That was the night that was

When the forecast last night said "rain and snow and sleet and hail", I thought they meant generically across the country, I didn't realise they meant right here, right now. We have in fact had all four overnight. There was one point where all three of us got out of bed* to go to the window and look, because the noise against the glass was so peculiar (and so peculiarly loud and wet) we couldn't quite work out what it was. [A sort of sleety hail, since you ask: hard enough to bounce, soft enough to cling. There's probably a word in science for that particular physical condition, but I don't know it.]

As it happens, I was awake for quite a lot of the weather. Indeed, I am claiming the weather as my excuse for listening to quite a lot of the cricket.

It's snowing quite hard now. Shall I go to the Lit & Phil, I wonder? Or shall I stay home and keep the cats warm work from here?

[ETA, t + 30: I'm not sure what that is, that's currently precipitating: rain or sleet or snow or hail. Whichever. It's coming down in swirly clouds, and I am ... disinclined to go out and discover.]


*My fault. I'm fairly sure the boys would have stayed just where they were, thanks, if I hadn't moved. But they were packed in so tight against me, that meant they were moved by default: at which point they might as well come and look, as we were all staring at the window anyway...

This will be the day that is

It's good to have decisions made for me by other people. (I have never understood that wanting-to-rule-the-world thing, nor even the wanting-to-be-in-charge-of-anything thing. Except perhaps my own participation, I quite like being in charge of that. But I still want someone else to tell me how to participate, mostly.) Dinner plans tonight are cancelled, in view of inclemency. (It is snowing again as I speak, and by this evening? There is doubt about trains and such. Official doubt, even.) Which means that for definite I am staying home. I shall assemble a big warming pot of mutton chilli with black beans, and let it stew slowly, slowly while I try to work.

I know I've mentioned it before, but it is odd how hard it's suddenly become to work at home. It is just the distractability of me, the flibbertigibbet that is my butterfly mind, which of course I have always had; but I haven't always had the distractions here at my desk. E-mail and internet are obvious; also a new OS to play with (I have an Ubuntu Toolbox book right here by the keyboard, and a firm intent to learn), and research materials, and admin stuff, and and and. And coffee and biscuits and cats. And cookery downstairs, and the house all about me with stuff that needs done, and shops without, and and and.

If I had webcams, you could compare and contrast: Chaz at the Lit & Phil, working fairly solidly, maybe taking a ten-minute break to read a paper but otherwise at the keyboard tappety-tap for a thousand words or more; Chaz at home, writing four words and then flicking to the e-mail, checking LJ, wandering downstairs to stir something, coming back, checking LJ, looking at the work, writing twenty words, googling...

I should probably do something about this. Usually, of course, the easiest thing to do is go to the Lit & Phil. But I need a fallback, for snow days and weekends. The discipline of yesteryear, that would be the thing. I wonder if I can remember how it worked?

Someone's hosing down the sidewalk, and he's only in his teens

I just looked at a ten-day forecast for Newcastle, and was a little startled to see that the tenth day is actually Christmas. How can it be that close, this soon?

Ahem. I have perhaps not been paying due attention.

The good news is that the forecast for Christmas Eve does not include snow, which bodes well for Karen's arrival. The less-good news is that it's bracketed with snow the days before and after, and weather can shift by one day at this distance, no trouble. Still'n'all. I shall be confident, and all will be well.

There's a bright silver haze on the meadow,
There's a bright silver haze on the meadow
The snow is as high as a elephant's eye*
And it looks like it's falling clear out of the sky**


*Not really.
**Really.

I am not mad, but I could learn to be

It is famously a sign of madness, to keep doing the same thing over and over in hopes of a different outcome. This is known. I know this.

And yet I keep looking for that verdammte pudding-basin. In the same places where I have looked before, because there is nowhere else that it could be.

Aaargh. Somebody put me out of all your miseries...

Best Gay Stories 2010

So I've been waiting for this, and it has finally come: Best Gay Stories 2010. And look, it's so pretty:




And also I am in it. With a story that I am oddly fond of, with a title ("'Tis Pity He's Ashore", since you ask) that I kept close to my heart for the better part of forty years before I found a chance to use it. Why yes, I am a hoarder; but eventually the right moment does come along. So long as you can find the thing that you were keeping.

Also?

My chest hurts. I've been a bit too wheezy for a bit too long, and if I went to the doctor he'd give me some prednisone and then I'd feel better; but, nah. Not for this. Not in this weather, when I don't want to go out and he won't want to see me because the surgery will be overflowing with snotty kids and people who slipped on the ice. I'll get better magically all by myself, because that's how it works, oh yes.*

I might go to bed, though. I'm thinking about it. Except that that's kind of the ultimate work-evasion strategy, y'know? I spent much of my childhood being too sick to go to school; now I'm a grown-up, and it's kind of harder to convince myself.

And obviously I am not too sick to sit here and type. QED.


*Actually I do mean this. Nine times out of ten, it gets better. Time ten, it gets worse and I go to the doctor and he gives me prednisone.

Two odd things

I'm surprised by how often I use numbers in my text. Low numbers, two and three. They are ... not constant, but frequent, certainly that.

I have learned this by dint of searching for them, through 27K of text: because it struck me suddenly that I was not chaptering as I usually do, not finding and seizing the obvious opportunities for a chapter-break, or else forcing them at regular intervals. I love chapter-breaks, both as a reader and a writer; I have a long history of building them in; I used indeed to claim the shortest-ever chapter in British print (three words! eclipsed, alas, by that Lindsey Davis, who used to be my good friend before she produced a one-word chapter). But it seems to be a corollary of the way my process has changed, that I no longer look for natural breaks nor manufacture false ones. This current text has one after 25 pages, and then not another in all 85. I need to do something about that. But not now...