Sorry I went quiet there again. I’m terrible at the moment for that. Apologies.
I was busy, and things, and stuff, and meh, and y’know, and then I had to go to France for a couple of days for work. A press trip - what’s called a ‘familiarisation tour’ of the Champagne region and an introduction to various kinds of fizzy wine and things.

Yeah, yeah, I know: it sucks to be me, etc.

Press trips are weird, though, and I’ll tell you about that another time, because they really are. They sound a LOT more fun on paper than they are in practice - with every second scheduled from very early morning to very late at night, you’re whisked around things at a rate of knots, trying to suck in as much information as you can while all the time having to make small-talk and … I’ll write more about them another time. They’re WEIRD.

Anyway, it was all very interesting, and I now know a fuck sight more about champagne than I thought I ever would.

However, I was also writing down some thoughts that are never going to make it into an official article about the subject. So below you can find them.

I don’t speak French.

I don’t speak French, which is something I forget reasonably often. I’ve told you this before, I think. I do, however, understand a fair bit. Or at least a bit.

A very little bit. I listen to conversations, and I can follow them - at least as long as I know what the conversation was about in the first place. But I can’t actually speak. Because I’m too scared of getting it wrong, generally.

If I know the topic of the conversation, then I can pick out enough to carry me through the rest - though with a lot based on conjecture that I wouldn’t actually use for work without checking the facts nine times. But if I know what we’re talking about, I can figure it out. Kind of.

However, I think my basic levels of understanding were pushed to the limit by the concept of a 90 minute walking lecture on the technicalities of wine making. Insomuch as all my notes from that visit read something like(based on an actual sample copied from my notebook):

“4000 (400?) kilos grapes put into the press, 2500 (or 25,000)(seems unlikely) litres of liquid comes out and goes into the somethingfrench, and then french french french. Last bit funnyfrench, as several other journalists laughed. Three days in vat, then moved to somethingfrench. Ah. Cold smelly fermentation room, apparently. Then some more stuff in french.”

Which are really helpful when it comes to writing up, as you can imagine.

I never quite managed to get the hang of one of the grape varieties (champagne’s made out of three grapes, generally, one white grape variety and two black (though the wine is traditionally completely white, of course) did you know that? I didn’t. I’m a mine of useless facts about champagne now, ask me anything). Chardonnay I could remember; Pinot Noir I was fine with, but the third one kept slipping my mind entirely. I kept learning it, and it kept escaping again and rolling off under the sofa. It is a tricksy beast, this third grape.

I know what it is called now, of course, and I know in my head. It is called Meunier. Pinot Meunier.

However, the first time it was mentioned to me on the trip, I missed it, and for the sake of writing down something (that I could correct later)wrote it down in my notebook as ‘mimsybean’.

“Traditional Crue of [this champagne maker]: 45% Chardonnay, 35% Pinot Noir, 20% Mimsybean”

It is referred thereafter in my notebook as ‘mimsybean’ at every single mention.

- ‘Single vinyard, biodynamic viticulture, large attack on palate, long finish, full-bodied, 100% mimsybean.’

- ‘Mimsybean matures faster than chardonnay and pinot noir, thus is generally left out of blends that are intended for longer cellaring. Like cellaring’s a word’

- ’Chalk slopes: cracking growing conditions for the pinot and the mimsybean’

Mimsybean. I keep saying it now. I knew it was wrong, but it was a much nicer word than the one that was right, so I didn’t really care. That is all.

You have to exchange nice polite pleasantries with the person that’s shown you round or given you the tasting or, if you’re lucky, they’re the person that owns the house. “Thank you, Merci, Very Impressive, Thank you for your time, What a marvellous range of champagnes, Here’s my card, Au revoir” Of course, as the day went on, and you were either striving for the ever more polite things to say because you felt like you’d said all the nice things already, or you were getting more and more effusive because, let’s face it, you’d been drinking champagne all day.

So you ended up saying things like “Heavenly” or promising that if you got married, theirs would be the champagne served at the very first toast. Or just a simple and overexcited “That is the best champagne. Ever. In the WORLD”.

Which I think is the wine-tasting equivalent to stumbling out of the pub at midnight declaring to some random office colleague that they are your “BEST mate in the whole FUCKING world. I fucking LOVE YOU, mate. I do. Alla’tharestof’em are BASTARDS. I fucking LOVE you, though. No, I do. No, I do. I do.”

