Okay, who ate my scarf?

Do you ever have a day when you cannot even control your own clothes, let alone be expected to manage Life with all its whimsy? I am having such a day. It started when I woke from being semi-smothered by my pillow. You know the day bodes badly when your own bedding is conspiring to kill you.

My cardigan on the tube turned into a giant flopping beast, determined to make friends with my tube-dwelling neighbours. Somewhere under Islington my ear-phone wire (what is that called? I somehow suspect not 'ear-phone wire') did something funky with the buttons and the whole shaboodle tied me in a knot while I was trying to get off at Kings Cross. Getting off the tube in the rush hour requires nerves of steel at the best of times; let alone when I have somehow constructed a reef knot from my clothes.

My gloves fell out of my bag as I dug deep for my travel-card; my socks keep bunching down into my trainers, and my top has decided to saucily wink a small crescent of tummy just when I least expect it. Look, clothes, I have work to do today, and I cannot keep checking if you are in the same place as you were this morning. Don’t do this to me! I am supposed to be looking corporate and business-like, despite the fact a conker* dropped out of my bag as I walked in the office. Whoops.

Sometimes I wish I was a monk. They seem to be so sorted in the fashion sense of things. Just a big brown sack – what can go wrong? Although you know I’d have problems roping it in the middle. It is my dream in life to own a slanket.** Seen them yet? A giant blanket with a head hole and sleeves. If I Were an Author (sung to the tune of ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ from Fiddler on the Roof), then magazines would picture me in my gorgeous home, notebook in hand, draped in my slanket. I would be at the forefront of slovenly female author fashion. Until those heady days, however, I am stuck with the evil cardigan and the top of doom.

*A conker is a horse-chestnut. They fall from the sky! Well, trees. Children of Old (sorry, mum) used to drill a hole through them, string them up, and bash them together to see who had the strongest conker. Cheats used to bake them in the oven first so they were like little round bricks.

