This New Spring of Time.

I am still pressing on with the novel, which has now reached Chapter 8. I wish I could write more quickly and more fluently, but I can't. I take the view that continuing progress is a Good Thing.

What would speed me up (probably) would be a lucrative publishing contract and a deadline; but I might as well say that a visit from the Blessed Virgin Mary would help. The latter is more probable, after all.

However I am absolutely determined to finish this book. I am writing it, basically for two people. Constance and me. If anyone else likes it, that will be a bonus, but as I do not expect to be able to buy a Rolls Royce with the proceeds, I am remarkably relaxed about the whole thing.

What I can say is the style is quite different from anything I have written before. It May Not Please Everyone. But it so happens I am finding it easier to write that way.

Deferring the Garter Meeting.

In Kathryn Warner's book on Richard II I found that in 1386 the usual meeting of the Order of the Garter was deferred from St George's Day, although no reason was given in the King's letters. This threw me as the opening scene of This New Spring of Time is that very meeting and I had written it as taking place on St George's Day. Suddenly, this was wrong!

So I searched as one does, and found that the Garter statutes (albeit compiled in Henry V's time) provided that if the feast of St George fell close to Easter, the meeting would be deferred until the following Sunday. This was to save the knights having to travel over Easter, which was a no-no.

In 1386, St George's Day fell on Easter Monday! So at a stroke, I knew why it had been deferred and the likely replacement date. Simples!