Done!

Done done donnity-done!

Aaargh!

I feel completely swamped. Am coming up for air quickly to write this and possibly put on another pot of coffee. Yes, that sounds like a good idea.

I am working at the dining room table. This is what it looks like at the moment:

Coincidentally, that is also what the inside of my head currently looks like.

I have completed the rewrites, and I'm on my final (final!) read-through. I'm on page 31 of 227. And it has taken me almost 1 3/4 hours to get this far. I need to pick up the pace.

This post is brought to you by the letter 'C'

C for Confused, that is. I am having a Confused day. It has been rather a Confused year, actually.

You see, I put Zimbabwe out of my mind for a long time. When we arrived in New Zealand, I hit the ground running and tried to put as much distance between myself and what happened there as I could. This year, however, I finally wrote the book that I had always been planning to write, and it opened up a lot of things that I hadn't thought about for almost five years (wow, has it really been that long?). I want to get this story out so much that, when I think about it, I feel a bit sick. Scared that I won't handle it right, or let people down - the people who lived through the same things that I did. I want to tell their story right. I hope I have. I hope I can get it published, sooner rather than later. Anyway, that is why I am feeling Confused with a capital C at the moment. I feel like I have been given a task to perform, and I hope I don't stuff it up. We'll see.

Embryo

Hello tadpole
My how you’ve grown; you learned to swim
The egg-smooth milky hammock of water
Rocking like a lullaby
Your pre-pubescent soul.

How brave
To flick your tailed, slick
Body out into the acid world, too bright
It dries and crusts you, now
You’re too hard to save.

Here’s a thought;
Would you rather stay dim, cool
Mole-nosed and velvety in the dark
Or nudge out towards the light anyway?
Just wondering.

Whee!

This is where Mink sits while I'm working. Behind me on the chair. And when I get up to make coffee, he spreads out over the whole chair and refuses to move.

I am done for the day! I actually managed to finish ALL the rewrites. This means that tomorrow I can read through the second draft with my advisor's and my notes next to me, and tick off all the changes. I may even be able to send the manuscript off to my advisor tomorrow instead of on Friday, as planned. Once we've worked out the kinks in the second draft, I may be at a point where I can start sending the manuscript to agents and publishers. Exciting!

Mwa ha ha

I have just decided to kill off a character who previously survived the book. Weird to have the power of life and death, even over someone fictional.

Monday morning ...

I'm hoping to get a really good day's work done. I have to, if I'm to finish the second draft and send it off on Friday.

I'm being a hermit this week, to some extent - I'm not good at multi-tasking. I get overwhelmed very quickly if I have a big long list of things to do. I wish I wasn't like that, but I am. If I'm going to write, I need hours of uninterrupted time. I know this is a luxury, but luckily it's one I have at the moment.

Here's the plan for the week:

Monday - this may be a little crazy, but I'm aiming to finish all the editing today. There are 64 pages left to do, and it will mean working very hard, but ... I think it's doable. We'll see. Dream big, and all that. I'm not going to do any rewrites today, but I'm going to flag the places where I see rewrites or additions are necessary. Which brings me neatly on to tomorrow's work ...
Tuesday - rewrites and additions.
Wednesday - rewrites and additions.
Thursday - check the second draft against my and my advisor's notes on the original manuscript, to make sure I've addressed everything.
Friday - final read-through, and send!

Okay, back to work. Oh, and the photo shoot yesterday was so much fun! I'll post some of the shots later.

Woo-hoo!

I am down to 110,000 words!

Revision stats

Phew! A hard day, work-wise. I am very affected by the weather - took me a while to realise that, as in Zimbabwe we didn't really have weather. Not like we have here - four seasons in one day. Once we moved to New Zealand, I noticed that my mood (never the most stable at the best of times), rose and fell with the temperature and the cloud-cover. Now that I am aware of my seasonal mood-swings, I can work around them, and sometimes shrug them off. Today was like that - I felt a bit crap because it was wet and gloomy and icky outside, but I tried to put that aside and get my work done anyway. Mostly succeeded.

Here's where I stand at the moment:
Word count: 111,000. And that's with some rewrites and additions. Yay! It shouldn't be too hard to get it below 110,000 by the end.
Pages revised and edited: 154 of 232 (A4, single-spaced pages, that is). Which leads me neatly onto ...
... Chapters revised: Twenty-one. There are thirty-three in total. Which puts me seven-elevenths of the way through. That's nice and confusing.

