Well, you can’t deny that I have a nice sense of irony – writing a post entitled ‘procrastination’ and then not producing anything else for best part of two weeks.

Reader, I have been indisposed. I had a minor operation last Monday and it hurt a lot more than I thought it was going to. Granted, the fact that I was told at my pre-op assessment that I would take a week to recover, and the fact that my friend who’s had similar surgery warned me that she could barely walk for a week afterwards should probably have given me a heads up, but it didn’t really.  I spent most of last week in bed bleating feebly at husband/mum/dad/MIL who were all taking turns to look after me (and Anna). By Friday I’d managed to get dressed. True, it was in leggings and a loose dress, so arguably not that different to pyjamas, but still. Since then I’ve been feeling better every day, and I’m very grateful to my family and friends for their help and support. And patience.

I have learnt three lessons from my experiences, which I will share in case anyone else can benefit from them.

One, is that anaesthetists have access to some seriously good drugs. People of a squeamish disposition may want to look away now, but for the rest of you…I have terribly coy veins, which retreat completely as soon as they see someone wearing a white coat and brandishing a needle, and so inserting a cannula into my hand was not particularly easy. After a few attempts I became hysterical distressed, and the lovely, lovely anaesthetist took pity on me, and gave me a shot of something which gave the effect of, as he put it, ‘downing two large glasses of wine in two minutes’. Wonderful stuff. If  you know any anaesthetists then I would strongly suggest they warrant an invitation to your Christmas party.

Secondly, if you have an operation as a day case in a hospital in Paddington, West London and need to get a taxi home to Walthamstow, East London a few hours later, then it’s probably a good idea to take any painkillers you can get your hands on before setting off. And preferably have had the foresight to marry an anaesthetist. There are a LOT of speed bumps in London.

Thirdly, the medical term for a big bruise is a haematoma. That is helpful because when people ask how I am, giving a brave smile and saying that I’m fine apart, from the post-operative haematoma, tends to elicit what I feel to be an appropriate degree of sympathy, whereas saying I’ve got a big bruise probably wouldn’t.

I hope that this painfully acquired knowledge helps someone out.

But now, bravely soldiering on, despite my haematoma, I am very excited to be putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) with my third book today. I’ve heard from my editor at Hodder, and she is very happy with my second novel, To Have and to Hold, so that will be published as an e-book on 8 May 2014, and then as a paperback on 19 June 2014. I’m sure I’ll be cursing over edits and corrections at some point, but for now I feel ready for the next challenge. I’ve had the plot all worked out for a while, and the characters have been simmering away at the back of my mind, but now seems the time to to bite the bullet and start writing. Cos, you know, it’s not like there’s going to be anything else for me to do in December, is there?