On your marks and ready, set, let's get loaded and forget...

Okay. My doctor and I have conspired against entropy today, as my plumber and I did yesterday. I have the good drugs to keep me breathing; I have the good drugs to stop me hurting. I have the sore shoulder from the injection to stop me dying.

I have a novel to finish, and thereafter a draft to kick into shape. I have my kicking-boots ready.

I have an engagement this afternoon, and a book to read, and many books to sort through.

I have a cat in my lap, as it happens. He doesn't care about any of that. It is ... not impossible that his not-caring is infectious, but I will try to muscle through. As much as I can, at least, without disturbing him.

It's funny, sometimes he really doesn't feel like a twelve-pound cat. At the moment he's all fluff, no weight to him at all. At other times? Oof.

This may be of interest only to British foodies

I just found the programme from an amateur production of Noel Coward's Private Lives that I was involved with, in Oxford in the late '70s. On the back cover is a small and solitary advertisement, for "Les Quat' Saisons Restaurant Francais, 272 Banbury Road, Proprietors Mr and Mrs Blanc".

I should say so.

WFC panel

There is a program posted to the WFC site, at least; and I have a panel thereon. On the Saturday:

1:00 PM

Pacific 2/3: Hook and His Heirs: Piratical Fantasy

Pirates - you gotta love ‘em. We all wonder how Hook eats with that hand. From the pirates of the Caribbean to why Blackbeard’s beard smoked and where the buried treasure lies, what is the eternal fascination that keeps them popping up in our speculative fiction?

Chaz Brenchley, Douglas Cohen, Sherwood Smith (M), Jefferson Swycaffer, Kim Vandervort

Cool. If nobody takes it down again. I can talk about pirates. (Can we say Johnny Depp?)