I have been editing my story.
I have edited away almost a thousand words.
This has kept me busy for the whole afternoon, and when I finished I came downstairs feeling confused and disorientated about the real world, the sort without murderous wolves and demons, and couldn’t quite remember what I ought to do to get ready for work.
There is a lot more to be edited yet, but when I had finished I bundled it all up and dispatched it to my tutor anyway, and was instantly rewarded with a very encouraging email which said she was looking forward to reading it.
I am not sure that this is true, quite apart from writing her own books she has a lot of students to teach, all of whom produce reams of aspirational drivel for her inspection, and so I suspect she might have been being polite rather than truly thrilled, especially since she is not my tutor anyway more, and now nobody will be paying her for reading it.
In fact she was a huge part of the last few weeks’ drive to get the wretched thing finished, having written to me and demanded to know where it was and why it wasn’t on her desk, exactly as if I had still been a real student instead of a recently ejected one. I was immediately overwhelmed by a guilty awareness of idleness and determined to do better, and so I did.
It is a hundred and thirty thousand words long, less the ones I have just edited away.
I rushed around again this morning, getting everything done so that I could get on with the editing project. I dashed around the dog walk, which was glorious this morning, because the sun was shining, and although it was very cold, it was wonderful, crisp and bright and icy-fresh.
I have taken to adding another hill into my dog walk. When I come down off the second hill I have always just walked around the bottom of the first one, but recently I have been walking up and over it again, although in a different place to the first time. You can do this because it is quite a big hill. Certainly it seems like it when you are plodding wearily up it for the second time.
The second time does not take so long because it is a different part of the hill, but I have been telling myself that even five minutes’ extra exercise is virtuous, because of it being every day, and so over a week it is probably enough to make it all right to eat some Cambazola cheese without feeling guilty.
Cambridge sent me an article today telling me that their researchers have discovered that some people share a gene with Labrador dogs. It is called, unimaginatively, DENND1B. This gene makes us a bit like human Labradors, who are shocking dustbin raiders and I have even known them be clever enough to open a fridge.
Not all people have got DENND1B, just the ones who eat too much.
I am one of those, which is why I have got to puff and pant up an extra hill every morning. Unlike Labradors, I am easily clever enough not only to open the fridge, but since I have got opposable thumbs instead of paws, can make cheese and onion pies and lemon cakes and chocolate caramel biscuits. This is a wonderful thing until my trousers get tight, thank goodness for dungarees.
I think Rosie has got the gene as well, perhaps we are related. She found another bone in the Library Gardens tonight. I meant to take it away from her, but forgot, so I am gloomily expecting to get home to a kitchen floor full of dog related disasters.
It is always good to have something exciting in one’s future.
