I was lucky enough to grow up in the countryside, a field away from a railway line.  I used to love lying in bed as a child waiting for sleep and listening to the trains go by, especially in the summer when the window was open.  It’s why the cottage where my character Hazel grew up is so close to a line.

I still love trains, although they make a very different sound than they did over 50 years ago when many were still steam hauled.  But I live much further from a railway now and I miss it.

This morning I was struggling with a bit of my next book but one, ‘History Girls’.  There is a vital bit where the history of Saltbury proves to be dramatically different than everyone had believed.  I knew exactly what the story should be, but for days now I’ve failed utterly to make it work.  So at six a.m. I drove a few miles to the south where there is a little unstaffed station.  Only about 100 people a day use it.  I took a note pad and a pocket full of sharp pencils and just sat on a bench writing and watching the trains go by.  By 9 a.m. when it started to rain, I had over 30 pages of notepad full and a lot of blunt pencils.  It was a lovely morning.  I’ll have to do that again sometime.