"the drilling in the wall kept up, but no one seemed to pay it any mind"

Jack-hammers to the left of him, clarinets to the right of him...

There are building-works up the road, that is, and the noise of that echoes through the basement here to make an utter joke of the Silence Room; and there are music exams just across the hallway, children doing excruciating things to Greensleeves, and ditto ditto. With both going on at once, I feel like an orange-pip squeezed between two heedless fingers.

And keep thinking about going home and making marmalade, giving up entirely. It's not like I know what's happening anyway, with this damn book. She is discovered, and no one gives a damn. I must look elsewhere, apparently, for my climax. Maybe a walk would help. But maybe that's an excuse, or the racket is. Maybe I should just sit here and grind away. Little by little. Don't nobody call me Eric.

EtA: oh, ffs. The jack-hammer is right the other side of the wall now. This is impossible. *lights out for the territory*

All the oranges of Seville will not sweeten this little hand

Oof.

I have chopped All The Oranges. All of them. It was ... sticky, and went on for a very long time. And I was tense to begin with, and I missed a phone call that might have mattered because my hands were all covered with gloop; and you know that thing about how pets know when you're wound up and come to offer solace? Well, hah. Mac knows when I'm wound up, and comes to wind me further. And doesn't stop. Ever. And what should make me laugh makes me yell at him, and then I feel guilty as well as tense, and...

Well. Like that. But I have done with chopping, for the nonce; and the marmalade is so much that it's almost too much for my giant stockpot, and I'd better be watchful when it boils.

And my poor burned finger is stinging, for all the world as though all that citric acid has eaten through the nice new skin. But no, obviously it cannot be that.

I have measured out my life in coffee-spoons

I am trying to work. No, really: I am trying. While the marmalade boils. It is urgent and important that I work, and I am trying.

So far this evening? I have achieved one carriage return. Actually, I suppose it's not called a carriage return any more, but I don't know what it is called now: "Enter" is equally inappropriate. One paragraph-shift. Whatever. That's what I've done.

Permission to despair, please?