Help me, internets, you're my only hope

Daniel Fox made it through to the second round of the BSC face-off - but now Jade Man's Skin is up against Patricia McKillip. Patricia McKillip! Whom we adore!

People. Click through and vote for me anyway, like the angels that you are. Never mind the morality of it all, never mind the sheer artistic effrontery. Make Daniel's day, and carry him through against overwhelming odds... (Patricia McKillip!)

To Carthage then I came, burning, burning

I took my burn to the pharmacy two days ago, as it wasn't getting any better. Now I have Special Dressings, and a degree of reassurance. After the last time I hurt my hand and ended up in hospital for a week, I guess it's inherently reassuring every time a professional doesn't shriek and have me instantly incarcerated.

The trouble with Special Dressings, though, is that they're not adhesive: which means they need to be wrapped around with sticky stuff, which, um, turns out not to be particularly sticky. At the moment I am adding strata at every turn, layer on layer, apparently on the principle that sooner or later it will become so massy that it will acquire its own gravitic attraction and Cling by Physics. As we all must, in the end.

In other news, today is apparently a good day for my dictionary to let me down. Twice. It doesn't have iconodule; it doesn't have stambouline. (Why, yes, I am reading Jason Goodwin again. Why do you ask?)

The writer at his works

How this is ever, ever going to put food in the boys' bowls, I do not know.

This novel I am writing? Went on pause, just a chapter from its climax, when I went to California. That wasn't planned, it just worked out that way. And so of course I failed to make any notes about said climax or the build-up to it; and so when I came back to the book three weeks later, I had entirely forgotten where we were going or why. (Literally so: the protagonist was heading off somewhere to some purpose, but I couldn't remember what.)

So I have reread the whole book, and I do at least have a better idea of it as a whole. Her specific errand, though? Still a mystery. I walked into town this morning trying to think, trying to recover what I had thought before, failing in both directions. Sat down here in the Silence Room and mooched around on the internets, upgraded my Ubuntu installation, contacted Virgin about my phone, so on and so forth. Evasive manoeuvres, you know the sort of thing. Checked the news.

And then I started writing. Sent her off in a whole new direction, literally and figuratively; set her up for a horrible shock when she gets there, the possible betrayal of everything that has come before; still have no idea how to get from there to any kind of climax. Or no, not "still": even more so than before. None of this was planned, intended or reckoned for. What am I thinking...?

Four hungry eyes accuse me of gambling with their supper. And I'm not even home, damn it...

Retail adventures

Oh shops and stalls and stores of Newcastle, how you must have missed me...

I came home (early and fidgety, abandoning the morning's work unsatisfied, needing a better sense of what in the world I was doing) my usual way, via the market and the discount store and the department stores of my heart. And in the market I discovered the last of the Seville oranges, way later than I would have thought to find them: we can haz more marmalade! I foresee a weekend of going gloop-gloop-gloop, when I really ought to be working.

And then I bought a book. Shock, horror. But seriously: I am horribly shocked. It is a lovely baking book, a prizewinner, a deeply attractive object. I read it as I walked along. It has a recipe for lardy cake, which was a treat of my childhood and one I am eager to recover (jemck makes the only adult version I've encountered). So I ran my eye down the page - and shriek, pallor, trembling! She uses butter. Instead of lard. In lardy cake...

I almost turned straight around to take it back, this book. Didn't, for I don't do that sort of thing: but still. Almost. If I'd seen that when I was browsing, I'd have put it down on the shelf and never touched it more. What was she thinking?

Hing!

I have newly realised - I think - why the Asian foodstores hereabouts insist on keeping asafoetida behind the counter, rather than with all the other spices. It is purely and simply to make us ask for it, so that we can say "asafoetida" and they can look blankly and we can learn to say hing instead. It's a game we play on both sides, the same way every time. But I will not yield. I insist on my right to say asafoetida first, before slipping in a "hing" just that precious moment before some helpful other person does.