Catching up

[desperance]

I am told I am a lazy sod. By a Frenchman who knows the proper use of the word 'fardel', so I suppose it must be true.

Which being true, it excuses me from blogging: so I do not need to tell you about my weekend, how I spent the central day of FantasyCon being so ill that nothing passed my lips between a glass of grapefruit juice at breakfast (oh, and one sip of execrable coffee: for yes, coffee can be made so bad I will not drink it) and the stomach-settling curry I had for dinner (lamb achaari, since you ask, and probably the finest of my life). Which having not told you that, therefore it would make no sense if I went on to tell you that although I was ill, I still don't believe I lost half a stone over the weekend, which my bathroom scales just tried to tell me before my bath. After my bath, they asserted that I was back up to my regular weight; and I don't suppose I absorb half a stone of water every bathtime (a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter, so that would be the better part of a gallon), desiccated creature though I be...

Nor need I tell you how foolish it is to get excited at the least whisper of a murmur of interest from a publisher, and yet I still do it, even when they just ask to read something. I must stop this; I am too old to drink hope for my portion. Youth thrives on it, but cynicism is my cup. Despair comes later.

I don't need to tell you about the cats, obviously: how one or other of them did that unravelling thing with the toilet rolls in my absence, a new discovered game; nor how one or other of the little sausage-thieves may have learned how to open the fridge, unless they just got lucky; nor how Mac came to watch me have my bath, sitting on the edge there and playing golf with the soaps (when the bath is empty, he tries to get them down the plughole; when I'm actually bathing, he just knocks them into the water-hazard). I think he likes the warmth and the steamyness (Misha used to get into the bath as soon as the water drained away, and chase her tail in the tropical fug) but I don't have to tell you that either. Either of those.

Warmth is very important just now in all our lives, because it's turning chilly but I haven't put the heating on. Living as we do in a cold house (it's long and thin and faces north) which is very well insulated, at this time of year downstairs is uncomfortably cold but up here is actually still okay. Which is good for me, work-wise: and a working Chaz is good for Barry, because he likes to sit under the desk-lamp. Which puts him strategically between me and the screen, so I type peering over his shoulderblades or else between his ears (as I am as I speak), until he condescends to go to sleep. Mac sits on the printer, which I guess is also warm. Which I am excused from telling you.

What more need I not say? Virgin Trains has still not sorted out the chaos with my tickets, though it's been nearly a month now and I should be travelling in three weeks. So far they have charged me twice and still not delivered what I booked. And now they're not answering my e-mails either, nor my letters. Snarl.

Life goes on, books get longer. They don't get any better; by definition, they stray further from the ideal with every word I write. Still'n'all, we get them written, by and large. Mostly large. (Actually "by and large" is a nautical term, covering the range of sailing from close-hauled to before the wind: which I learned, of course, from Patrick O'Brian. I love that stuff, but I need not tell it you, for I am lazy; and lazy men tell no tales, no indeed.)

The rest is silence. Whereof we cannot speak, etc. I should probably go to bed; that's what a lazy man would do. Or a cold one.

Comments

[mantichore.livejournal.com]

Not a kind. Fairly hard to bear, I'd say.