Family: you can run, but.

In an act of sheer self-immolation, I have been reading (very slowly) a book - Isolarion, by James Attlee - about the street I grew up on, Cowley Road in Oxford. I think the book is an act of journalism striving to be literature, but never mind; it still knows exactly where each tooth point goes. The nature of the street has changed entirely since my childhood, but people still remember:

"The houses were built for workers coming to jobs in the car factory; the Regal Cinema was built to cater to them too. There was always a Saturday matinee for the kids."

My dad worked in the car factory, we grew up in and around those houses. I went to those Saturday matinees. Those and comics were my first introductions to serial storytelling, as we didn't have a TV when I was little. There's probably something longer and more thoughtful to be written about that, as I do still remember the vivid sense of suspense that an interrupted story left me with, the burning anticipation of next week's episode.

In other not-unrelated news, my bad shoulder was appallingly painful in the weeks and months before Xmas, and all the drugs in the world (why yes, I do have all the drugs in the world) couldn't take the edge off. Then we went to Cornwall and visited family, both blood and adopted. Ever since, the knots have been untangling and the pain receding; yesterday was the first day in a long, long while that I didn't even think about a pain pill. Tense much?

I may never buy rice in this town again

It's strange how hard it is sometimes, even to remember that I need to be running things down, using them up. I've always shopped against the future: picked things up when they were cheap, filled the freezer and the larder, stacked the shelves, over-equipped the kitchen and the office. I have pans not used yet, waiting for the eventual failure of my daily batterie de cuisine. I have ink cartridges I will never use. I haven't tried to count the books bought and not yet read. Karen has a TBR room; I have a house.

But. Every now and then, I do remember. I really did look at the rice-sack yesterday and think "That might be enough to see me through." And right now I'm boiling a ham, which just might be the last ham I cook in this house. Light Errant was the first novel I began here; Pandaemonium may well prove to be the last. From Ben Macallan's second book, to Ben Macallan's second book: it has a pleasing circularity to it.

Even so, it isn't easy. My lunch is coming from the freezer, hurrah - but I still can't pass a butchery counter without thinking "Ooh, cold-smoked pork fillet! That'll be lovely for tomorrow's dinner," and like that. Fetching stuff home, when I should be doing the other thing. It's another feature, that shopping online just doesn't satisfy my retail hunger: I need to exchange cash for goods, and feel the weight of them on my back as I walk.

Ah, that's where we are

On p 142 out of 290pp, I gazed at the mess she'd made of my paragraphing and tried to work out on my fingers why she'd done that, whyever she'd think it was better that way; and gave that up fairly quickly, and considered stetting everything back the way it had been - and finally thought, "Oh, I don't care," and scrolled on.

I usually hit this point, somewhere along the line. My choices or theirs, it really doesn't matter. The words remain the same. Layout does have impact, there is a visual rhythm too, a sense of pacing down the page - but it's marginal, and it's not worth fighting over. I just want this gone now.

Math is hard

In other news, I tried the fragrant & hot pig's intestines again last night. Where four chillies might perhaps have been too many, two is definitely too few. Hmm. How to resolve this dilemma...?

(I have utterly mortal longings in me. I wanna go for a walk, I wanna go shopping. I wanna cook. I wanna read a book. I wanna watch a movie. Basically I wanna do anything except what I have to do. Nobody is at all surprised. But I do actually need to eat; thinking about food is practical. *nods*)

I'd be better off thinking about food

I promise, I'll stop grumbling soon. Any moment now. But honestly: if you change the punctuation, sometimes you change the rhythm and sometimes you change the sense. Both of those matter. Both of those were meant. Grrr...

*stets*

So bored

Soooo boooooored...

There's a bit in Modesty Blaise where Willie Garvin says - of sex, naturally - "Honestly, Princess, you wouldn't think it could be made boring, would you?"

Which is more or less where I am right now, except that where Willie has prioritised sex, I have prioritised writing. (Oh, hush. Let be. We can't all be Willie Garvin.) I have loved this job of mine with a passion, I have pursued it for thirty-some years, I have hated it and avoided it and clung to it and and and. I don't believe I've ever been bored by it, but I am now.

It's not the close-attention-to-the-words thing. That's what I do. It's the insuperable feeling that nothing is being made any better by this dreary unpicking, this stet - stet - stet. She obliges me to restore the status quo ante, word by sodding word. I did this once already; why do I have to do it all again?

Etc.

Really, I am going to stop whingeing soon. No, I am. Really.

Somebody needs to proof my stetting

The last twice I have typed first "ztewt" (because I was doing it backwards and in high heels, in a desperate pursuit of variety) and then [my default password], because that's what I type without thinking and I wasn't at all thinking, because this process has killed my last surviving alcohol-sodden braincell. I should probably make "stet" my new password; apparently it's what my fingers do.

I am stopping grumbling. No, I am. Any day now. Any day.

[For the avoidance of doubt]

No, there's nothing unusual in this. Partly she's working from a house style sheet - which of course I abominate - and partly from one of the formal manuals, Chicago or whatever. She has rules about where commas go. Actually so do I, but our rules are different. And she's just not catching the rhythm, some people don't if they don't hear me read aloud: so she doesn't get the repetitions, she sees the same word three times in a paragraph and thinks it's a mistake. She thinks I make a lot of mistakes.

Also not-at-all-unusual? Is that I'm fussing. On the internets, because, y'know. Here you are.

That's all. She's doing her job, I'm doing mine. You're doing yours. Carry on.