go along to my Facebook page, there’s a little photo-diary of my day.