I can have haz been yung?

Oh, dear. In the impossible process of trying to sort a life's worth of papers in a day, I found some really early stories...

Out of nothingness spawns existence. Actuality distils slowly from infinity: separates out, drifts away, and closes in on itself. An ego is formed, a dust mote floating in an eternal vacuum...

I would have been, oh, I don't know: fourteen? Somewhere there. But there are some things which even youth does not excuse.

And I am not even going to type out the opening lines of my great handwritten fantasy epic (Part One, Volume One), which I observe was dedicated - oh, the impertinence! - to J R R T.

The memory lingers, it slips through your fingers

Two days' time, I'll be at Heathrow (barring catastrophe).

I am, ahem. Not ready.

I suppose I never was going to be ready, but I hate the state of unreadiness I've actually achieved. My hands hurt from shuffling papers all today, and I've barely cleared one wall of the office. It has four. Also I'm probably doing everything wrong, chucking what I ought to keep and vice versa. Also I am about to take a stroll up the back alley, peering in my neighbours' recycling bins, for lo. Mine is overfull. The guys come in the morning, but.

Also also, I'm going out for dinner tonight and I've been looking forward to it for ages: seriously good food, unmetered alcohol and a bed to fall into at the end of the night. Except, alas, I can't afford to stay. I need to come back and do more in the early hours. Which means I can't afford to get slaughtered either. The food will still be seriously good, and the company too, but.

My left hand really hurts. That's not fair. I'm trying to be good, dammit! *whines*

Why the hell didn't I keep this stuff organised as I went along? Also, why the hell did I keep this stuff?

Etc. But I have had the phone conversation I'd been dreading, and the nice man made it easy, so. Now I just have to do everything else.

Oh, and I have put a shoggoth in the post. That's a first.