I solved a couple of plot problems today as well - I haven't finished the necessary rewrites, but I've made a start and I know what I need to do. Half the battle. I still have a lot of work to do if I'm going to finish by next Friday. Luckily, I work best to a pressing deadline. The coffee machine and I are just going to have to continue on our symbiotic path.

For now, I'm going to have some away-from-screen time.

Here comes the sun (I wish)

I know you're probably heartily sick of hearing me complain about the dreadful weather and saying how I want to go on holiday, but ... the weather is really dreadful and I want to go on holiday! It's particularly grim today - cold winds, lashing rain, sky grey-blue like a bruise. Every night this week, before I fall asleep, I have been mentally packing a suitcase for a holiday somewhere warm. I may be getting slightly obsessive.

I do love packing, though - it satisfies both my love of clothes and my love of organising. There's something about choosing a distilled, concentrated version of yourself that is just so much fun - you can leave all the dross behind and present your most essential self to the world. Perhaps I'm overthinking it.

Anyway, these two posts on packing have satisfied my cravings for this morning: Wendy from Hand It Over shows us what she's taking to Mexico, and the_kitten from Picked Pics gives us packing tips inspired by her upcoming trip to Viet Nam.

New Fortnight's Resolutions

It's the start of a new week, and I am filled with determination and good intentions (and coffee). I feel the need for some discipline (that word brings back memories of the Discipline Mistress - seriously, that was her title - at the Convent high school I attended for a couple of years in Zim. She looked like a man, with a big, square jaw like a superhero. Anyway). Since I am a creature that loves setting goals and having timeframes for things, I have decided that I am going to do the following in the next two weeks:

1) Finish revising the book
2) Follow Daphne from dlittlegarden's excellent example, and practise Style Without Consumption (SWoC). I buy a lot of clothes, and I buy them frequently. For the next two weeks, I am not going to buy any luxuries. I know two weeks doesn't seem that long, but I think I'm going to find it quite difficult. If I'm still going strong by August, I might try and extend it further.
3) Eat healthily and exercise every day. Winter and recent laziness has made me a bit more ... erm ... 'cuddly' than usual, and I could do with a bit of toning up.

So, off I go.

Where I've been all day

No blogging today;
Lazy a.m. and p.m.
Back tomorrow, though!

Be brave

Inspired by Leah's post on the always-inspiring Creative Every Day, I've decided to start doing Jessie's Be Brave Project. It is based on the famous quote by Eleanor Roosevelt - "Do one thing every day that scares you." Just one thing.

The rules are:

1) (most important:) MAKE YOUR OWN RULES.
2) Do this for yourself.
3) Make a commitment for the length of time that best suites YOUR needs - one day, one month, one year, one moment...it's all up to you, and you alone. ;)
4) The "brave" or "scary" things that you choose to do can be as big or little as you want them to be. Sometimes it's the little things that can be the most scary!
5) (not to quote Nike, but...) Just do it.
6) Be on your own schedule. You don't need to make a commitment until YOU are ready.
7) This is your unique journey - make it whatever you want it to be.

I tend to get tied up in knots about 'doing more', and feel guilty for not living up to what I think I 'should' be doing. This can be paralysing. If you focus on all the things you aren't doing, you forget to celebrate the things you do. Everyone has at least one challenge, big or small every day - I think this project is a way of acknowledging that challenge, and then acknowledging your victory over it.

I have struggled with depression and panic attacks for a long time. I don't really talk about it that often, because I do try and focus on the positive, but lately I have felt myself slipping into that paralysed, anxious state again where everything feels so overwhelming that I just want to stay indoors and hibernate. It's especially easy to do when the weather is cold and uninviting outside, and I have a job that requires me to spend a lot of time working on my own. Doing one thing every day that scares me is a way to break out of that feeling of helplessness and fear.

Anyway, I am going to take up this challenge for one month, and see how it goes! Today's One Thing is, of course, running the author's talk at university. Wish me luck. And if anyone would like to join me in this project, I'd love your company!

Sigh

I want to go on holiday! These pictures are from our trip to Daydream Island last year. I have hugely itchy feet at the moment, in the metaphorical travelling sense rather than the literal sense (thank goodness). I need heat! Light! I want to be somewhere new.

Homesickness

"Ich habe heimweh"
Is the only German phrase
From years of classes

That stayed in my head.
It is not hard to see why:
ich habe heimweh.

