The truth is I’ve always been in denial about getting older. I went jogging round Glastonbury Tor every morning and wouldn’t stop till my knees hurt. I think my teeth look good and I don’t like to mention that they’re plastic, made in a dental laboratory in Wells. And I regard the expansion in my wasteline, compared to what it was until ten or twenty years ago, as strictly temporary. But now a new kind of change is fast approaching: I am shortly to be drawing my old age pension.

This is quite different. This means freedom. It means I no longer feel that I have to go out to work, that I have to give my time and attention to whoever might be able to pay me. My time is now officially my own. This is something to celebrate, not to deny.

Not that I intend to stop working – just to stop doing what I don’t enjoy. So I have closed down my office in town and moved my working life to integrate it with my home. I am no longer available to the public, only to people who I would like to invite in. I can go off and do some shopping, or take a walk in the sunshine, if that seems like the best thing to do just now. I can have a snooze after lunch (or I can follow the creative urge and work till midnight). It suddently seems much easier just to be me.

When I reached 60 I decided that I must take my writing more seriously. It is, after all, the only ambition I’ve ever had – to be a writer. Five years on and I have done quite well: I have published five books, locally, and in different ways they have all been well received. I can call myself a writer – not just a ‘provider of office services’ with writing done only on slack afternoons or when the photocopier has broken down.

It was a struggle getting everything home, including the photocopier and the office furniture, up the narrow stairs and into what used to be the front bedroom. Besides the bulky items there were boxes and boxes of paper, books, stationery, files, a laminating machine, a spiral binder, and endless assorted other bits and pieces. They filled the living room and took four days to get sorted out.

It’s all here now though, and I’m enjoying the result. My desk is beside the window and the cat is curled up behind the computer, in the sunshine. The time has now arrived for me to make the most of my good fortune and to start reaching out more to the wider world.

This was written for the Unique Publications newsletter, which I sent out initially to people who have bought my books through the website. The intention is to be more in touch with my customers, to let them know about recent or upcoming publications, to tell them more about Unique Publications and about my own process with writing, and to offer special deals on past publications. Please email me (bruce@glastonbury.co.uk) if you would like it sent to you.

The month begins with thick cloud and a rainstorm that lasted twelve hours or so. By the following morning the river is much fuller, and where the water passes through the reeds that have grown up across it, there is a strong though narrow stream that looks like a miniature rapid. It takes several days for the weather to clear and for some hot, sunny weather to arrive; for a while from then, even when it’s cloudy it’s warm. The river settles down to be still and quiet – it seems happiest in the winter when there is plenty of rainfall, though it’s in the summer that there is the lush growth along the banks, and plenty of bird life. Most of the summer birds are gone by now however, and the lush growth is beginning to die down.
 
Signs of scummy pollution get washed downstream sometimes, and are usually washed away again in a day or two. The fish are busy; one comes to the surface, and very strangely then moves sideways before disappearing back into the water. I have never seen that before – in fact I’ve never even heard of it happening. There’s a chill in the early mornings, and it’s misty more often than before; though the days are warm and usually sunny.
 
Finally we are getting a sustained period of real summer weather. The stillness of the river is something that I’ve been aware of since back in April – I described it then as ‘settling down into its bed’, and most of the time it’s been very sleepy ever since. I haven’t realised before how static, with no sense of flow, the river can be. The weather is very pleasant though – but I have become ill.
 
For the first few days I lie in bed, ‘travelling with Petroc’, working out the next part of my story. The weather continues to be hot, and after five days – having been told that the hot weather is about to end – I get up to walk to the river again. It’s a gorgeous day and I feel inspired. The sound of the reeds swaying in the breeze is like wheat or barley; it made me think of Egypt by the Nile. In the bright early afternoon sunshine I can see fish swimming in the water, something I have never seen in the mornings when the sun is low. On the way back I see a beautiful bird of prey languidly circling above the field, spiralling down until it had seen that whatever it had noticed was not edible, and it flew away.
 
I thought I was getting better, but by the following morning I was definitely worse and by the end of the day I was in hospital; this is a different story altogether ...

The month begins grey and damp once again, and I wonder whether grey, damp summers were a feature of the post-Roman time. The birds are no longer so loud and insistent now that they have mated and nested, and they seem to have become a backdrop in the distance. After a few days it looks like we’re going to have consistently summer weather. A warbler just downriver does start up one morning, and the other way there’s a squeakier bird, possibly a lark; all very laid back though, a few birds flitting about but quietly, the occasional fish making itself known, but briefly.
 
There’s a loud sudden sound from nearby – a coot? – something that’s nesting in the riverbank, though I can’t see it. The river is quiet and still, but the longer I sit beside it the more I am aware that there’s lots going on. When the sky is grey it’s like a warm blanket rather than cold and wet; it’s warm, and day by day it does begin to get sunnier. The growth of reeds, lilies, and general foliage is still getting fuller. A family of swans sails slowly by on their way upriver – a pair of white parents and seven near-full-grown signets, still grey – when they get to the place where reeds have grown most of the way across they have to push themselves through the narrow gap that is left.
 
It is half way through the month before the weather really becomes hot and sunny for a few days. I spend a delightful afternoon on the Avalon Marshes, taking time to sit in a hide and watch the birds going by and the reed beds spreading themselves around the waterscape. It was noticeable that both flora and fauna are very similar to what I see every day beside the river here, though on a larger scale. It is perhaps this that gives me the impression that the slow, quiet river can look so much like a lake at this time of year.
 
By now there is a definite feeling of summer weather, at least some of the time. The birds provide a background chirruping more than an unavoidable mass of sound; the river is moving steadily, still fairly full though calm and persistently quiet; small insects move around seemingly aimlessly. A duck in the nearby rhyne is hidden by the foliage but making a loud noise about something. As I sit and get quiet myself I notice more sound from the birds – the young ones must be growing up quite fast – and there are splashings in the river from the fish. Every time I take sufficient time for this I notice that there’s plenty of life going on.
 
Still humid air brings a feeling of portent; perhaps, I think, a huge thunderstorm is on its way. No, the sense of something impending is still there the following day when there is a thick mist and the dampness of an overnight shower. It fades though, and the weather pushes and pulls between summer sunshine and damp greyness. One day (the start of a hot summer’s day) I am excited to see a small silver fish jump right out of the water to grab an insect. The insects, when one of their number is taken from below the water, get in a panic; but they can’t help staying near to the surface.
 
‘Was that a kingfisher?’ I ask myself, as something flashes by and skims along just above the surface of the river, going upstream. It disappears very quickly, and leaves behind a cloud of surprised swallows, skuttering every-which-way. Then there’s a small bird, maybe a warbler, hopping about in the reeds just a couple of yards from me. This is the height of summer, though already there are hints of autumn: a chilly morning and steam rising from the water. The swallows dancing around are very active. Sometimes they sit quietly on the telegraph wires but now there’s a feeling that they are preparing to set off somewhere.
 
The last day of July provides a beautiful sunny morning, though with plenty of dew on the grass – the mornings are getting later. Someone appears with a camera on the other side of the river, taking pictures of the Tor I think; then he asks if it’s OK to take one of me, so here I am, nicely recorded, sitting on the riverbank and writing in my notebook: