Sorry to have disappeared...

I've been working on my new book, in a place without internet access, which is good for writing, but bad for blogging. Here is a clue about where I've been (above). First person to guess correctly will get an excellent prize (a limited edition Chanel lipstick).
Anyway, here's what I've been doing: a trip to Fowey to speak at the Du Maurier festival, which was lovely, though being in Fowey made me cry, because it's the first time I've been back there since last summer, and it brought back all kinds of memories about family holidays (good memories) and the end of my marriage (bad memories), and the overlap between the plot of 'Daphne' and the unexpected turn my life has taken, ever since my husband left me at the beginning of the year, in a twist that felt horribly reminiscent of my novel. Does that make any sense? No, probably not, unless you've read 'Daphne'... So I walked along the coastal footpath from Readymoney Cove to Pridmouth Bay, and wept and wailed into the wind. Fortunately, no one was there to see me apart from a herd of cows and a flock of seagulls, who wailed even louder than I did (the seagulls that is, not the cows. The cows just stared at me, and carried on chewing the cud).
Then after the weeping walk, I had dinner with Kits Browning, Daphne's son and executor of her estate, and his wife, Hacker, who are incredibly kind and generous people, and they cheered me up. Caught the ferry there, and a smaller boat back at midnight, and felt sufficiently restored to be able to speak at the festival the next day without bursting into tears on the podium. The event was about 'The Breaking Point", which I've posted about here in an earlier bibliotherapy column, and the other speakers were really interesting -- Stella Duffy and Lisa Appignanesi -- and the chair, Professor Helen Taylor from Exeter University, pulled the discussion together with her usual aplomb. One of the most intriguing parts of the discussion, at least for me, was Stella's comparison of Du Maurier with Patricia Highsmith, which had never occurred to me before she mentioned it, but I can see exactly why she might link the two writers together. I was also struck by Lisa's observation of the metamphorses in Du Maurier and Angela Carter; from human to animal, and vice versa...
This is turning into a bit of a stream of consciousness -- what I did in my weekend in Fowey -- so apologies for that, but have slightly lost the plot.
Where was I? Oh yes, in Fowey. The festival bookshop didn't have any copies of 'Daphne' to sell to the audience afterwards, which was mightily disappointing, but my favourite bookshop did -- Bookends of Fowey -- so thanks to them, as always. I dropped in to see them, and to browse through their treasures -- they've got the best selection of rare Du Maurier editions, along with other wonderfully alluring books (it's the bookshop equivalent of a treasure hunt, with one clue leading to the next; you'll have to visit the shop to soak up the atmosphere...)
Then I bought a large Cornish pasty -- it would be a crime to leave Fowey without eating at least one -- and went for another quick walk along the Esplanade to the sea. By then, I'd reached a kind of accommodation with my sadness, and remembered what it was that I love about Fowey. As Stella Duffy said to me, 'it's good to come back here, because you'll have new experiences to overlay the old ones'.
Am going to post this now, before I have second thoughts about the hopelessness of my prose tonight. Forgive me for the rush of words...