Strange, disorganised post

Strange, disorganised morning. LOML has a cold, and so slept in, which meant I slept in too as he usually wakes me up. This has thrown my careful routine somewhat out of kilter. Am slightly worried because LOML getting a cold usually means I get a cold, by sheer virtue of proximity, and I would rather not get sick. To this end, I am drinking orange juice and chewing Vitamin C tablets.

On the brighter side, I have passed the 112,000 words mark on my book (heading downwards). I would love to cut it down to under 110,000.

Great progress!

Whee! I have just radically restructured three central chapters of the book, and it has made such a huge difference for the better. The initial re-jigging of scenes opened up the way for a new scene that I think is really necessary for the development of one particular character. I'm working on that scene now.

Amazing. It's like moving the furniture around in a room - suddenly you have so much more space and light and interest.

Morning shift

I rolled out of bed early this morning to set up and look after our club table at university and try to recruit some new members (it took four cups of coffee. To get up, that is, not to recruit new members).

You can tell, can't you? It is EARLY. I got better as the caffeine started to kick in, but I felt very bleary-eyed for the first hour.

Slaving over a hot wossname

Tonight is Romantic Dinner Night with my husband (although I have an ulterior motive - if these recipes work tonight, I'll make them next time it's our turn to entertain the in-laws). I am making pork chops in a mustard sauce, carrots in orange juice and baked new potatoes, with bread-and-butter pudding for dessert. Assuming everything works. Otherwise it's fish and chips night and we'll pretend this never happened.



Mink apparently thinks he's entitled to his own personalised place setting. Tough luck, mate!

Sensitivity

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this:

A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.

To him... a touch is a blow,
a sound is a noise,
a misfortune is a tragedy,
a joy is an ecstasy,
a friend is a lover,
a lover is a god,
and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating."

- Pearl S. Buck

On the beach

It was ridiculously warm and sunny today - someone is answering my prayers! We spent the day at the beach to make the most of it. I love living in this city - we are right on the coast, and it is only an hour's drive to snow-covered mountains. The best of both worlds.








My husband took these pictures, which is why they're so good! The top I'm wearing is one I made years ago. It languished in a suitcase for a long time, and I only recently rediscovered it.

...

I live my life under the tyranny of time. I draw up schedules for myself and try to stick to them. I feel guilty when I don't. I am always aware of time going past, and how I am using it. Am I being productive? Am I making the best use of it? Am I wasting it?

The days I remember as being the happiest are the days when I completely lost track of time. I remember sailing on a lake in Zimbabwe. The day seemed to go on forever. I remember visiting a friend's house and playing a board game with her grandchildren. I remember lying on my living room floor in the sun, watching the shadows change outside. These days were free from endless clock-watching and scheduling.

I think if I could let go of my time a little, I would be happier.

It is sunny and warm today!

Good Hair Day

waking up shampoos the mind
(because we’re worth it)
sweet lemon-scented day - unwind
fingers from tangled hair, let
silky sun condition and embalm
everything and everyone in creamy
sunspun light to gloss and calm
and lend emulsive softness - dreamy.

Haiku

Sun, you tease! I thought
I could wear short sleeves today
But no. Time to change.

Home-work

I am in full-on organisation mode! After moping about for a while this afternoon thinking about the progress I'm making on the book, I decided that I need to set myself a stricter schedule, as I did when I was working on the first draft. So here's what I have worked out - two chapters a day. Finish by 3 August. Do a final read-through in the first week of August, making sure all the changes are ticked off. Send to my advisor on 10 August.

Self-motivation is hard. I'm getting better at it, but it's still hard.

Andrea's Tips on Working From Home, In No Particular Order, Which Aren't All That Revolutionary, But Are Fun to List:

