Yesterday's darlings

So towards the end of last year I wrote a story for an antho that hasn't been announced yet, and we've just been doing edits so I had to read it through, and - yeah, talk about a darling d'hier. Every now and then a good editor highlights a line just to note how much they appreciated it; and then I glow all warmly and appreciate it too and perhaps feel a little smug; so I thought I'd share my smuggery. Utterly out of context, but never mind:

Here was the street called Strait, because it was like honesty: narrow and difficult and not for us.

[For those not familiar with the great texts d'antan, "the street called Straight" is a phrase that echoes down the centuries. The street itself is in Damascus; the line is in the Bible (Acts chapter 9, to do with the conversion of Paul: it may be the only street-name given in scripture); it recurs in the opening line of The Gabriel Hounds, "I met him in the street called Straight." Mary Stewart is one of my touchstones, where romantic thrillers are concerned: as witness, I have packed all her titles that I own. I never met her, but I was once in the room when my agent was speaking to her on the phone; does that count?]

It doesn't count as running away, so long as I'm doing something

A nice person from the moving firm is coming to conduct a survey on Friday morning: viz she will say "What are we moving for you?" and I will indicate the neat cube of boxes and say "That" and she will say "Ah, fine. How many are there?"

At which point, I really ought to be able to tell her.

Which means that between now and then, I really should have finished packing.

Um.

I've been through most of the books...

*whimpers*

I hate this, and I just want to write my novel, please. I've only got about 12K to go; I could do that this week, if I didn't have to, y'know. Pack a house.

Also I have just run out of olive oil. And the running-away bit of me thinks "must buy more olive oil! now!" and the extravagant bit of me thinks "hardly going to notice the cost of it, against everything else that we're spending" and the disconsolate bit of me thinks "I like to go shopping, it makes me feel better" and ranged against all of these is the frugal bit of me with gritted teeth, going "I'm only here a fortnight and I've got bottles and bottles of other oils, I can get by two weeks without olive, and I wouldn't have the time to go through half of it, and I have work to do instead of shopping, and the time would be far better spent putting things in boxes, and and and..."

Frugal me is winning, but only just. I'm not quite sure what I shall dunk my bread in, when I open a bottle of wine in thirty minutes: walnut oil, perhaps...?