What, no telly?

It's Saturday afternoon and, guess what? It's raining again, heavily. I usually don't mind the drizzle and the grey skies because they keep me indoors at my computer, working instead of frittering the time away in garden centres or antique shops which I seem to be addicted to. I'm a great one for pottering around city centres too, sitting in coffee bars kidding myself that I'm working on a plot in my head when I'm not really, or only half trying to.

Today, however, I desperately wanted to go to Howath on the old steam train. I want to have a scene in the book that I'm working on at the moment where the main character gets trapped on a steam train in India. So I'd like to find out what it feels like travelling on one, even if it's only a short distance. Howath [see picture], by the way, is where the Bronte sisters lived. The station in Keightely has been as a location for The railway Children, Yanks and Alan Parker's film version of Pink Floyd's The Wall. There's a fantastic high street with old-fashioned teashops and an antiquarian bookshop where you can get second-hand Folio Society books in very good condition.

Most of my friends are busy this weekend, or abroad on their annual holiday, so there's no one to hang around with. And since I gave up watching telly last Christmas I can't slump down semi-comatose on the sofa either.

When I tell children during school visits that I have no telly, their jaw drops. 'How do you live?' I get asked. 'Don't you get bored?'

I don't have time to get bored. In my spare time I bake, I cook, I read, I listen to music on my ipod and I go for long walks with my camera.

'What else don't you have?' is usually the next question after the telly one.

Let's now. I don't have a helicopter, I don't have a dishwasher and I don't have a microwave.'

That gets them too. 'But how do you cook?'

'I use a normal oven?' I answer. Some like at me as if they're not sure if I'm having them on.

'Do you have a car?'

As a matter of fact, I don't. I hate the stupid things, and not just because they wreak havoc on the environment. When I was a kid I used to get car sick all the time and had to travel with a plastic bowl on my lap, just in case. How embarrassing was that?

So now, I don't have a car.