1) Get dressed as if you were going to an actual workplace (well, pretty much - it can be a zany, creative imaginary workplace rather than a corporate, suity one. But dress so that if you were suddenly called out to a meeting, you could go with only minor adjustments). Psychologically, this gets you in work-mode.
2) Drink lots of coffee.
3) Set a daily timetable, with breaks scheduled in. I don't work an eight-hour day, because I find I get too drained creatively - instead, I work from 10am to 6pm, with an hour for lunch and two half-hour breaks. So I end up working a six-hour day.
4) Install a cat. They produce useful warmth and a pleasant working environment.
5) Get a housework schedule established and stick to it. It's so easy to get distracted from working by the sudden, urgent need to pair all your socks or clean the back of the toilet cistern with an old toothbrush or alphabetise the spices. This is known as procrastination, and is a Bad Thing.
6) Make sure family and friends know that, although you are working from home, you are still working and are not eternally available to run errands, meet them for coffee at the drop of a hat or have long phone conversations. Of course, sometimes you will want to do things. But you need to protect your time, or else it will become fair game and you will end up driving your mother's dog to the groomers' every week (speaking from personal experience).
7) Get out of the house regularly! Go for a walk. Get some fresh air. Otherwise you will go stir-crazy.
8) Stop working in the evenings and on weekends, just as you would in a more conventional workplace. It's easy to over-work when your 'office' is only one second's walk from your bedroom. And over-working plays havoc with your health, peace of mind and relationships. It also means you'll burn out at some point. I used to pull late-nighters when I was in the first throes of writing this book, but I soon figured out that it made me tired, cranky and creatively useless after a few days.
9) Eat properly and resist the urge to snack endlessly as a distraction or because the fridge is just so ... damn ... close.
10) Reward yourself when you reach your own milestones! It's fun, and gives you a sense of achievement and progress. And no one else will. (Although they should).

Can I get a whoop-whoop?

Woo-hoo - I have successfully cut 10,000 words from the book! This may not sound like a good thing, but in general books (particularly first books) are 80,000 - 110,000 words in length, and publishers tend to back away slowly if you overstep that. Of course, I still have a bunch of rewrites to do, so this is in no way a final count, but I like to have my small triumphs.

Perhaps I will celebrate with coffee.

Typecast? (Sorry, couldn't resist!)

You can tell a lot about someone from their handwriting. This article looks at the handwriting of typographers - people who create fonts for a living. It's interesting - there's a lot of variation.

My handwriting has always been pretty shocking - my brain moves faster than my hand (which is probably a good thing), so even though it may start off neat and tidy, it soon deteriorates. Anyway, here's my husband's handwriting, and mine.


(LOML is what I call him here, by the way - it stands for Love of My Life, which is a little cheesy, but has been his handle in the blogosphere for a few years now. If it ain't broke, why change it?).

Stir-crazy

I keep having dreams about packing for a holiday (I also keep having dreams about living in a post-apocalyptic world where we have returned to riding on horseback and fighting with swords, but that's another story). I dream for hours about folding summery clothes and packing them away, then driving to an airport filled with anticipation (I'm filled with anticipation, not the airport). It's not too hard to interpret this. I am sick sick sick of winter and longing for heat and light again. Every year I think I have adjusted from Zimbabwean weather to New Zealand weather, but this is in summer when everything seems bright and optimistic. When winter rolls round, I realise that no, I have not adjusted. So I am looking at photos from last year's holidays to cheer myself up.



These are of Cathedral Cove, taken on our honeymoon. You may recognise it as the spot where the four Pevensie children land when they are called to Narnia in Prince Caspian. Kind of ruined the movie-magic for me because I know the place so well - it's hard to think of it as Cair Paravel!

A still, small voice?

Terry Pratchett is, without a doubt, my favourite author, and has been since I discovered a battered copy of Witches Abroad in a classroom bookcase (I nicked, it, I'm sorry to say. Still have it). I was devastated to hear of his Alzheimer's disease. And I was incredibly moved by this article, in which he speaks about his thoughts on God (and gods).

Haiku

Good morning sunshine
The earth says where the hell are
You? Come back! Come back!

Celebratory story (I would pop champagne, but I don't have any)

Hooray! I have successfully ticked off one of the eleven rewrites that I need to do! And I have completed a basic edit of about one fifth of the book. So progress is being made, if slowly. I also wrote a few hundred words of my young adult novel, so it has been a fairly productive day.

To celebrate, here is an excerpt from a short story I'm working on in-between other things. Just by the way, every poem and story I upload is mine unless I say otherwise, and copyrighted accordingly, yada yada.

November 1994; Richard walks into his new school library for the first time. It smells of dust and the dead husks of spiders twirling in old webs.
He wants:
a special book, one he has not read before. Maybe one with a fold-out map; gold-edged pages; mysterious scribblings in the margin from long-dead student hands.

He finds:
endless coloured spines and floppy paperbacks, their colours garishly exhausted, like old ladies who have slept in their makeup.

