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How often do we visit book stores these days?
I remember one of my favourite pastimes whenever I went into "town" was a happy half hour or so spent at my favourite book store. But nowadays, I confess that I don't browse so much. Is it because there seem to be so many titles, piled so high, that it's hard to choose? Or is it because we rely on word-of-mouth referrals and then order our books online? Probably a bit of both. The convenience of e-books and audiobooks also means we're not tied to one platform for our reading.

There's another way to receive recommendations and that is, of course, via online forums like Goodreads, the largest online book club in the world. Both of my books are listed there, along with hundreds of written reviews. But, for me, the biggest surprise has been Instagram. It offers a pictorial take, with beautiful images of my novels accompanied by short reviews or comments. The most numerous posts have been from readers of the books in translation. Spanish, French, Turkish, Croatian and Polish readers are happily snapping away and posting lovely pictures of La hija de la Criada, Cradock Evi, Kolor jej serca, La chica de Simons Bay, Sobaricina kci...

I have to feed their comments into Google Translate, of course, so that I can understand what they're saying but the pictures tell a story without words.
Have a look at #barbaramutch !

What came before Beach Huts?

Fancy a dash of Victorian bathing chic?
Nervous about getting from the sand to the sea without compromising your modesty? Well then, you'd have to use the technology of the day: meet the Bathing Machine. Horse-drawn and all the rage in the 1800s, they could be hired in slots of, say, half an hour, and looked like beach huts on wheels. Queen Victoria had her own personal version on the Isle of Wight. You would jump into your bathing machine at the top of the beach, change into your bathing costume in privacy and then be conveyed down to the sea by your trusty steed, where the front door would be opened and you would step directly into the shallows.

How very proper!

Originally, sea bathing was segregated, with ladies and gentlemen occupying different parts of the beach lest - gasp - ladies should be seen by men in less than their normal head-to-toe coverings. By the end of the century, however, mixed bathing was becoming the norm. Striped changing tents began to appear on beaches from where discreetly costumed men and women would walk across the sand and down to the sea. The Bathing Machines fell out of favour, lost their wheels and their horses, and became the beach huts that we see around the world today - and, gorgeously, on St James Beach in Cape Town.

In The Girl from Simon's Bay, Ella Horrocks, daughter of the hero of the book, takes the train to Simon's Town to search for Louise Ahrendts, her father's long-lost love.
Neat villages clung to the seashore above the railway line.
The train chugged past tiny crescents of sand lined with bright beach huts...