There are two exhibitions in London/Essex that I was really excited about seeing over the next couple of months. I may yet get to go. And maybe you can, too? They would make a fantastic weekend. Here’s a clue.

Shropshire weather report: cold and fluffy.

At the Royal Navy's new top-secret testing facility?

4/4 My shed is also where I write books. My first book, The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective came out in 2019. After a little break(down) while I dealt with a pesky brain disease, That Dark Spring is coming out in April 2025. I will no doubt bang on about this in due course.

3/4 I love tinkering in my shed. Most of it comes to nothing, but occasionally something works. This is a simple automata I made a few years back using beach-combing finds and inspired by Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. I also knit, sew, paint and hammer stuff in an equally hit-and-miss fashion.

2/4 I’m a collector. In an attempt to tame some of my hoarding tendencies, I’m creating a museum in my downstairs loo called the British Looseum. There are still boxes of stuff to display and it also turns out to be very hard to photograph, but here goes. More to come as it fills up.

Isn’t it lovely here? By way of introduction, I thought I’d expand a bit on my bio. First up (1/4): I love reading. This is the current pile – a mixture of treasure hunting, dissolute Russian counts, space crones and practical exercises involving arsenic and chloroform. All excellent.

I make the mistake of going fancy (aka sweary knitting) so it's doubly annoying when I lose one (although I think this one's friend has actually gone off for some me-time in the house somewhere).