He is disappointed. His leather shoes squeak round corners, his hand judders along the rows of spines like a stick rattled along railings. The rest of his class is in the ‘easier’ section. Sweet Valley High, books-of-the-movies. The Mills & Boons that his friends will crowd around, hoping for sex scenes. Paul will read them out in a whisper, Andrew will giggle like a girl and hop on one foot, the others will listen and say ‘eeew’ but feel a sharp, aching nausea in their bellies at the thought of Doing That to a Girl. He thrusts, she moans, five erections quiver towards the battered cardboard cover like magnets towards the North Pole.

Richard, feeling intellectually superior, squeaks to the end of the section and meets a glass cabinet. It looks official and imposing, as if it should hold trophies in a turn-of-the-century gentleman’s club. There is a lock to one side. Inside; a row of brown leather books, their titles tooled in threadbare gold. They are as touchable and dignified as sacred cats, and Richard wants them. He feels a nervous urge to pee, as he does when playing hide and seek, because there is something secret and exciting about these books. A Passage to India, The Plumed Serpent, The Scarlet Letter, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ornate words that suggest rich, dark, heavily perfumed stories. Richard, uncertain whether the cabinet is locked, lays his hand flat on the glass front and draws it back. It slides easily, with a heavy, rumbling sound that makes him jump. He feels like a jewel thief, and because that is more interesting than being Richard, instantly he is a jewel thief, taking out his glass cutters, drawing a perfect circle and reaching in with a gloved hand … Then, just as suddenly, he is Richard again, because now he has the book and there is no need to pretend.
Richard, calls someone, and someone else’s shoes squeak quickly down the rows of books. It’s Paul. Whatya got there? Lemme see, givit.
Paul flicks through the pages and spurts laughter like sneezes. He reads; And she was mad with desire of him. She could not see him without touching him. In the factory, as he talked about spiral hose (whazzat?), she ran her hand secretly along his side.
You’re disgusting, Richie, Paul laughs.
Givit here. Richard snatches it back. It’s literature, D.H Lawrence, it’s not like your stupid books.
Oooh, literature. Come on, it’s lunch and we’re playing touch, says Paul, and squeaks rapidly away. Richard follows.

Richard stands in line, waiting to check his book out. It is heavy in his hand, like the Bible, but instead of little numbers of verses there is just beautiful black text, freckled and scattered with commas, speech marks, exclamation marks, queries. He likes the look of the fat paragraphs and the sudden explosions of direct speech that break up the page. He likes the thin, slightly greasy pages.
Richard!
He walks forward. The librarian here is very librarianish, with grey hair and glasses.
What have you got there? She turns it over in her hand. Richard doesn’t like seeing it upside down, it looks undignified and helpless, like a bug on its back.
You’re not allowed to take these out. Where did you find it?
Richard swallows. Paul is snickering behind him. Richard got out a dirty book and they won’t let him have it!
I found it at the end of one of the rows. It was on the floor.
Someone took it out of the cabinet, she says. She frowns, disapproving. Those are very rare copies. You’re not allowed to take them out.
Then what’s the point? Richard wonders. It’s a library. He feels small, hot and pink, a marshmallow of embarrassment, as he races out to play touch.

Quote

"I think lots of people tell me they want to write novels, but they don’t actually have the stubbornness, you know bloody-mindedness to actually make it happen. Sometimes it’s very difficult to be creative. I have days, weeks of really, really struggling and just sort of sitting in front of a computer, drinking far too much coffee, buying things on eBay, but it comes back in the end and if you keep pushing it I think it will come. And the more you practise the easier it gets. So I think there’s an idea about the creative process that it’s somehow freeform, whereas I think you only get that freedom by being very disciplined. So I work very hard. I have rules for myself - I make sure I’m at my desk at nine, I work through to lunch, I do my eight-hour day like I would if I was in an office. The truth is there’s no right or wrong way to do it, so you need to practice until you’ve found a voice or sound with which you’re totally confident."

- Patrick Neate

Mysteries

Mystery #1

I keep finding this weird listing on Amazon for a second-hand copy of my book in hardcover (which doesn't exist - it was only ever produced in paperback), selling for NZ$117. Whoever is selling it must be crazy. I know copies of the book sell for several million dollars in Zimbabwean currency (I used to keep track just so I could say to people, "Hey, my books sell for $7 million a copy!" and see their expression before I confessed it was in one of the world's weakest currencies), but this is in New Zealand dollars. It is very odd. Also, I used a lot of parentheses in this paragraph, which probably made it confusing to read. Sorry.

