Isn’t this sunshine lovely? I can’t believe it’s only March. I must apologise for not finishing my Chaz and Maz Down Under Blog as promised, but I’ve been a little busy over the last couple of weeks. I promise to finish it off next week.
So last week-end I was at the Scottish Association of Writers’ Conference in the Westerwood Hotel in Cumbernauld. It was my first conference attendance in person because of Covid. I had booked to go in 2020 but of course the virus struck just a couple of weeks before and it had to be cancelled. Not wishing to take any chances of having to cancel again, in 2021 the conference was held online. I must say both the online and the in person conferences had their own merits. I enjoyed the in person one last week-end as I went along with several other members of Bearsden Writers and it was good to be able to spend time with them and get to know them better. It was also good to see members of the committee, the workshop leaders and the adjudicators in person, especially the irrepressible Wendy H Jones, the President of SAW. However, although there were plenty of interesting workshops, the way the conference was organised we could only attend three of them, whereas the online conference allowed us to attend all workshops if we wished. A mix of in person and online would have been perfect. The keynote speaker was Vaseem Khan and I must say I found him very entertaining. I bought one of his books, a crime novel set in India just after partition, so am looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately, I didn’t win anything in the competitions I entered (flash fiction and self-published novel) but I’m delighted to say that two of our members did win. Maura McRobbie won a commendation for her under-7 short story and Anjana Sen won the poetry competition. Congratulations to them both.
This weekend Charlie and I went to Largs for a couple of days in our motorhome to celebrate 28 years of being together. Believe it or not this union happened at another conference, only that one took place in Peebles Hydro on the 25th March 1994. We had a lovely couple of days; the sun shone brightly over the Firth of Clyde, we walked into Largs and to Kelburn Castle, we played ukulele and sang in the sun, we dined in Scott’s restaurant and went to the theatre to see Fiddler on the Roof, one of our favourite musicals. I also used my BirdNET app and identified several birds – a common chiffchaff, a Dunnock, a European Greenfinch, a Herring Gull, an Oystercatcher and possibly a Water Rail. What a perfect way to spend time with the man I love.
Unfortunately, I haven’t managed to do much writing apart from posting on TikTok but I plan to get back on track this week. Hope the sun continues to shine on us.
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MARION MACDONALD 