Yesterday was a beautiful day, temperatures uip to 30C on the terrace.
I had a couple of personal things to celebrate also.
Yesterday was my 63rd birthday.

I like birthdays.

The Facebook internet age means that I got a wonderful assortment of birthday wishes from family and friends on line, by text, by phone and even by snail mail so there was no feeling of being isolated here in France.

Síle (who knows me well) gave me an absolutely perfect present- an envelope of money on which I am allowed carte blanche to spend as I like at Vide Greniers.

The plan was that we should dine in Octopus a one star Michelin restaurant in Beziers- which we did and that was completely delicious.

But the highlight of my day happened in the afternoon.

As you will all know by now for the last several months I have been busying myself with A Book .
Tentatively called :

À Table,
An Irish Chef
in a Village in the Languedoc

It is a sort of travel/memoir/recipe book.

Last week I finished draft one and started the very painful bisiness of submissions.
This is the ultimate cold call , in the submission form they ask questions like :
Please tell me why you think your book should be published?

A hard one to answer by a modest retiring violet like me.

I have sumbitted the oeuvre to three publishers in the last week and so far have been delighted to have recieved only one rejection.

The highlight of my day yesterday was that I recieved an email from a family member of a publishing firm (a person totally unknown to me) who reads and enjoys my blog and requesting that I might submit the draft to them.

Now I know that the whole project is still a long shot but that letter somehow brought me a few steps closer to the moment when I might smell the binding of my own first book.

Exciting times.

Maybe life begins at 63 ?