Can it really be so long since I last posted? Excuses: illness (not serious), forgetfulness (likewise, but probably permanent) and, of course, holiday stuff. I spent three precious weeks with my sister Anne, who lives in Mount Gambier. (The distance from Perth is roughly the same as London to Moscow: Australia is Too Big, I reckon.) Anne and I had a great time together and I also got to catch up with my nieces and nephews, as well as my daughter, Billy Jo, who lives in Adelaide.

The forgetfulness is apparently due to 'frontoparietal atrophy', which means that part of my brain is shrinking. I've been taking Aloe Vera, Gingko Biloba and lots of B-vites, all of which are said to be helpful to this condition. They have made a bit of difference to short-term recall, but sadly, the worst symptom is constant dizziness, and so far I have found no help with that one. We are living far longer than previous generations, and many of us are keeping physically fit, but apparently there's no treatment for brain shrinkage.

However, I'm determined to enjoy life for as long as possible. I've been having a virtual school reunion, thanks to a Facebook page devoted to people who attended Sydney's Conservatorium High School, which is celebrating its centenary year. Sydney, of course, is on the other side of Australia, yet there are several 'ex-Cons' living here in Perth, and last weekend four of us got together. One of the quartet attended the Con at the same time as I did, so we had lots of yarns to exchange. Another lady was there in the 1940s and the other one was there in the seventies. We hope to get together again before too long, and I am hoping to go back to Sydney for the school's Big Bash in October.

Shrinking brain notwithstanding, I hope to get the final book in The Talismans Trilogy off the ground this year. It only consists of  few ideas in my head at present, so I really must knuckle down to it, in between Shakespeare Club, teaching dance, fitness classes and other commitments. Wish me luck!

We are more than half way through November and I have not written a blog post. Life goes on as usual: Mondays and Tuesdays I teach dance. Wednesdays and Fridays I go to keep fit class. The third Saturday of each month (that's today!) is devoted to the Shakespeare Club of Western Australia's monthly meeting.

So I should be getting plenty of exercise. That's the theory, anyway. In actual practice I only do two or three fitness activities in a week. However, a friend and dance colleague of long standing teaches an adult ballet class and I've been going to that for the last two or three weeks. I'm spoilt for choice, in fact, as there are several excellent adult ballet classes available in Perth. Some, like the one I teach at Trinity School for Seniors, are for beginners or near beginners: others are open classes for more experienced people. However, my class is the only one, as far as I know, that's intended for people over 60.

Dance, especially ballet, is a very healthy activity. It can help develop and improve strength, flexibility, balance, grace and co-ordination, to say nothing of musicality and confidence. It saddens me to see the number of people of all ages who are grossly overweight. I am glad I will not be a pallbearer at such a person's funeral!

Even so, I'm ashamed to say that over the last couple of years my exercise program has slipped and.I am now well over my 'working weight' - the 7 stone 10lb  (about  55 kg) I used to be when I was dancing professionally. A love of cakes and ice cream accounts for much of that, but is hardly an excuse. I've generally managed, as an adult, to keep my weight under 80 kg, but if I don't watch out, it quickly shoots up to as high as 95kg. Some people, and I appear to be one of them, seem born to be fat.

We have all, I'm sure, met people who seem to stay slim no matter what they eat. Anorexia and induced vomiting aside, it seems our genes must have an important role to play in our weight.

That's my excuse, anyhow, and I'm sticking to it!

Read, Write, Dance. Those three words could almost be my epitaph. Certainly (bearing and rearing children aside) they are the three activities that have eaten up the greater part of my time since I was a tiny tot. I know most of you are readers and many of you are also writers and/or dancers, and you will know what I mean. We read because we read because we read. Ditto writing. Ditto dancing.

I envisaged an old age that would be taken up by these three beloved interests, and over the last few years I've purchased lots of books. I bought them intending to read them, of course, but somehow reading has dropped to the bottom of the list. I have been writing, of course (although not nearly as much as I should have done) and I do attend fitness classes three times a week (at least in theory -  it's more often once or twice a week).

Until a couple of years ago, I read religiously for an hour before going to sleep at night. It's essential for a writer to keep up with the latest books, especially in one's own genre, so whenever a colleague publishes a new book, I dutifully visit the online bookshops to seek out a copy.

