Ah now, this I recognise...

Up betimes this morning, and staring at the screen, at the story, thinking "Huh? What was I thinking? Why can't I write like other people, damn it? Nobody's going to care about this..." and so on, till I went downstairs to drink coffee with nothing done at all, because I can at least do that.

And then back up here and more sitting & staring, and nothing doing; so I laid a trap for myself, I took myself into town with a flask of coffee and the LHP.

And behold, if I sit in the Silence Room and am good, and have no internets, I can still write a thousand words in an hour, which always used to be my standard. Technically I already knew I still could, because on my hols a couple of weeks back I had a day in Oxford, in coffee shops, pretending I was mizkit; I wrote five thousand words that day, before jemck came to save me from myself. But there wasn't anything else I could do that day, burdened with a heavy bag and all; they wouldn't even let me into the Ashmole.

Here, of course, the isolation is fictitious, but it does still work. I had half a mind to replenish my stock of coffee and stay another hour. Instead, I wandered home via the shops and spent fifty quid on stuff I really didn't didn't really need. Luggage, a kettle... You know. I do have these things. But now I have new ones! And Barry can sit in the luggage, and Mac can sit in the kettle-box! Also, there are mushrooms. I didn't really need mushrooms either, but who could resist the allure of watching Mac chase 'em across the dining-room? Nom-nom-nom!

And I have a thousand words before lunch, which is like a thousand runs in May, a fine start to the season. And later on I get to cut someone's head off, which is always fun.

The getting of kettles

In case you were wondering why I'd buy a new kettle, when the old one is still functional:

(a) the little light comes on! to say that it's working!

(b) if you accidentally dip its tail in the washing-up water while filling it, it doesn't immediately suck up a cupful of water into its electrics, which it will then spit out all over the electrics of its base when you go to plug it in (I am not a nervous man, but sometimes I wonder if I ought to be);

(c) it doesn't dribble! when I tip!

and

(d) it's black!

Is that enough? I'm sure there's more...

And, yes. I should be working. But I've done my five pages, which is supposed to be Minimum Ration but often works out as Finishing Line, and it's kind of hard to motivate me further. Still. On...

I know I'm no good with faces, but...

I am one with the gleeful number, on the detention of Radovan Karadzic; but I do just want it noted, that no matter how often I stare at 'em, I have no idea how you can have one of these faces in your mind and recognise it in the other one. He'd have fooled me nine ways from Sunday; he is still fooling me.

*is bewildered*