For some reason which neither of us can understand, Lord H's alarm went off at 6am today and both of us woke up not feeling remotely tired. In fact we even got up, with enthusiasm - how astonishing. Usually, on work days, I lounge around till 6.15am and Lord H doesn't surface till 7. At least. Today, however, we were up with the larks and had already solved world hunger by 6.30am and brought peace to the earth by 6.45. God, but we're good. Our job here is done, Carruthers - it only remains for the mother ship to return and carry us home. Hmm, must be delayed on the intergalactic highway ... Ah well ...


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Every Day Poets

It has been a steep learning curve for the managing editor but if not for writewords, I would not be managing editor.

I hope some of you will pop along to the site and lend your support to this fledgling.

You'll recognise some of the names there. Thank you to all of you who contributed poems. Thank you to all of you have put up with me wittering on.

Every Day Poets needs readers and writers. We welcome poems for special occasions too. Dust off your Christmas rhymes and Valentine sonnets, send us you musings on mid-winter and springtime. Make a date with EDP every day and add some poetry to your life.

www.everydaypoets.com

There was lots of hand-to-hand fighting and blood spattered lenses, an absence of chariots thundering across the plains but plenty of agonising. How do you deal with 4,000 captives when you’ve hardly enough provisions for your own men, for instance?

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I seemed to spend most of the morning doing anything but write. It's been a good few days since I even looked at Hallsfoot's Battle, let alone tackle any more of it - and my confidence levels were at a very low and reluctant ebb. Not that they're ever that high, mind you - I'm powered purely by sheer bloody-mindedness. Anyway, I finally got down to it (as it were) at about 11am and then somehow managed to drum out 1000 words by 1pm, which brings me to 51,000 words and part-way through the Second Gathandrian Legend. I even have a glimmer of an idea about where it should go next, which is something. Quite rare too. But let's not get too excited - no doubt I'll have to go through the same agonising process of reluctance tomorrow. Dammit ...


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I know it’s a very sad-Brit thing to get excited about a few inches of snow, but everything looked so pretty this morning. It is still 3 inches deep on the grass here in the Chilterns at 1.30pm, so that’s more than we normally get all winter. Here are some pics for any equally sad Brits who find this sort of thing interesting. I hope you are all now planning to stockpile tinned food in case it happens again…

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Was much taken today by the sight of one of the squirrels on campus using the pedestrian crossing to cross the road. How very sensible. Saves all that swinging from tree to tree stuff anyway. Evolution is a marvellous thing – soon the squirrels will be sitting at the desks giving us orders ... You heard it here first.

At work, Ruth has very kindly bought a copy of Maloney’s Law so I hope she enjoys the read. Thanks, Ruth – it’s very much appreciated! Though, sadly, the poor thing is still not well, so we sent her home after lunch, fitted out with a bottle of Lucozade and our good wishes. Hope she’s better soon …


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My virtual book tour, Walk the White Road: flash, fiction and science, has now officially begun, and the first stop is at Clare Dudman's excellent Keeper of the Snails blog. She asked me questions about, among other things, my love for science, so I thought I would make a little confession here. Every now and then I pop into a blog called Cosmic Variance. It contains sentences such as this one:

The week before last, I spent several delightful days at the Causality, Analyticity, and Superluminal Propagation Workshop at the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics in Ann Arbor.

And I noticed that when I read the above sentence, I got a thrill. The kind of thrill I imagine some people may get from porn, or from gourmet chocolate, or from finding a great bargain, or buying a pair of really expensive shoes.

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So the question just begs to be asked - what went wrong? What happened? Oh I could of course (and actually did, too, if I am not mistaken) blame any number of external distractions. I wasn't well. Hubby wasn't well. Cat wasn't well. Mother was in hospital. Gay Friend's parents' house was burgled. The weather was too hot, cold, wet, bright, overcast, windy. The country is sliding into economic chaos. The world is on the brink of depression. I got stung by some stinging nettles. I had to sit and watch A Touch of Frost, or Merlin or a DVD. I had a headache, an earache, a toothache, a brain-ache. I hated writing. I loved writing. I was a writer. I wasn't a writer. I was a bloody pain in the arse!


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Woke up with the doom-laden Monday morning feeling today – is it the change in the hour? Maybe what with it being lighter in the mornings, I already feel I’m an hour behind my own life and I’ll never catch up again. Though, to be honest, I should be used to that by now …

Anyway, at work, poor Ruth is still not very well, and the office seems very empty – the boss is away, and both Andrea and Chaplaincy Ruth are on half-term with their children. Mind you, at least the roads were clear and I got to work about 5 minutes before I actually started out. As it were. Okay, that might be exaggeration for poetic effect, but you know what I mean ...


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Rosy Barnes has tagged me with this rather useful little meme. Basically it's this: you get tagged by someone who's mentioned, on their blog, three to five books they think should be given more attention. Then you post something on your blog, mentioning these, along with three to five of your own.

Rosy's are:

Wisdom of Whores by Elisabeth Pisani
Prince Rupert’s Teardrop. Lisa Glass
Borderliners by Peter Hoeg

and mine are:

Love that Dog, by Sharon Creech
Willful Creatures, by Aimee Bender
Taking Comfort, by Roger Morris

I'm not going to

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