Finding love in Shanghai

My It Guru has been and my wireless network is functioning again!! Hooray. Since I discovered the joy of wireless over a year ago I have become addicted. I can lie in bed, on the sofa, in the garden and it is bliss. The past week has seen me confined to my desk and study again and I felt greatly restricted. I think better with my legs dangling over the side of the sofa in the sun room as I gaze at the garden - well I try not to gaze too much because then I see all the work that needs doing. Fortunately though the hedges which separate the lower and upper sections of the garden have gained quite a bit of height over the wet winter so they hide the mad borders beyond that need attention. I will get to them - I will!!!

This week my lovely husband and celebrated the 9th anniversary of our meeting in a little bar in downtown Shanghai. We had actually spent the whole evening at a traditional Chinese banquet where husband to be had stared at my back all evening and I had tried and pretty much failed to find something vegetarian on the many dishes that landed on our table. So we didn't actually get to meet properly until a group of us had decamped to a little club somewhere down a back alley. My Mother had warned me about doing things like this in foreign countries but there I was doing it and loving it.

We were trying to recall what time it was when we emerged to find dawn rising over the city. We had spent the night chatting, dancing, drinking too many Heineken's and giggling at the secret Karaoke rooms where the locals were going for it with great gusto. Several hours later my future husband revealed that he had a flight to catch back to London that afternoon and I was bound for Sydney the next day. And so began our long distance love affair. No prizes for guessing what my first novel is based on - that and Michael Jackson's fondness for a brand new toilet seat every time he uses the loo. The two are connected!!

The writing has been flowing this week though I feel like the word count is never going to rise beyond the 50,000 mark - I am impatient to hit the 60,000 mark. So I best get on with it!!!