Still pushing forward with ‘Darkness’ and it’s like wrestling with treacle. Progress is painfully slow and sticky. A word here, a sentence there and crow barring a couple of paragraphs in where they better serve the narrative.

The story is finally beginning to go in the direction I want, but it’s felt like trying to turn a supertanker with a motorboat. Not completely impossible, but painfully slow and constantly at the mercy of wind and tide.

Since I began writing this series in 2003 I’ve upended my entire life several times, moved continents twice, been through a double bereavement (on the same day!) and multiple trials and tribulations. Nothing too damaging.

However, counting blessings, there are many much worse off, but when you’re dealing with narratives running to over a hundred and fifty thousand words each, these life events do make it hard to keep track. Given that circumstance, this post should not be seen as a cry for any form of sympathy. I freely acknowledge I made this rod for my own back. It would be better to think of it more as a wordy grunt of frustration.

Prone as I am to gloomy episodes, to periodically cheer myself up between other work and house upgrades I’ve been following the ever-astonishing progress of SpaceX, whose test flight number six is due for launch around the 18th of November 2024. That ‘chopstick’ catch of flight five’s booster earlier this year was desperately awe inspiring and a moment I will remember for a long, long, time.

Will we see Mr Musks project on flight six go for the double, with the spectacle of the next booster and Starship storm down from orbit, finishing their flight hanging in mid air on their respective launch towers? Not being privy to SpaceX’s project schedule, that may be just wishful thinking, but perhaps we the public will have to wait for test seven? Who knows?

Certainly there is a sense of rapid progress in terms of reaction propulsion and a sense of a new future taking shape. All I know is that a hopeful future is only just ahead of us. All we have to do is reach out and welcome it.