**This is a slanket. My continuing laughter doesn't halt my desire, strangely.

My Day

6.35am: Alarm goes off. Me and Siamese cat blink at it blearily from the warm bed. We both give each other a look as if to say ‘nahh’ and snuggle back down, me under the duvet, him cosy above.
7am: Really have to get up. Light goes on. Movement commences.
7.20am: Dressed and showered, spooning out tuna for pampered puss.
7.30am: Porridge with chocolate buttons in front of BBC One. Cannot remember a thing of what they were talking about.
7.40am: Fly about house looking for coat, scarf, pen, mobile. Cat lies in wait at top of stairs. I avoid his trap and tickle his head instead.
7.50am: At train station, buying pricey monthly travel-card. Train draws in just as I finish – hoorah!
8.53am: Pop up in another part of London.
9am: Start work. Make coffee.
10am: Start eyeing up little box of blueberries on desk
10.05am: Mindlessly scoffing blueberries
10.10am: Decide to stop scoffing as have to eek out fruit until lardy pizza lunch at 2pm. Will only have next blueberry after eleven.
10.26am: Ponder tea instead.
10.33am: These blueberries just aren’t going to make it.
10.40am: There are only seven left now, and two are squidgy.
10.50am: The only sounds in the office are the air-conditioning and spoons scraping cereal bowls.
10.52am: Glug water instead.
11.16am: Ooo made it! Blueberries now devoured. Time to eye up my banana… Nope. Won’t.
11.47am: Worrying thought in middle of work stuff. Do I know what genre my book is? Is it just contemporary fiction? Okay let’s see. It’s contemporary (in that some of it is in the recent here and now). It’s historical (as some of it dates back to 1939 and other early decades). It’s a bit fantastical (as it involves an angel and gives Death a a bit of a bashing). And if I put contemporary, historical, fantastical fiction on my query letter I will be laughed into the dustbin. Oh dear…
12.10pm: Thoughts drift to my banana. Must leave it alone until 1pm, not worry it. I must not be a banana botherer.
12.10 and 30 seconds: Office colleagues wonder why that quiet girl in the corner has just laughed uproariously to herself.
12.27pm. Will die if don’t eat that banana. Resist, resist!
12.30pm: Startling thought in middle of work stuff. Is chapter fourteen actually crap?
12.50pm: The banana is down. Repeat, the banana is down…
1.36pm: Emerge from work-stuff to glug water. Disappear again.
2.00pm: Yeay – lunch! Scurry out with lovely colleague H.
3.02pm: Back at desk. Think I have a lemonade rush. Or a cheese/bread/pizza rush. Feel surprisingly light-headed!
3.20pm: Ooo handed an urgent work mission!
4.11pm: Busy, busy…
4.20pm: Waiting for others now. Time for a coffee! Notice all the exclamation marks since lunch. Am hyper on cheese.
4.37pm: Damn. Mission sadly thwarted until Monday.
4.57pm: Feel a bit sick from pizza overload.
5.08pm: Eight minutes past home-time…
5.13pm: Waiting for tube
5.18pm: On tube, redrafting chapters 7 – 9 from the print outs I remembered to take with me this morning.
6.08pm: On train, still redrafting.
6.25pm: Home! Elderly Siamese cat makes precarious way downstairs to greet/yowl at me. We play belly rub for a while. Heating goes on.
6.40pm: Pampered puss is fed evening meal of ham and biscuits. He eats better than I do.
7.00pm: Am lured into The One Show by Ricky Gervais, and the promise of a model village. Am somewhat fascinated by model villages. And Ricky Gervais always just tells things how they are – comedy gold for topical shows.
7.30pm: Have a small glass of vodka and diet coke to celebrate end of week.
7.45pm: Cat on lap, home computer on. Will do a round robin email check, and then crack open chapter fourteen. I am going to post this now, but will continue to add to it as the evening goes on.
7.56pm: Still formatting this post! And I have decided that I really must listen to the Spencer Davis Group Gimme Some Loving before anything else happens. I liked it well before it was used in that advert with Martine McCutcheon preaching about tummy yoghurt.
8.20pm: Open Word document. Look at novel. Novel looks back at me. Right, I say to it, cracking my knuckles.
8.30pm: Must stop obsessively checking for comments on blog post. Must stop replaying ‘Gimme Some Loving’
8.33pm: Darn clicked again. Stop!
8.37pm: Just looked up that model village. It has a lovely website: http://www.bekonscot.co.uk/
8.40pm: One more youtube song and then I’m done.
8.50pm: With chapter 14 now (and another small glass of vodka and diet coke, after all it is Friday). Put The Queen's Coronation on youtube to give me some relevant background noise. How amazing is it we can use the Internet like this for research? Bloody fantastic. Hic.
9.00pm: I think I used to do things on Friday nights. Like go out and socialise and stuff. Am I old, or am I hermit, as The Killers might sing.
9.10pm: Texted good friend S.
9.12pm: If a left ear burns does it mean someone is talking bad about you? Oh hold on, the right is a bit warm as well. Okay – both ears are burning. So that cancels everything out presumably and no one is even vaguely thinking of me. Okay… nice…
9.20pm: Back to it. And I wonder why I don’t get things done.
9.27pm: Yeay! MusicObsessive, of the fab music blog, has left a comment. I am definitely flapper (see comments below).
9.52pm: Decide to have late supper of ryvita, mayo and ham, along with cup of tea. Mmm.
10.00pm: Loving the fact I have 27 followers. What if they all decided to comment at once? I would be swamped with bloggy goodness.
10.01pm: Found a dark chocolate Mars bar in the cupboard. Pounced and devoured it at once. Feel infinitely happier.
10.30pm: Getting tired now. Cat is back snoozing on my lap.
10.44pm: Do I write better when tired I wonder? As chapter 14 is going quite well.
11.00pm: Managed 785 words of redrafting. At least that is something. And if I go to bed now I can get up early and start again, although hopefully not in a scary Groundhog Day scenario. Goodnight!