But buying isn't reading. All that's happened is that I have a To Be Read pile which, if I stacked all the tomes one atop the other, would be about twice as tall as I am. I open the new book, read the blurb and possibly the prologue or first two or three pages, and that's as far as I get.

Partly, friends, this is due to disillusionment. I was over the moon when I sold my first novel, The Dagger of Dresnia, to Satalyte Publishing. But Satalyte is no more, and The Dagger of Dresnia (published 2014) has sold fewer than 500 copies. It is back up on Amazon now, due to the kind offices of my friend Andrew Partington of Submarine Publishing, but sales are still few and far between. (If you'd like a copy, contact me via Facebook.)

I think, friends, the self-publishing craze has resulted in a market swamped by enthusiastic writers, each of whom has written a magnificent novel that could change the world, or at least entertain a few people for an hour or two. But self-publishers and small press don't have the same access to publicity as the Big Five, and most of us can only expect to sell a few hundred copies at most.

Edward II

Some writers do very well out of self-publishing — they are usually prolific writers who can turn out three or four books a year. My creative machinery just doesn't work that fast, and nor, I think, do those of most writers. A book every year or two is about as much as most of us can manage.

Enough whingeing.  My current fiction reading is The Rune of Life by Dave Dunn, a long-time colleague from our Online Writers Workshop days, and non-fiction  - Edward II, The Unconventional King by Kathryn Warner, a dedicated historian with a passion for this often overlooked man and his times.

Carry on reading!

This morning, I attended a superb dance workshop with visiting American professor, Scott Putnam. I was too exhausted to stay for the afternoon session!

In fact, I must admit that I find contemporary dance heavy going - I only got through it at WAAPA by staying back to attend the evening classes for extra coaching, and I'm sure the examiners threw in a few charity marks so I at least got a pass in the exams.

It was lovely to watch all the keen young dancers (I was by far the oldest there!) and to see their inventive short choreographies. Professor Putnam is an excellent coach and I'm sure the dancers learned a great deal - as indeed I did, although whether or not I'll remember any of it this time next week is a moot point. The body feels worn out and I suspect the mind is heading in the same direction!

I was disappointed not to see more older teachers there. Perhaps Contemporary Dance is a young person's game. Classical ballet can also be exhausting, but at least you don't have to throw yourself onto the floor ten times a minute. (That's an exaggeration, but it does seem to be the default move when a contemporary dancer is wondering what to do next!)

As a young woman back in the late 1950s, I was deeply impressed by Contemporary Dance - it seemed so different from classical ballet, and so very modern. (Well, yes, Satima - that's why it's called Contemporary...) I first saw it when I attended a course of lectures by Beth Dean, an American dance ethnologist who had recently opened a school in Sydney. I was so impressed by this very new and different technique that I persuaded my mother to let me go to classes. It was an added expense for my parents - they were already paying for me to learn ballet at the Scully-Borovansky school, and piano, and singing, plus speech and drama, all at the Conservatorium.

But I enjoyed Miss Dean's classes, and started to take classical classes with her now and then. I eventually danced with her company, called Australian Dance Theatre. (It had no relationship to the later, Adelaide-based company of that name.) I am wont to boast about my appearance in a show before the Queen in 1963. I was dressed as  brolga, and while I'm sure the Queen wouldn't have noticed me as one of six people in brown all-overs with hoods, it was an experience to remember!

Dance has been my main love since I was four, when I saw the lovely pictures in a Ballet Annual owned by one of my sisters. However, I didn't start learning until I was eleven, and for the first year I had to pay for lessons out of my pocket money as my mother considered dancing to be a waste of time and money.

Then we moved house, and my new teacher, Joan Ashton, taught me free in return for helping with the junior classes. She even paid for me to have classes with her teacher, the late, great, Isobel Anderson. But young people don't always value or even see what people are doing for them, and I abandoned Miss Ashton and Miss Anderson to study at the more famous Scully-Borovansky school.

Somewhere about that time, I saw a performance by the Bodenwieser company at the Conservatorium. That means I must've seen the now centenarian Eileen Kramer!

Well, here I am sixty years later, loving dance as much as ever but unable to perform  many steps and exercises that at one time I would have done easily and with gusto. Tempus has fuggitted, and stolen just about all my flexibility and most of my strength as well! But I won't stop dancing until I become absolutely incapable of doing a plié!

Many thanks to Robyn Cooper and Angela Perry for their organisation of today's workshop. It was a joy to attend!