part deux

Right. I got back from Saundersfoot at about 3:30. The flat has been cleaned from top to bottom. You can see your face in just about every surface that's even remotely reflective. In time honoured tradition my mother has ignored my pleas to just leave the flat alone and let me do it, and instead spent the best part of a day uncluttering my life. I'm extremely grateful. For the first time in months it looks like the place I envisaged when I bought it. Neat, uncluttered, spartan, for want of a better word. It's a home with angles. My flat has geometry again! How long I'll manage to keep it like this is another matter entirely, but I am going to try.

The holiday went really well. I'm deeply impressed with my current asthma medication. Previously I'd have been terrified at the thought of running around on a beach because it usually means I've got to make sure I've got a whole load of ventolin handy. This time I didn't even touch the stuff. I played every daft beach game, threw myself bodily into the sea, and even dashed back up the cliff path to the cabin like a demented mountain goat, with nary a wheeze. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Evenings were fairly quiet and tended to be spent in one living room or other playing board games or just watching mindless telly. I managed to read 2 entire books in the last 2 days while lying prone and content on a beach. It was just cool.

Unfortunately, I did get through a depressing amount of money. I'm currently over 200 quid into my overdraft, and I only got paid a week before we left. Something needs to be done. A serious career rethink is on the cards. I'm increasingly tempted to ignore the voice in my head that keeps telling me "don't be bloody silly" and just have a crack at freelance writing; anything and everything that people will pay for. rainbowmagicuk has received a copy of my kids story manuscript and was very nice about it (being of the handy-with-pencils-and-paint persuasion, a published illustrator and an all-round good egg). It seems to be gathering an awful lot of impetus for something I started on the spur of the moment. I'm beginning to get the feeling that if I don't really try to do something with it, I'll regret it.

Anyway, that's more than enough in the way of an update for the time being. I'm off to bed, with a view to finding out how Guards! Guards! ends.

Hmmm...

Having been in need of a pair of decent sunglasses for ages, I recently bought a pair of pince-nez ones (the kind that sort of clamp on to your nose and don't have arms) because I thought they looked pretty cool. I now realise why Laurence Fishburne's expression never changes in the Matrix movies. He's not trying to look cool and enigmatic, he's just trying to make sure his shades don't fall off!

"If you take the red pill... oh bugger! Where've they gone now? Hang on a sec, Keanu, specs emergency, mate. Anyone got any blu-tak? No? Chewing gum?"

Sundays go entirely too quickly

I spent today doing large chunks of bugger all. I went to see my Grandma, as is my custom on a Sunday, followed by a trip to my Mum's. I found a bunch of old books I used to have as a kid which, if anything, have brought me to the conclusion that The Dream Peddler is actually eminently publishable. I have several books with the same rhyme scheme and pretty much the same length - some are even longer! Reading through them betrays a certain clunkiness that later versions of The Dream Peddler don't have (at least to my ear). I'm rather encouraged. While I was there I also happened upon a rather world-weary stuffed womble (Orinoco, naturally), I shall clean him up and take a photo for my userpic.

Our pop3 server at work appears to be seriously goosed. I can connect to it, and I can authenticate myself, but I can't seem to get any messages. It may well be the flood of emails I was getting from a friend, who I think must have some kind of virus; either that or she was so desperate for me to read this one message that she sent it over 20 times. It's an inconvenience I could do without. If anyone's sent me an email today, it very likely hasn't got to me. My own machine is far more reliable and I can be reached at ajs at orinoco dot homelinux dot org without having to go through work's excuse for a mailserver.