Hubble bubble

I committed sociability yesterday, from pub to restaurant, and felt fully functional throughout, which was good. This morning it was desperately hard to get out of bed again, but I made it; and now I am working - committing mayhem among my semi-colons, largely; fond as I am of the little innocents, comparatively few will survive this slaughter - while I make soup and boil the Xmas ham. Well, simmer it v gently. For four hours. My house is redolent with moist and fragrant air. Though it doesn't seem to be getting any warmer, sod it. Brr.

I suppose I ought to stop and eat the soup, but - well, working. Picking words over like lentils, it's addictive. Besides, this is one of my infamous bedroom scenes (all pillow-talk and no action, since you ask about the infamy), and I'm enjoying it. Sweet young things all awkward with each other, you know how that goes. First-night clumsiness and ouchie.

I have said too much; but it's okay, I can change it all now. You'll never know.

Update

I've worked through the first two sections of the novel now, the first 150 pages; which I have cut to 128, which means about 7K words cut from about 50K. Which is okay, if not optimum; the opening section was tightest anyway, and I barely got a thousand out of that. I'm expecting more dross later.

Meantime, it's time to glaze the ham, and I have no redcurrant jelly. I have always used redcurrant jelly (and mustard, and brown sugar, and a squeeze of orange juice: it's my patent glaze, fruit and sweet and sharp together), and I have none. How can this be?

I may have to go with honey-and-mustard, see what that does. But oh, waily waily...

Oh waily waily...

...and when you're done wailing, you can cancel Christmas.

Well, no. All right. Those of you who are looking forward to it with any kind of eagerness, you can still play. The Grinches amongst you, form up on me. I am now officially of your party.

I truly don't have time for it this year, and my head is entirely in n-space (where n is for novel, you understand), which fact may in fact explain the catastrophe that has finally driven me over the edge:

I burned my glaze.

I had concocted a truly interesting glaze for the boiled ham, out of honey and dry mustard and ground ginger.

And I burned it. Badly. It wanted fifteen minutes in a hot oven, and it got the best part of an hour, while I was working. I am ... unhappy. (I should perhaps explain that I don't buy gifts for people at Christmas, I give them food. Largely, I give them great chunks of ham, with jars of chutney and such to go with.)

Also, Barry has just walked over my manuscript with something wet and greasy on his paws. I suggested that he might have washed them first, and he enquired what else I imagined he had come here to do? Indeed he demonstrated, which did not noticeably improve the manuscript's condition. (I think he's taken agin this book, much as I have done myself. Earlier he was sitting on the MS, in much the same way that Sophie used to sit in the suitcase when I was packing: in that "well, if you're going to go away again, you can bloody well take me with you" kind of way.)