I am back at my desk in Cumbria, deep in the editing process after a wonderful week in the Highlands.

I’ve been thinking of Agatha Christie and how travel impacted her writing so greatly. Christie said, “Your travel life has the aspect of a dream. It is something outside the normal, yet you are in it. It is peopled with characters you have never seen before and in all probability will never see again. It brings occasional homesickness, and loneliness, and pangs of longing… But you are like the Vikings who have gone into a world of adventure, and home is not home until you return.”

The Highlands spark my imagination. Waking to see snow topped Ben Vrackie and mists in the Killiekrankie gorge, it’s hard not to be inspired.

My protagonist lives in the Highlands, and aside from short trips to Amsterdam and Edinburgh, most of his adventures occur in his mountain embraced home.

Returning to my home, this week has brought roller coaster lows for me and those close to me. Watching the BBC adaptation of “His Dark Materials,” one of Philip Pulman’s quotes on writing struck me. He says “A magpie is like a thief: it takes the things that belong to someone else, bright and shiny things – and makes them his own. And that is what writers do, isn’t it?”

I agree, writers do take the shiny things. The things that glitter and delight us. But we also take the darkness, the things that frighten and sadden us.

Perhaps we can learn from the darkness so that what delights us is the simple things, the everyday beauty of our world and the kindness of others.

I’ll be watching the mists this November and listening for the clacking call of the magpie.