Status

Oh, for fuck's sake. I am having a really hard morning here: didn't make it to the Lit & Phil (though I did actually leave the house to do so; ten minutes later I was home again), have struggled to grind out a page and a half and was just thinking maybe I could tip it over to the third page and end the chapter when the Mighty Metal Percussion thundered into action.

There's a vast container lorry parked on the pavement directly outside my house. Been there a couple of hours, just sitting; but I guess it's broken, because now someone is thumping on it, irregular patterns with something heavy that makes the whole damn thing resonate. I shall go mad, and squat in the fireplace with ashes in my hair. That'll help.

Green tea is good for you

Does any other cat like to eat tea-leaves straight out of the strainer, or is it just - well, you know who it is...

In other great questions of our time, would it be okay if I abandoned all known goals, projects and promises, and just devoted myself to sandwiches and DVDs from now till the end of my brief and bitter career?

The Game of Gull and Lamppost

When the going gets tough, the tough - as we know - go shopping.

Well, I'd already read all my friends page, and it was barely two-thirty. What's a man to do?

There's a motorway carved right through this city, and a part of my way lies beside it.

Seagulls, for some inscrutable avian reason, like to perch atop the m'way lampposts and watch the cars.

A gull flew in to land on one of the lampposts - which clearly meant that the gull already there was obliged to move. So that one flew across to the opposite lamppost, which already hosted two gulls: which meant that one of those had to move.

And so on, with variations, all the way down the motorway as far as my eye could see.

Clearly this was a LARPy version of chequers, or possibly backgammon. For seabirds. Featherbackgammon.

Talking of gammon, I do just want to eat and eat suddenly, and mostly porcine products. Meatloaf, pork pie, smoked ham. Sossidge. Can this be genetic, or some kind of cultural memory artefact: the weather has turned, 'tis time to be slaughtering the pig?

Seven pages a day

Pages: seven. Phew!

Words: 2039

Zukotou:

125,237 / 125,000 (100.2%)

...and oh look, here I am over budget at last. With, um, all the end of the book to happen yet. Everything I thought I'd write this week, I haven't reached yet. Sigh.

Still. On we go. The Girl No Longer Disguised As A Woman is about to discover the Pirate No Longer Disguised As a Pirate (hey, it's complicated. What can I say?). I thought she might get there today, when I remembered this was a scene I had yet to write (and went through a dreadful session of "oh, wait, she can't recognise him, she's never met him, has she...?" "oh! wait! she knows all about him, her grandfather told her..."), but - like everything - it's taking longer than expected. I can't write any kind of confrontation without a build-up first, it seems. It's probably a flaw.