Mystery #2

A snail appeared in our fish tank yesterday. We didn't put it there. The only explanation I could think of is that there was a snail egg on the oxygen weed when we bought it, which subsequently hatched. I named the snail Stanley.

Mystery #3

The snail disappeared after a couple of hours, and hasn't materialised again. Has he been eaten? Is he hiding somewhere? Will he come back? Life's tapestry is rich indeed.

(I should never have named him).

Winter

Cold has white knuckles
It raps on the doors
Peers in the windows
Of young women
Getting undressed.

In the bleak midwinter ...

It has been snowing today - not in the exciting, White-Christmas way, but in the sleety, slushy, sludgy, onomatopoeic way that results in wet feet and a general sense of lassitude. Luckily I have nothing more to do today, and can snuggle up on the couch with soup and chocolate and watch a DVD with my husband.

I just finished the book Floor Sample by Julia Cameron (author of The Artist's Way, among other things, which was hugely helpful to me). It is not so much an autobiography as a memoir of her creative journey. I started reading it in the bookstore yesterday afternoon, then realised I had been standing in the same spot for almost an hour and should probably buy it so that I could continue reading in more comfortable circumstances. I see a lot of myself in her book, which is comforting. Reading the book gave me a few ideas about how to progress with the book, and with my creative life in general ... when I figure out how to word them in plain English, I'll let you know.

One thing I've decided, anyway, is that working on the revisions from home isn't, erm, working. It's too cold at the moment to work upstairs in the study, so I've been working at the dining room table. Which means I'm very close to the kitchen, which contains the fridge and the coffee machine and all kinds of lovely distractions. So I think on Monday I'm going to start working at the cafe again.

Potential

I was cut out to be someone special
But they didn’t piece me together
I was meant to be a day at the beach
But was cancelled because of the weather.

Dilemma

I am in groceries no-man's-land this morning. We're going to do our shopping tomorrow, and usually this would mean we were down to our last slice of bread and drop of milk, but Friday has rolled round and we have ... nothing. Absolutely nothing breakfast-y, anyway.

Of course, this probably means I should go and buy some bread and milk, and make some toast and coffee at home. But, frankly, that's not as much fun as going out for breakfast. So that's what I'm going to do.

Make it work

"The secret to keeping your style story hop, hop, hopping along is to be forever expanding your cultural horizons. Since style is ineluctably related to the culture in which you live, the more you see, read, sniff, hear, or eat, the richer your engagement with the world around you becomes." - Tim Gunn

I completely agree with this statement, and it sums up my feelings about style perfectly. Also, Tim taught me a new word - 'ineluctably', a synonym of 'inevitably.' Thanks, Tim!

I found this quote through the lovely Flair to Remember.

Idea

An idea I had today
Is sieving through my mind
Like too-thick soup
Through a lazy stomach

When usually,
like vodka,
it would go straight to my head.

Ick

Phew, what a day! I have done absolutely nothing productive except throw up and do some valuable research on hangover cures.

First was the cheesy pasta for breakfast (because of the morning-after grease cravings). That seemed to work for a while. And then, suddenly, it didn't. So I drank lots of water, which was fine until I got hungry again and decided to attempt a baked potato. This didn't stay down long, either. By now I was desperate and looking up cures on the Internet. Some of them were so disgusting that I wondered if they were meant to make you feel so sick from disgust that you would forget about feeling sick from the hangover, but I dismissed this idea as ludicrous.

The solution, finally, was a mint digestive tablet, two Vitamin C capsules, two very greasy fried eggs and two pieces of toast covered in Vegemite. I plan to patent this and sell it. I will make millions. Perhaps I could liquefy the whole lot in a blender to make consumption more efficient?

No.

Oh dear

It is a bit of a gloomy morning. Mink has gone to the vet for an operation on his abscess and to have his teeth cleaned. I have a hideous hangover after our dinner last night, which is entirely my own fault. I drank far too much red wine and probably embarrassed myself hugely. I turn into a strange Bertie-Wooster-type character when I'm with people I don't know very well and I've had too much to drink. "Hello dear chap, let me freshen your beverage, what what, oh dear, I appear to have dropped my biscotti on the floor, whoops-a-daisy."