Thumbs? Who needs 'em?

Mac is learning how to operate my devices. Barry has already taught him to switch the bathroom light on and off (by leaping wildly for the dangle-string). Yesterday he taught himself to switch on the vacuum cleaner, by leaping down from the mushroom-box. He was so startled he dropped his mushroom, oh noes!

This morning, immediately after I switched off the radio, he switched it on again. Presumably he wanted to hear about the banks' overdraft penalty fees, which I most exactingly did not. Fine: I left him to it.

In other news, Newcastle has not been above freezing all week, and yet young women still expose their midriffs to the frost. It is insane. They will freeze through the middle and snap in half.

What else? Only urgency. I left the Lit & Phil at half past twelve, and yet it is now two o'clock. I need to eat: prawns and mushrooms and dried fish and noodles, I think. Perhaps an egg. And then I have thirty pages of book yet to wrangle through the computer, and that's done; and then I have to clean the kitchen floor and push the vacuum around a bit, if Mac's not going to do that for me; and then I have to go back into town. In, um, three hours' time. It's a lot to ask. I shall probably fail at one of the above. I'll leave you to guess; it's all a mystery to me.

Tell you what, though. I don't care what anybody else is going to say (and they are). I like the way this book ends, damn it.

Well, so much for that idea

I did most of it, I did. I finished the revisions, and sent the book off again. I cleaned the kitchen floor (under strict supervision). I gave the boys Early Tea, as a reward for their supervising, and powered up the vacuum while their backs were turned. And addressed it to the dining-room floor, and--

And suddenly it was sucking nothing, on account of the hose ripping itself to shreds.

This is the almost-brand-new expensive vacuum, you understand. Which I bought from some dodgy online deal and am now somehow going to have to find a contact for, to kick and scream at them in the new year.

Meantime, I suppose I could dig out the twenty-year-old vacuum that still works perfectly, but...

Nah. Sod that for a game of soldiers. I'm going to the pub. Catsitters will just have to walk on crunchy carpet.