Mark and the dogs are at the farm and I have had virtually the entire day to myself.
What was more, it was a real day as well, the sort that starts at eight o’clock and just keeps on going. This was because Roger Poopy had an emergency wee on the carpet and then we had to get up, which we did, rather crossly. We had finished breakfasting and contemplating and considering our lives long before ten, and then Mark and the dogs buzzed off and I did all of the unavoidable things like washing up and sweeping the hearth.
After that I have spent almost all of the day buried deeply in my book-to-be.
I have drawn up calendars and charts of relationships.
I have drunk pot after pot of fragrant red chai.
I have written two and a half chapters and I am writing this before I go out to work in order that when I get to work I will be able to read my book about Napoleon and not write another single word. I have had quite enough of writing for one day.
I am concerned about the day’s achievement because it has been a very exciting bit of the book, and as all of you know, excitement is not my forte. I like things to tootle along smoothly and without incident, and then I can write about them. In fact, regular readers might remember that this has been my major objection to writing a book: that things have to happen in it, and I find life much easier when they don’t.
However, I could no longer put off the dramatic escape of the princess from the wicked baddies, and so off she went, galloping across the plains of Surrey as if the wolves themselves were at her heels.
Nobody chased her. I wasn’t up for that. There is such a thing as too much excitement for one day. I am not the sort of writer who hurls possessed golden rings into fire pits of doom, certainly not on a chilly Wednesday afternoon.
After I had finished it I sighed with relief and treated myself to some cherry shortbread to revive myself. Then I pottered off downstairs and virtuously hand washed my collection of non-washing machine bras and fragile jerseys and got the bread rolls out of the oven.
I made the bread rolls as a sort of commercial break to relieve the anxiety at an earlier point when it was all getting a bit much.
It is a good thing that I have got so many things that I can do to distract myself, otherwise I would really have to get on with it.
It is done now. In all conscience I don’t have to write a single word this evening, and can eat my picnic with a completely clear conscience.
I am going to stop writing this as well. I am going to go and occupy my evening enjoying the fruits of somebody else’s exhaustingly hard labours. I have come to look at books through completely new eyes.
Have another picture of the Army’s new poster girl.
Just so I can feel especially self-satisfied with all my offspring who are much more adventurous than I ever was, Number Two Daughter sent me a video of her and her fellow ski instructors doing their exciting high-speed skiing thing. It is nice to have fit and active children, it somehow makes me feel less guilty, as if I could be considered fit by association. For anybody interested, by which really I suppose I mean friends and family, because watching films of other people skiing is not exciting unless one has a personal reason to be thrilled, here it is:
LATER NOTE:
I have got to have an early night. My car window exploded again. We have a Car Window Crisis. More, I imagine, tomorrow.
