Not the song by The La’s, but finally the ball has started rolling on chapter ten. It was like pushing really hard at something poised to go downhill all day, and then finally, I can feel it shift and sway. I can’t say it’s rolling with speed, but I have added something nice to chapter nine, and managed to do 2,000 words on ten so far, and the night is young. I work so much better at night… trouble is, I rather like sleeping as well. Maybe I need to think of myself as a shift worker…
There are still fireworks going off randomly outside, once people make one big bang, it’s obviously a hard habit to break. I walked to town today to mingle with real people and learnt a few things:
1 – It is nigh on impossible for me to walk past a Starbucks and not buy a Belgian chocolate cornflake cake, since being initiated into their delights last week. This is bad.
2 – That no matter what day or what time, H&M will always be crowded full of desperate looking women.
3 – That I am developing an irrational fear of shop alarms going off when I walk through the exit. I’m not a shop lifter or anything (well, I once attempted to steal a penny sweet by dropping it down my school jumper, and then felt so bad I wiggled it out and put it back, with added jumper fluff. And it was a fizzy cola bottle, I had sugar everywhere…) so there is no rhyme or reason for this, I just feel weirdly guilty.
4 – For some reason I always end up in the middle of Monsoon wondering whether £50 for a T-shirt is a bargain. I remain to be convinced (and the budget gives a huge sigh of relief).
5 – WH Smiths gives me the creeps. I mean, be a book shop, or be a stationary shop, or be newsagents… stop morphing into other shops!
Right, back to it… Where was I? Oh yes, the smog of December 1962…
4 comments:
Don't forget that the winter of 62/63 was one of the coldest on record. I know, I was there. It started to snow in Dec 62 and continued and didn't thaw until March 63, ave temp during that period - below 0C (and we lived in a house without central heating!) I remember snow piled up at the side of the road for the whole of the winter term. The lake at St Albans where we lived froze over and you could walk on it!
Happy days...I think.
Hi Jayne. I'm up to Chapter 10 too - just need to find that elusive motivation to get it finished. Only 20,000 to go!
Best of luck with yours - I'm off to look behind the sofa for that motivation.
b
p.s. Is it bad that whenever anyone mentions the December 1962 smog I automatically think of Sylvia Plath who died a few months later? That woman is irrevocably in my head like a manic depressive albatross, years after I left university. I should have done a dissertation on J K Rowling instead.
I use a great website that tells you what the weather was no matter what year/month, and it does say about the 'Great Freeze'. You could walk on the lake at St Albans?! Blimey! I was there on Saturday (the town that is, not the lake) - Christmas is definitely a-coming, is all I can say.
And Ben, nice to think you are on chapter ten as well. Ah, that elusive motivation. If you find it and have any going spare, please lob some my way! I shall do likewise... As for Sylvia Plath, that's not bad, that's impressive... I was the same with Virginia Woolf, if it’s any comfort. Years after the study finished, Mrs Dalloway still gives me the shivers.
As it should! It's only the best book ever written.
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