I have been having yet another day of trying to write things.
I have written a thousand words of what might, in somebody else’s words, be described as ‘an inverted pyramid of piffle’. This is because I am trying to rewrite the story of history to suit my own purposes.
Perhaps I should have gone into politics.
I have written and written and written, and now I am finding it very difficult to find anything interesting to tell you, because I am all written out. Also I do not think that I am feeling very amusing. I have scowled at the screen until my eyes have become crossed and my lips cocktail-stick thin from being determinedly pressed together, and I wish I had concentrated harder on winning the lottery, because trying to become a writer is a jolly lot more difficult than it looks.
Mark has been at home today. He is going to continue with his rural broadband activities tomorrow, but today we have had a day off, and went for a walk up the fell together.
We did not walk over both fells, because of Mark’s sore knees. I pretended that I was being patient and benevolently understanding about this, but secretly I was relieved, because it is jolly steep to get up to the second fell-top, and I am never sorry for an opportunity to be idle.
It was a splendid morning, as it happens. We have been worrying about the much-publicised storm reaching us, but it seems to have exhausted its energies in Scotland, and left us alone. We had prudently supplied ourselves with candles and fuel for the generator, just in case, but they did not turn out to be necessary, and we have put them all back in the cupboards again. This morning was clear, and cold, and bright with birdsong, and it was soothing to be out in the chill winter air.
We came home to the Monday excitement of trying to get the sheets dry. This is easy in summer, but at this time of year the sun does not reach into the back yard at all, and the Monday clean-sheets laundry has to be distributed hopefully into the warmest parts of the house.
It is almost bedtime, and I have just been to investigate. They are almost dry, which is a good thing, it would not be nice to have to sleep in a puddle.
I don’t suppose it would have come to that really. In an emergency there would always be the hairdryer.
After that Mark went out to do things in the shed. He is trying to make a battery out of some household items and some soil. He has read on the mighty Internet that you can do this and is keen to give it a go. I have nodded politely but I am not expecting that it is likely to be able to charge my computer any time soon, although I will tell you at once if it becomes exciting. He is still carrying on with his attempts at nuclear fusion (fission?) as well, but I do not think he has managed that yet either.
I retreated to my computer and my rubbish attempts to write a best-seller, but without success. In the end I gave up, which was just as well, because I remembered that I had not finished my homework for this week’s class, and so I turned my attention to that.
Tonight was the last class about writing a crime novel, and although I have enjoyed it very much, I am not at all sorry. It will be good to be able to walk around the Library Gardens in the middle of the night with an untroubled soul again. It is much nicer to live in the real world than in some shocking first-person narrative where serial killers stalk the streets and small children are endlessly dragged shrieking from playgrounds to meet horrible fates. These things are very absorbing to watch on the television, or to read about in bestselling print, but actually don’t happen very much at all. I do not know a single person who has ever encountered a serial killer or had their children abducted.
Somebody pinched Mark’s chainsaw once, but I don’t think it is a likely subject for a novel. I managed to cover all details of the event in brutal realism on these very pages, which were that Mark was most annoyed, and we had to buy another on eBay.
I am going to call Mark now. He has buzzed off to sit on the taxi rank during my class, because he says it is the only place where he can pretty much guarantee uninterrupted peace.
I shall give him a ring and we will go and empty the dogs, fearlessly, before bed.
