I’ve been making jewellery.  On Thursday evenings at Inverlochy house in Aro Valley with jeweller Sue Shore.  Unfortunately, the course is finished now, but I hope to do more next year.  Last week, I made a pair of copper spaceship earrings, and the week before I made silver earrings, heating strips of silver until the surface melted into folds.  Polished up in the tumbler, they ended up looking a little like leather, I think.  It’s been enormous fun – all the hammering and soldering and sawing – a good antidote to sitting in front of a computer all day.

Here are the little ships, floating in space, and celebrating the fact the Voyagers science fiction poetry book made it into the Listener’s Top 100 books for the year.