I am now half the woman I was after squeezing into a size eight dress for my husband's work's summer ball...be warned, guys, you may not want to read any further!

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I know it's vain and girly, of course, but I am rather proud to have managed to get down from a size 16 (on a very good day!) to a size eight. Of course, I've blogged before about how dress sizes seem to have changed (got bigger) and weight-wise I am still two-thirds the woman I was, but I am quite chuffed with the achievement. Now all I've got to do is stick here!

I'm also crossing my fingers that the physical weight lost will somehow transform into poetical weight gained...I wish! Still, things continue to go pretty well for me at the moment on the writing front with my poem Housework as this month's writelink resources poem.

Less positively, I had just finished polishing off a submission today and gone to check the address to send it to when I realised I was a month too late! Doh! I had written the deadline down a month wrong in my diary. I have been kicking myself ever since, but at least the editing should have improved the poem for wherever I decide to send it instead!

Of course, this could be a sign I'm doing too much at the moment, so I'm looking forward to bank holiday and half-term next week. I'm keeping the diary free from any writing tasks and have booked a few beauty treatments to get ready for my husband's do instead. (Well, I have got to look the part, haven't I?) I also hope to snatch a little more reading time than this week, with Seamus Heaney and John Burnside to look forward to. Delicious!

Anyway, I've started posting some topics (who will/should be next poet laureate? Courses/mentoring? Where does the Muse come from?) and favourite poems to the writelink forums, so if you enjoy my poetical mayhem (!), don't forget to check them out.

Happy reading and writing!