I have no objection to holiday mementoes. In fact, the boys often bring back all sorts of nonsense with them. But I do object to us ending up with a colds as our holiday memento of Burnham-on-Sea this year. Just as well then, that I had also some good news waiting when I arrived home...

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Having looked at the chaos of post, unpacking and dirty washing, I decided to ignore it for a while and log onto the Guardian online website to see if Kate Clanchy's selection of responses to her recent workshop was up yet. It was, and, even better, my poem Bagging Up was one of those she had selected. Hurrah!

The news was a very welcome boost as I had been feeling a little down about my poetry with nothing much in the pipeline since Matthew Francis chose my poem Slivers for his Guardian workshop in May. Though I kept busy on holiday, using the evenings to work on my long short story (maybe the bare bones of a novel?), it was surprisingly short on inspiration. The one exception being the rough draft of a poem inspired by the caves at Cheddar Gorge.

Our holiday also featured a telephone interview with our local newspaper the Worcester Evening News, as Legend Press is relaunching a new edition of its short story anthology Remarkable Everyday at the end of August, which includes one of my short stories.

Poetry aside, there is a lot on the go for me at the moment. Besides, getting my son ready for the return to school, I'm preparing to read at Droitwich's annual Salt Day festival on September 13, where I think I will combine some poetry with the first part of my story from the Remarkable Everyday. I've also joined Next to Hemingway, set up by another Legend Press author , Lee Henshaw, to link authors with their local reading groups. And, last but not least, I arrived home from holiday to find some of the books I'd been waiting for as part of the research for my long short story/maybe novel.

So, despite my low mood and the cold draining a lot of my energy (so much so that the last few days have been my biggest break from exercise for a while, as on holiday I even found a local sports academy where I could swim early every morning!) I am keeping almost as busy as usual. I'm also hoping the lack of poetry inspiration was only a temporary holiday/illness blip, as mowing the lawn this morning has already sparked some lines for a new poem. Fingers crossed it continues. ;-)