Yet another month has disappeared ...  all very well for T.S.Eliot to talk about measuring out life with coffee spoons - I measure mine out the occasional web page entries! And this one is such good news. Yesterday Wakefield Press confirmed that they will publish my new book, Bystanders, next year - a great relief to have this established, as it's a book I really want to see finally in print. Someone asked me how long it had taken to write. I answered, honestly, all my life. True, because the genesis of this book is some writing I did back in 1958, and that's over fifty years ago. A VERY long gestation period. So middle of next year, once again my life comes full circle.

Meanwhile, other things this month have been surprising. Like the sudden unexpected decision to travel overseas later this year. That started with a trip David was very keen to do - a tour of Ireland, which he loves and where I've never been, to be followed by four weeks in Germany, travelling north to south, east to west, by a series of train trips - to see all the friends and relatives we have who are scattered all over this beautiful country. So, having said this 2014 was a stay-at-home year, we've decided to listen to the niggling sense of memento mori and go. But it's been a monumental jigsaw puzzle effort, working out an itinerary that, at this late stage of planning, fits in with everyone else's travel plans so that we can can catch up with all the old friends we want to see. Worth the work, and we'll be covering a lot of territory.

Last few weeks have been, thankfully, a bit more focused, and there's been a bit more writing done than I've managed for many months. A few poems, but the main effort has been to finish the new book, Bystanders. It's out for reading by a few people at this stage, and will be going to a publisher at the end of the week. I'm in that awful stage of huge self-doubt. Should never have written this. It's prose. Should have stuck to poetry. Maybe should stop writing altogether. Time to stop and smell the roses. Can't do that. The rose season is over, and it's almost time for the winter pruning. Perhaps a message in that too?

Another month gone by, and yet again I wonder where it's disappeared to. Just before Easter came the lovely Words@theWall evening, where Ros Schultz and I read at the State Library a smorgasbord of the poetry we've written over the years. Next day it was off to Canberra for Easter with family and catch-up time with old friends. Since return, there have been a number of Rotary Club speaking engagements - Holdfast Bay and Marion Clubs, followed later that week by Edwardstown. These are always really enjoyable events, as was taking part in the Hills Laneways Festival, where a group of poets read from our works outside the Red Cacao chocolate shop and cafe in bright sunshine with crowds of passersby wandering around the festival areas.

But now it's back to the desk again, and the computer, as I try to draw to an end the next book, another one many years in the thinking, and now at last getting on to paper. This book at last is the prose work that members of my family have been urging me to try for years. But in between, just to keep the muse pacified, scraps of poetry for the many writing groups we now belong to. It's so satisfying to be back to writing. All too soon June and July will bring the next crop of speaking engagements, and the balancing act will be on again ....