It's only a week since I met Elly Griffiths in Lowestoft to talk to her about her new book, 'The Killing Time', yet it feels like months ago.
It hasn't been a particularly busy week, but clearly a lot of things have happened to make it seem that a lot of time has passed.
Funnily enough, Elly's novel is about time-travelling detectives. It's the second in her new series, and each time I talk to her about the rules, devices and fascination of time travel in literature, I am reminded of her reference to Einstein who stated that we are all time travellers, just moving forward into the future.
Chatting to Elly before we went on stage, I was surprised to discover that in her reading, she looks back, being a keen re-reader of books. If she picks up a new author, she will get to the end of the book and immediately start again to work out how the author 'did it', she said.
But she also re-reads old favourites and we compared notes on the children's classic 'A Wrinkle in Time' which I've recently revisited with a group of primary school children. Elly revealed that one of the characters from that book by Madeleine L'Engle inspired her current series. You'll have to read them to see if you can work out who!
The children's book I've read this week is also about time and travel, in the retelling of Jules Verne's 'Around the World in Eighty Days' (scroll down for details). The message to take away for the heroine Maggie, accompanying Passepartout and Phileas Fogg, is 'take every day, every hour, every minute one tick at a time'.
It's rather like Sophie Raworth's attitude to running, and to life, taking it a step at a time, one foot in front of the other.
This approach of living in the moment, not dwelling on the past nor wishing for some hope or dream for the future, was brought sharply into focus for me again with the story of Peter Berry as he copes with his dementia.
I attended the launch of his second book 'Patching the Puncture' this week and came away moved and inspired by his humour, kindness and joy as he seeks to treasure the life he has now, not the memories he has lost nor what might have been.
Thank you for reading!