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It was my son's last day of his school holidays yesterday and we used it as an excuse to go for a slap up feed in Lavenham. We had toyed with the idea of going blackberry picking as well (which is becoming a bit of a last day of the holidays tradition) but it wasn't blackberry picking weather.

We went along to the church this time. There are nice lichen encrusted gravestones with weathered skulls and cherubs. If the words 'nice' and 'gravestones' don't fit together for you, then they will p...

I went into the studio today. I hadn't been in for months. As always there had been a flurry of activity from my studio mate, John Clark, who has been busy painting some large canvases. I saw John last Saturday and he was so enthusiastic about what he had been doing. I rarely (who am I kidding - never) feel such unbridled enthusiasm for my own work and it is quite inspiring.

I sent my last Payne's Grey in to the New Statesman today. They are moving and redesigning and Payne's Grey has be...

My son had a tooth out today. He is having a brace fitted and needs a tooth out to allow room for the required movement of his other teeth.

He had worked himself up about it rather having never had any dental work done. But the dentist was amazing and I don't think my son was really properly aware that the tooth was out until he was told.

I sat and watched the whole process and was not really sure what to expect from my son. Was he going to freak out? Was he going to scream? Burst into tea...

It was my birthday today (and I am honoured to discover in the Guardian birthday list that I was born on the same day in the same year as Tim Burton) so we went to the Norfolk coast for the day and pottered about among the jolly sailors at Brancaster Staithe before going for a very nice lunch at the White Horse. Then we went off to Titchwell, an RSPB reserve we used to frequent when we lived in the area. Rising sea levels are going to force great changes on many places in East Anglia and Titch

Maybe someone from the reads my blog, because have been blogging about covers too. Or maybe its just coincidence. Sure. Coincidence. Take a look on the link on the left or click on 'Guardian' in this post.

And I know I have been raving about Cormac McCarthy a lot lately, but if you like his work or even if you don't, then listen to the . I would urge anyone who writes - or wants to write - to watch this clip. He is trying hard to look laid back and relaxe

The horror, the horror. . .

During my conversation about book jackets with Helen Szirtes, she made the perfectly good point that a book jacket should not misrepresent a novel. I certainly think that a cover should always say something true about the novel.

These covers shamefully misrepresent the novels. In most cases they are trying to make them seem more accessible to the mass market paperback purchaser. Although the words - greatest adventure, greatest horror etc - sound exciting, the image

I drove over to Norfolk to see Chris Riddell. Chris is married to a farmer's daughter, Jo Riddell ( a very talented artist in her own right) and they have a cottage near Jo's parents house. We used to live just down the road when we first moved out of London in 1993, renting a tied cottage on a nearby farm.

Chris and Jo have turned this place into a beautiful retreat and just to annoy me after I told them about the many problems with my own studio, they showed me round the studio they were buil

I had a long telephone conversation with Helen Szirtes today about the amendments to The Dead of Winter. We were doing the last bit of tweaking before it goes off to be proofed. As I have said before - this is such an important stage in the life of a book. It is vital to have a good working relationship with your editor and vital also that you take this part seriously.

Inevitably we occasionally wandered off piste and during one such diversion I was pointing out that we seem to me to be in a

After a plague of flying ants and a continuing plague of wasps, I am now enduring a plague of fruit flies. Every time I pick up a piece of fruit or lift a glass of wine to my lips, a fruit fly or two (or six) will appear and start bothering me. Their tininess is somehow part of the irritation.

I will destroy them.

There was an interesting report in the in the States. This involves the American branch of my publisher Bloomsbury and a book by Australian n

I hate a wretched day today. Whilst my Dell desktop has been relatively trouble free since I bought it many years ago, my Dell laptop has been a utter pain.

It is a year old and has been away twice for pretty major repairs. In June it had everything but the keyboard replaced and came back with a new hard drive. I had to reinstall all the software apart from Windows. I switched it on yesterday to hear a high-pitched squeal and it refused to boot up.

I contacted Dell, to whom I have just paid a