Alternate worlds

It's not so much the life of the mind that I live, as sheer fantasy lives. Alternate Chaz-worlds, where stuff happened differently. That's probably inevitable, given the nature of my work; after watching numbers of my friends'n'colleagues start where I started and achieve remarkable things, of course I'm going to dream what-ifs about my own work and my own career.

Also, being where I am in my actual life, of course I'm going to play the lottery. In my head, I have millions to spend every week. That's just fun.

Less expected, perhaps, is piano-Chaz. There's a little internal part of me that regrets the lessons I abandoned as a child, the practice I never did, the competent player I might have been by now if I'd kept it up. I love the whole smoky jazz sax vibe, but when my dreams have soundtracks, it's always piano.

Even more wildly unlikely, but currently much on my mind? Is minimal-Chaz. Every now and then I glimpse a wisp of another personality, the Chaz I never grew to be: one who keeps his mind as uncluttered as his living-space. Right now, that's the Chaz I want. For practical and obvious reasons to do with packing, moving, sorting out this life before I begin another; but more immediately, just because I have some books to post.

Professionally, it's known as picking: you go through the warehouse with the order-sheet, picking this book from here and that book from there. These days there are machines driven by computer systems, but in olden times when I was young it used to be a job. Right now, I could quite enjoy playing picker: laying out half a dozen piles, people's different selections of titles from my book sale. Packing them up, printing out address labels, carrying everything up to the post office. For one afternoon, that could be fun.

Except that there is no place, no space. Everything in this house is so crazy cluttered, I don't have six feet of clear countertop to build the piles on. Everything gets jammed up on everything else, and it's all complicated and confusing even before the cats bounce in and start knocking things over...

So yeah, at the moment I'm still waving my flag of surrender, which for the last thirty years has been emblazoned with the mantra I have a book to write!. Which is both criterion and excuse, true and feeble both at once.

This morning, I shall finish revisions on House of Bells. This afternoon, after I've sent it off? I'm going to clear the coffee-table downstairs, and start picking.

If you want to add to my woes complications labours picking pleasures, the book sale's still open. LJ seems to be down right now, so I can't link yet, but the book sale post is easy to find if you want to. Basically, everything's a fiver, plus a flat three quid p&p however many books you order.

I'm sorry, I've heard that before

When I was a kid, the chief complaint about the BBC was that there were too many repeats. It was reckoned to be a bad thing.

These days, of course, it has whole channels built around repeats (and they are almost all I find left to listen to, on Radio 4 and its subsidiary. I used to love R4 comedies, but these days? Just Not Funny. I suspect this is a function of ageing, like losing touch with & interest in contemporary rock, and chasing kids off one's lawn).

Anyway: I had been listening to the news downstairs, then I came up here to pretend that I was working. The radio moved on, and I heard the intro to I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue.

Turns out that if you listen to "One Song to the Tune of Another" from a different floor? It just sounds like they're singing the original song.

Anyway: I went downstairs again, thinking I could listen to that, I'd be allowed. Only, y'know what? Turns out to be the very episode that I heard recorded a couple of weeks ago. It's a whole new definition of "repeat", and where's the fun in that? I suppose I could listen out for the Very Annoying Woman I was sitting next to, with the Very Annoying Laugh, but - well. I repeat. Where's the fun in that?

Magick 4 Terri

In case you haven't heard, Terri Windling is not having such a good time just now, and some enterprising folk have set up an auction site to help her out. There is an amazing truckload of good stuff available over there.

Me? I am putting up a matched pair of novels, Bridge of Dreams and River of the World, signed and inscribed, in their original hardcover editions. You can bid for them here, should you feel inclined. (Should you? Yes. Yes, you should. Or something else, of course. But something.)