The Unreality of Chateaux

In a little over 2 weeks I'm going to Switzerland, to Le Chateau de Lavigny, for a 3-week Writers' Residency. This is - obviously - wildly, truly, deeply wonderful, and yet I'm really struggling to feel as if it's really REAL. I think this is because the part of my brain that should be thinking about the book I'll be working on there is up to its tiny eyebrows in ANOTHER book which I'm trying to finish before I leave. That, and the fact that my house has all at once filled up with large, excessively live, uniformly unemployed sons - and their belongings. And I'm trying to fill out a Scottish Arts Council Grant form (deadline 14 June) which is proving to be far more difficult than it should be - I just can't seem to find a properly convincingly persuasive form-filler's voice to use ...

If going away doesn't seem more real by NEXT post, however, I'll be surprised. And worried. Which will very likely help.

Cheers, Joan.

P.S. The names of the residents are up on the Chateau de Lavigny website now - here's the list for my session:

• Natalia Bilotserkivets (Ukraine)
• Sandrine Fabbri (Switzerland)
• Togara Muzanenhamo (Zimbabwe)
• Joan Lennon (Canada)
• Margherita Russotto (Italy)
• Mykola Ryabchuk (Ukraine)

If anyone on this list finds their way here, I have 3 things to say -
1. Hi!
2. Please don't be scary.
3. I know they've put me down as Canadian but my knowledge of Canada stops round about 1978, when I left. (Already I'm a fraud.)