Things are busy at the Arcane/ArtPix towers as we keep an eye on our unit at The Customs House in West Bay and try to plan for the next very uncertain months. We have a lot of projects and plans but are delaying them because of the virus and Brexit. 
We are also trying to go out for a walk once or twice a week to try and explore some corners of Dorset we do not know (or to go back to our favourite spots.)
Yesterday, we paid a visit to another gorgeous location full of history and atmosphere: Wynford Eagle.
It is a gentle and very quiet hamlet mainly made of a row of beautiful old terrace houses, a small manor house and a big farm. It is almost eerily empty, bar a few parked cars and a rush of vehicles at rush hour (Maiden Newton and its train station is just a few miles away).  
The Manor House was the birthplace of an important individual: Thomas Sydenham, a famous 17th century physician, nicknamed "The English Hippocrates". 
​We hope to go back later in the autumn for more walks in the area! 
I am now going to take a break from the websites to concentrate on writing The Right Place... Unfortunately, I am behind schedule and might be running out of time to meet my deadline of draft 1 completed by 31st December.
23,885 words so far and so many to go (The Book of Thoth was over 100,000!) 
I will post an update at the end of next week to report on my progress. 

The church of St Laurence, below, has a rare feature called a tympanum dated from c.1100 ("the semi-circular or triangular decorative wall surface over an entrance, door or window, which is bounded by a lintel and an arch. It often contains sculpture or other imagery or ornaments." (wikipedia)

The fields full of rapeseed made us feel like we were picking things up as we left them last April as the lockdown brought the country to a standstill: the bright yellow flowers and the strong smell are a feature of spring... The hot September sun enables farmers to have another crop, maybe? (It was incredibly hot yesterday...)

Matt ArtPix went to sell at a car boot sale at the weekend and came back with a little present for me: three "Gaston Lagaffe" comic books. 
I don't do nostalgia but I have to admit that I grew up with these comics: my parents have all of the them at home. 
So I had a reading binge yesterday - It really is cute! 
But it's not only cute and funny: behind the silliness, the comics tackle quite a few serious issues. 
Lagaffe is a dreamer and catastrophe-prone inventor who doesn't fit in the office culture.
He is his own man and anti-authority, gentle and naive, but reading these comics published in the late 70s/early 80s, I have found quite a few things which would make this sweet character very popular nowadays...
​Oh, and he loves his pets: a crazy cat, an even crazier laughing seagull and a goldfish who dreams of freedom.  

I have a thing for iron gates... 
In my second novel, The Book of Thoth, the wrought iron entrance gates of the Whitemoor Hall estate are very ornate and feature a sun and a moon... 
The eerie gates below are on the Kingston Lacy estate in Dorset. We had a walk around the boundaries of the estate yesterday and passed the wonderful Kitchen Garden. When we visited the house several years ago, our visit was interrupted by the rain and we had promised ourselves to go back and have another go at the gardens, which are fantastic. Incidentally, Kingston lacy has inspired a few aspects of my third novel The Right Place!