*dreams of oblivion*

[desperance]

That SF story I've been working on, that I've been so delighted by, excited by, this last ten days?

Today I hate it. I can't look at it, I can't go near it. So it goes.

Today's World Book Day. Happy World Book Day. It ought to be auspicious, so I've started a new book. I may post wordcounts; I may set myself absurd ambitious targets. I'll let you know.

Meantime, World Book Day: it's an appropriate day to discover this. That jacket that I bought last year? Does not have a pocket big enough to hold a book. Not even the slim volume of poetry I asked of it. How can this be?

Also, I have made a Chinese beef-and-ginger stew that is not quite too hot for me to eat. Thing is, I have this container full of dried chillies from two years ago; I dry my chillies on wooden skewers, and I can't quite remember which is which. Don't know what variety it was that went into the stew, a whole skewerful, but it wasn't the disappointingly mild one. It's very nice, but - oof.

Also, although I cannot now attend my friend Peter's birthday party, I seem nevertheless to be writing him a poem. (For those of you new to this, to me, I do not write poetry; I am an ex-poet. A prizewinning ex-poet, to be sure, but I gave it up.)

It's all draft, it changes by the hour, but this morning's first verse is:

*

The barbarians are at the gates. The bloody gates are down.
There's the whisper of a rumour of a slaughter out of town.
We've got nothing left to fight for. We've got nothing. So it goes
When you've been sold all down the river for a makeshift suit of clothes.

What with telephone elbow and texter's thumb
Is it any bloody wonder we're in Kingdom Come?

*

Etc. They tell me that anger is one stage of grief; I seem to have achieved it.

Comments

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

There is, as I have said before, no such thing as an ex-poet. You are a recovering poet - and as entitled to the occasional lapse as the next man.

See you this evening!

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

At a risk of seriously earworming you, did you realise you can sing the first verse to the tune of Cool for Cats by Squeeze?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, you can earworm me with cat-stuff any old time (and don't tell me it's not about cats, Barry's watching...). I think it also goes to Tom Lehrer's "Proud to Be a Soldier". You can march to it, anyway; it's a call to arms. And cats.

WBD

[(Anonymous)]

And what have they chosen as #1 book for WBD??? Pride and b***** Prejudice!
The Beeb site says it's a book the nation can't do without - I think, as part of the nation, I can.
This just goes to prove that women read more than men ( see D. Teleg top 100 list for 'chick-lit' in the top 20 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/28/nbookslist128.xml )
Slim
http://www.slimpalmer.com