Yesterday, I took a day off. This is quite a rare event for me, but after the olive harvesting and a house crowded with lovely friends who have been olive-picking with us, I decided it was time for a little relaxation. We collected close to 400 kilos of olives, which for a year with not…

A robin has flown into the house through a set of open French doors and is sitting in the corner by one of the antique lamps I picked up from a château sale near St Tropez.  Michel is in the kitchen chopping up a mushroom he collected from the hillside this morning after yesterday’s rain….

Hola, I am writing this from the Hotel Romantico in Sitges, northern Spain, twenty minutes south of Barcelona by train. Sitges in early October is a regular stop for Michel, my husband, and I. We drive here from our farm in the hills behind Cannes to participate in a Mediterranean documentary film festival and market,…

Hooray! I have my first Kindle Single hitting the Amazon Kindle e-bookshop today. It is a love story set along the shores of the Mediterranean and is titled The Girl in Room Fourteen Here are British and US links to it. US http://tinyurl.com/kywqknu UK http://www.amazon.co.uk If you buy it, and I hope that you will,…

I am very concerned to have learnt that Bayer is suing the European Commission to overturn its two-year ban on the use of Neonicotinoid pesticides. These pesticides are a major factor in the dying off of millions of bees around the world. A huge public push won this landmark ban only months ago. Please, let…

La Rentrée in France has several meanings. The Return. It is the time when everyone is heading home, heading north, after their holidays. It is back to school, back to the office. The beginning of autumn, the end of summer. All the big supermarkets are packed with satchels for sale, special deals on exercise books…

Paris in August is a very different and delightful experience. Basically because the city is full of foreigners and many Parisians have fled south to enjoy the sun and their summer holidays so there is an atmosphere of calm. The frantic hooting of traffic and fraught pace of life seems to have been snuffed out….

As July draws to a close and the holiday season is really underway here in the South of France, I thought I would just send a little note to remind you that if you are looking for holiday reads, the entire six-book Olive series is out now as a compilation pack for those of you…

Bantry is floating at the water’s edge and all this week the town has been bathed in heat; a glorious midsummer heatwave.  This is a different Ireland to the land of my memories, of my childhood, although in those recollections, the sun is always shining and the corn is high even when it was not…

I have arrived into London where the weather is beautiful. England is always transformed by the sun and so are the British. Everyone is talking tennis and upcoming heatwave while I am preparing for the West Cork Literary Festival which begins on Sunday. I have three events there. Writing non-fiction and Memoir, a five-day workshop…

I have been here on this dusty rather over-constructed patch of Mediterranean coast between Sousse and Monastir for the past five days. Along with husband, Michel, I have been attending and participating in a Maghrebian Olive Oil Festival where three of our OLIVE ROUTE films have been screened (to great success). It is my first…

For those of you who have been following my work for at least the past decade, you will know that in one of the earlier OLIVE FARM books, I wrote about the class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids. I knew very little about what was going on back then, except that word was going around,…

Friends, I just created a new petition and I hope you can sign — it’s called: Stop the proposed EU bill to Overhaul Seed Regulations This issue is very importa nt to me, and together we can do something about it! Read more about it and sign it here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Stop_the_proposed_EU_bill_to_Overhaul_Seed_Regulations/?eDtCaab Campaigns like this always start small, but…

After a month of travelling, I arrived back at the Olive Farm a couple of days ago and was greeted by very warm weather and full blown spring. It was a robust and colourful welcome with creatures buzzing about on the open blossoms everywhere and overwhelming happiness from our three dogs. More good news this…

It is lunchtime and I have just completed my first event in New York at the New York Olive Oil Competition down in the trendy district of Tribeca. Farmers, olive producers from all over the world have converged on the city to learn more about the mysteries of this magical fruit and its juice. I…

I am writing this from Hollywood where the day is just breaking and the sun is rising above the verdant hills dotted with shots of startling red and purple bougainvillea. From the window here in my hotel room, I am looking across to the HOLLYWOOD sign. Tonight is my LA event at the Barnsdall Theatre….

It has been a rather hectic few days in these running up to Easter and my departure next week for the States. My computer crashed. Amongst other losses, everything within my email files has disappeared. Visits to Apple, assistance from teckie friends: nothing has retrieved the files. And, before you shout at me about backups…

The birds are back. Our Short-toed Eagles. Four were spotted by our new caretaker yesterday, circling above our woodshed. I saw two or even three ( a distant speck that might have been a third one) a week or so back, which was a little early for them. They spend their winters in Africa and…

My US tour begins in Texas and this will be one of my first events. I am currently practising my Texas dancing and I think this might be the first time I will have ever tasted Texas wine. If you are going to be anywhere near Dripping Springs outside Austin, Texas that first weekend of…

I spent last week in Paris. Whilst there, I attended an evening screening of one the OLIVE ROUTE films. The film in question is  The Olive Tree in the Holy Land.  Our audience was university students and I was a little concerned that perhaps such a subject would not be of interest to a younger…