I am not feeling very enthusiastic about writing in these pages tonight. Tonight I think I would prefer to read my book and not create anything at all.
This is because I have spent the entire day being creative.
I have written my Critical Analysis essay and edited my Creative Assignment yet again, and finally handed them both in.
Then I edited two short stories down to an almost-acceptable length and sent them to a short story competition. I am not optimistic about their chances because I thought they were better when they were longer, but there was a word limit in the rules, and I supposed that I had better try to stick to it.
I didn’t manage it in the end anyway, and so I don’t imagine I will get anywhere at all. I will lose the competition either because the stories are too long, or lose because they are rubbish, with all of the helpfully entertaining or explanatory bits cut out, like Shakespeare losing Falstaff and Macduff in one fell swoop.
I had edited them after they were written anyway. Taking out any more words was like taking bricks out of a wall, it just left holes behind.
I felt discouraged when I had finished, perhaps I should just have stuck to my guns and sent in something that was over the limit, but these things happen.
The assignment pieces are the right length, which is a relief.
I am feeling cheered by it now that it is finished, it is nice to have it all over and done. I have got a couple of letters that need to be composed and written and then I do not need to sit down at my computer again until we get back from London.
They are not nice letters. One is complaining to OfCom about our mobile telephone provider. It is useful to be able to compose documents like this, but brain-squelchingly dull, and I am feeling less enthusiasm than I have noticed that Oliver is feeling about his Past Maths Papers prep.
I have not even been out to empty the dogs. I had become so anxious about finishing the assignments that Mark took them out by himself this morning, so that I could get on with it.
It is all done and I need to put it behind me. I do not need to think about the small smelly boy who features in my assessment piece any more. It does not matter if his dreadful mother murders him in his sleep whilst my back is turned.
I have not written a critical analysis since my schooldays, and it was an effort to recall language which had sufficient pomposity to sound as though I knew what I was talking about. I will have to try and hold that mood, it will be useful when writing to OfCom.
Other than that it has been an uneventful sort of a day. Last night turned out to be fairly busy, mostly because every other taxi had given up and gone home, if indeed they appeared at all.
The only notable event was that we were accosted in the middle of the night by an extremely intoxicated lady who said that she did not wish to go back to her hotel because her husband was drunk, and would probably hit her.
We agreed that this was an undesirable state of affairs, but could not quite work out what her alternatives might be. It is an unfriendly world for those who find themselves penniless in a strange town at two in the morning, and I would advise my readers to consider better advance planning in their own lives.
In the end she went back to her hotel anyway. Mark went with her, but reported that her husband did not seem especially violently inclined, and so drunk that he was unlikely to have been able to hit the side of a taxi, even if he had taken a run at it, so presumably it turned out all right.
She will have to get the divorce this morning when they have both sobered up.
