It isn't just the weather

I made a phone call today.

For those of you who know me, or those who've just been following along, that ought almost to be enough. 'Nuff said. But it isn't really, so let me add that actually, in an effort to make one brief phone call, I had to make three and I was on hold for over an hour altogether, and you will know just how much I hated that and everything to do with that. And in the course of it all I found myself concocting various delightful conspiracy theories: such as that those who call helpline numbers and hang on for a while and then hang up before they actually get to speak to anyone have their numbers recorded, and ever thereafter will always be shuffled and reshuffled to the bottom of the queue when they try again, in hopes that they will do the same again rather than pursuing their query; and that the on-hold music played at them in the meantime is deliberately dire and dreary and dreadful in hopes that they will again give up and go away; and that helpline menus are deliberately abstruse and misleading in hopes etc etc. And then I did eventually get through, and the nice boy was so prompt to say "this matter hasn't been settled because we never received your acceptance, but I'll put it through now to the head of the queue because you've been waiting so long" that I immediately distrusted the whole process, and presumed that they did of course receive my acceptance and just ignored it and everybody's in hopes that some at least would not pursue it.

And then I wondered just when I started to mistrust my bank so automatically, given that these are the people who have been looking after all my money for the last 35 years and I used to love them dearly. And actually I guess I date that to the time when they shifted my "personal manager" from someone in my local branch to a disembodied voice in Birmingham, so yeah. Phones. *hate* [There is in fact only one person on the planet from whom I will willingly take a phone call, and she spends a lot of her time saying, "Okay, your turn now. Say something."]

And then I opened my copy-edit. I've not been putting it off so much as genuinely forgetting about it, which is an artefact of electronic editing; it's much more convenient in many ways, but much easier to neglect than an actual pile of paper. So I opened it, and worked my way through three pages (of 290) and already I want to gouge someone's eyes out. If I write "and even so", I do not mean "but even so". I think "and" has more impact, because it's less expected. I have actually, y'know? Thought about this. And the other trouble with electronic copy-edits is that I used to just go through paper ones and write "stet" a hundred times on every page and that was that. These days, because we have comment features and so forth, I feel obliged to justify my stets; and it takes for ever and winds me up no end and and and. Three pages, and I can't bear to do any more tonight. At this rate, no. I will not be delivering on time.

I have at least written 2K of new stuff on Pandaemonium, which currently stands here:

 

20033 / 95000 words. 21.1% done!

But oh, it has been a grim and a grimy day today, and I have been hating it. Now I must bake bread and cook rice, and try to cheer myself up. But I have no gin. No gin! I might have to open another bottle of wine. I never do that. But I made telephone today. *needs consolation*