Things On My Mind

Dear friends and virtual acquaintances,

It would be nice to hear that you’ve had a wonderful few days or weeks of festive joy. I’ve certainly stretched my holiday out as long as I could, but I daren’t cut out any longer in case it becomes permanent.

When you last heard from me I was writing about my arrival in Los Angeles, and if I were to go on with these extracts and references to my notebooks, the commune in Mendocino County would come next. I wrote a piece about it for the Sunday Times and I could copy that off the cutting. But there’s something else on my mind – two things, actually.

The first is that I’ve just begun working on an account of my flirtation with agriculture. I burst onto the Organic Vegetable scene in 1986 and, in all innocence, seem to have achieved something memorable. It may turn into a book. I don’t know, but it might be a good idea to serialise it as I did with the Canary book. Would you like that?

The other thing on my mind is that it’s a lot of work keeping this sort of thing going, and although I am always glad afterwards to have done it, it’s often hard to get down to it. So this would be where you come in.

Of course my main practical reason for running a website is to sell books, but sales have been falling off for a while now, because all of you have probably already got Jupiter’s Travels, and maybe the big Camera book too. But the one book that I don’t sell enough of is Dreaming of Jupiter – a pity because it IS a good book.

If you will buy the book it will really encourage me. You don’t have to buy it from me, unless you definitely want my signature. Buy it from a bookshop, or Amazon – much cheaper. I will find out, soon enough if it’s moving. There’s a thousand or more sitting at the distributor’s warehouse and I hate the idea of them getting pulped before I get pulped myself.

Cheers to you all, and WATCH THIS SPACE.