Today’s weather was so springily balmy that I dried all of the washing outside.
By that I mean that I almost dried it. It was not quite crispily dry when I hauled it all back inside, but it was pretty close, and I was very pleased, because there had been a lot of it.
At the risk of harping on a theme, all of my jackets and jerseys had become blackened and gritty with the horrible dirt of the unwanted planks. We will not go on about that any more, I am sure you have heard quite enough about them. Suffice to say that I have washed all of my jackets, and decided not to wear them for bringing in firewood any more. I have unearthed a jacket of Mark’s for that purpose, and resolved to put it on every time I refilled the fireplace. This struck me as a satisfactory resolution to the problem.
The clear skies of the daytime are beginning to turn into very chilly night skies. We will have frost tonight.
It has been an idle sort of day, inspired by an email which arrived last night from my supervisor at Cambridge. Obviously she is not my supervisor any more, because I am not at university any more, save for a final fling in a few weeks when I will turn up, spend a fortune, graduate, nurse a hangover, and turn my back upon the place with the greatest reluctance. I do wish that we lived nearer, they keep sending me invitations to attend lectures on all sorts of subjects that I would absolutely love to hear more about. There is one about the links between the landscape and the culture of the people of Tibet, and another about whether or not we might go and live on another planet some time. There is one about dinosaurs on the coast of Africa, and one about natural hazards, by which they presumably mean volcanoes and things, not potholes or recklessly suicidal deer. There are all sorts of interesting nuggets of information available to bored postgraduates if only one troubled oneself to investigate.
Of course, I could always watch them online, although I would miss all of the hanging about chatting about it afterwards.
I will save it up for my retirement. I will become elderly and park myself in front of the computer to listen to clever young people telling me about their exciting discoveries.
That sounds like a magnificent way to be old.
Anyway, my ex-supervisor sent me an email wondering, briskly, where my story had got to because she had promised to send it to her agent.
Where my story has got to is, in fact, Nowhere At All. I have not written a single word for weeks and weeks.
Secretly, and it is a secret so do not tell anybody, I had become disheartened. I had quite decided that I did not have a single story in my head which was worth telling, and that probably I was just about as uncreative as it is possible to be, and that really I ought just to get on with driving a taxi and sawing up firewood for the rest of my life.
This was a dreary and uncomfortable feeling, and so I was trying very hard not to think about it.
However, some little hopeful spark was kindled by such a kind email, and so today I hauled my story out of the dusty recesses of my computer and began to look at it.
I had quite convinced myself that it was terrible rubbish, and some of it was, but some of it was not at all bad.
I spent all afternoon reading and editing, re-writing and scowling, until I was overwhelmed with guilt and had to jump up to do some of the things I was supposed to be doing, like sweeping the kitchen and bringing in the washing.
It will take weeks and weeks to turn it into something reasonable, but I might have a try.
I like writing much more than I like sweeping or dusting, and now that Christmas is all over I have got some time to myself again.
I might give it a go.
