It is quite startling to discover how uneventful a life of disability can be.
Right at the moment there is almost no possibility of doing anything more excitingly adventurous than walking upstairs, although that hurts so much it has become a special little adventure all of its own.
I went to Booths for some ethical potatoes this morning, and when I came back my foot was so agonisingly sore that I collapsed on the sofa in the conservatory before I even got as far as the house.
The dogs leaped up in excitement, thrilled to have a visitor to their sofa, and sat on top of me.
I would have liked to stay there for the rest of the day but of course I couldn’t.
Instead I dutifully got dinners ready, swept and tidied, and started with our preparations for tomorrow’s departure, because at more or less this time tomorrow we will be leaving for Scotland, and Oliver.
I am longing for this in a way I can hardly describe, how wonderful not to be doing housework and occasionally dashing back to the computer to see if any agents have written to me, which, by the way, they haven’t again today.
I did not do very much preparation, for reasons already set out, and after a while abandoned everything in the vague and almost certainly fruitless hope that my foot will be better by tomorrow.
After that I retreated upstairs to write my creative assignment, which I am very pleased to tell you is now complete. It is going to need some ruthless editing, as everything I write ought to have, because of an ineradicable tendency to warble on and on and on, but in its basic shape it is there, and I think will do reasonably well.
My next task is to compose the critical piece, which is mercifully a thousand words shorter, in which I need to explain the Creative Process in terms suitable for the critical gaze of a Cambridge academic. I Just Made It Up will not do, although would always be the most truthful. Instead I am obliged to talk in terms of braided narratives, which I am going to have to look up if I want to find out what they are, and of lived experience and classical influences. I have occasionally speculated about what might happen if I just made this piece of writing up as well, since I am almost completely sure that nobody ever checks. I am almost certain that none of the markers is going to click carefully down my list of Websites I Have Visited, Honestly, or read any of the titles I have included in my bibliography.
So far I have refrained from doing this, since the whole object of doing a Masters’s’ degree is to produce a real piece of work that I have worked out how to make really creditable, but it seems entirely feasible that in a true emergency probably I could. I don’t see why anybody cares anyway, the point is presumably that we can all make up jolly good stories, and it would probably be one of those.
Anyway, so far, so good, I have got the worst tongue-sticking-out bit out of the way, and if I get some time tomorrow, will be able to start on the other. I expect my foot will be better by then, though, so I will be kept busy cooking, and taking things out to the camper van.
Until then I can’t even walk the dogs, and Mark is taking them to the farm after work every night, where they run the last mile behind the car. They are spectacularly fit now, and love this, milling about excitedly when they know they are going to go, like race-horses in the paddock before the Grand National.
It might be a little while before I can join them.
It is very sore today.
I am going to go away and take some drugs.
