Chapter Thirteen is dragging. Partly this is my own fault, I've been adding to my research and the chapter has taken on a life of its own. I never thought there was so much information to be had on the magical role of plants in festivals, but believe me, it's never ending.

I suppose I should console myself that I'm almost there with the first draft. THere will be about 19 chapters according to the plan so I'm not doing so badly. But already by the end of chapter 12 I've reached 88,000 words, so this book is really going to be a whopper. If you don't read it you can probably stand on it to reach something. ;)

Another thing that slows me down is checking references, making sure I've put things into the bibliography, and compiling the index. This is best done as I go along, and part of the problem is that some plants have so many popular names alongside their 'proper' Latin one. The
index alone has over 450 entries (and rising) and there are over sixty texts in the bibliography.

But most of all, I have a problem with the fact that I really like the subject and just when I think it's going well I discover something I didn't know previously and which links up and makes sense of a lot of other things. Or I find an old spell which has to be included but means I have to go back and rewrite a chapter I thought I'd finished with long ago.

So tonight I have been finding out all sorts of interesting things about - wait for it - hazelnuts. (Remember the old Cadbury's advert? 'Nuts, whole Hazel nuts! Cadbury's take them and they cover them in chocolate....')

But now it's getting late and the owls are out......