Oh, right. That's how I do it. I remember now.

I wrote near enough three thousand words yesterday, in the end. And how did I achieve this, you ask? By being in the Lit & Phil, as I told it you: morning, afternoon and evening. Focused and time-limited. (Oh, and then a final page in the pub while I waited for the first-Monday gang to join me: but that was a lagniappe, no more.) I probably need to do more of that, if I'm going to bring this book in by the end of the week. Like today, f'rexample. Here I am, and in an hour I have to go up to the university for a final tutorial; but when that's done, y'know. I could come back here.

But oh, I do like going home. Cats and wine and comforts. E-mails to check, the possibility of advancement. That sort of thing. I am not strong to resist my home's allure. Maybe I need more reasons to have to be in town, with inconvenient slots of time between appointments. It would be silly, wouldn't it, deliberately to make arrangements in order to have the gaps between...?

Teddy bears in the news again

I'm back. I have virtuously tutored my boy with his German novel (it's an interesting choice: first time I've dealt with a student working in translation), handed in my meagre pay claim (I can't believe it - ten years on from the first time I filled in that damn form, and it still has a misprint, in capitals, right at the top of the page) and even more virtuously returned to the Lit & Phil. I don't know how long for ("2000 words or bust!" - but actually that's rather a big ask, and I may choose the bust option), for I am tired and I want to go home; but for now, here I am.

And for you - and for Softly! - here is a news story about teddy bears. I love that the BBC still recognises their importance in the national psyche.

This may be self-indulgent, but.

You will allow me to point out how utterly chuffed I am, that m'friend Aliette de Bodard is on the Nebula shortlist with her novelette The Jaguar House, in Shadow. I could only be more pleased if I'd been on there myself: which, bizarrely, I am somehow not. Again.

*faces facts*

*shrugs*

*pops champagne for Aliette*

In other news, here's something else I am rather more bizarrely pleased with: today's darling. Well, darling-so-far. I do seem still to be working. But:

“Sister Carter,” he said, with a smile that was not yet longsuffering but could clearly turn that way, should the occasion demand,

I just like that, y'know? It's ... temperate. Considering. Entirely appropriate, and just a little light-hearted.