After resting in a cellar for anywhere from 18 months to 3 years to decades and decades, champagne is placed diagonally in a holder, neck pointing downward. And turned a quarter turn (then jiggled) every so often for several days/weeks etc.

This is the process that brings the sediment - of the yeast and natural sugars that bring about the bubbles during the second fermentation and otherwise would coat the inside of the bottle and be generally horrible - down to a resting place next to the cork where it can later be easily disgorged. This rotation and jiggling is increasingly done by machine (see?! SEE how much you’re learning about champagne? Don’t worry, I’ll get to the point in a second, I swear it) but in the smaller houses, and when unusual bottle shapes are used, it has to be done by hand. This process is called ‘riddling’. The person who performs it is called a ‘riddler’.

Some French people - and yes, this is the entire point I’ve been building up to; I swear, you’re not going to believe how weak it is - find the letter ‘r’ difficult to pronounce at the beginning of words.

Which of course led to some amusing occasions of conversation about widdlers and talking about the complex skill of learning how to widdle champagne, and how men spend their entire careers widdling in the damp dark cellars.

This made me very happy.

Yeah, seriously, that was my entire point.
Told you it was weak.

I just love that headline.

It’s just, you know, completely factually incorrect.
Because it doesn’t. In ANY way that I can see. Not even in French.

I was running out to the dentist which, inconveniently, is still in London. Well, it IS convenient. It’s convenient for the office I used to work in. But not perhaps as convenient now I live an hour and a half away on the train. Still, they know me, and they are nice to me. And frankly that’s all that matters.

So I’m running out of the house to catch the train when the guy turns up to check the boiler. The landlord was supposed to be here to let him in and let him out, but the guy’s early, and the landlord didn’t know, and it’s all a bit of a rush. I phone, nice landlord comes running down the hill to my house, and I pass him running up the hill to the train station.

An hour and a half later he phones and says he doesn’t know where the cats are.

I’m about to go into the dentist, so on edge already - and he explains that he didn’t think the boiler man was going to be going in and out, he just thought he was doing things in the basement with the boiler. So while he was checking some other things that needed looking at elsewhere in the house, the boiler man went out to the van to get some tools. And the landlord came downstairs, and the door was open.

And he can’t remember when he saw them before that, but since then he hasn’t seen a cat anywhere.

I am panicking. I sit in the hygenists chair having my mouth sandblasted and thinking about the fact that my two little cats might be out the front - the front that sits directly on the pavement of a one-way road; a one-way road that postal vans come rushing down at speeds that erroneously suggest they actually care about delivering post on time. They’ve never been out front.

I am thinking about the way they look out the front door when it is briefly open.
With some curiosity:
- Big cat, Squirrel (Cat 1) in her way - wary, aloof, peering from the top of the stairs and occasionally cruising the closed door as if she totally would be brave enough to go out if it was open. Butitsn’t.
- Little cat, Widget - stunted by her illness and runt of the litter as it was - (and Cat 2, clearly) will poddle toward it in her friendly, simple way, thinking that the open door might contain a friend or, even better, some food.

As a distraction technique, it’s all well and good; time passes faster than ever, and I barely register the hygenist’s disparaging remarks about my teeth (I think it was meant to be a sales pitch, but still) and checking my phone between that appointment and the main one with the dentist. In the twenty minutes I’m in the chair, the friendly dentist gives me two fillings and the friendly dental nurse tips two cups of mouthwash over me in completely separate incidents.

I leave feeling like I have been very brave … and also looking like I wet myself. Twice.

My landlord phones just as I’m standing at the dentists’ reception desk having my only card refused because I hadn’t realised the rent and all my bills and loans had come out of my account at once.

He’s found one cat, he says, hiding under the bed, as far under as it can go. But the other is nowhere to be seen.

I rush for the train, missing one by minutes. The next is late. I get on it, it gets later. Delayed, delayed, diverted, and all the time I’m just imagining ever more horrible and distressing scenarios, and thinking about the fact that My Beloved does not know and how I could tell him if what I fear could have happened has happened, as he sleeps far away on the west coast of another country.

I don’t even know which cat is under the bed and which is the disappeared. I can’t think which might fare worse ‘out front’.

Widget might poddle up to people and want them to be friends; unlikely to be scared of open doors and cars; she can’t jump high, but she’s stupid enough to be very brave for her size when she probably shouldn’t be. She’s very needy around me, and will come, hopefully, when I call, if she can hear me.

Squirrel would find somewhere to hide, tuck herself in, make no noise and not move, paralysed by unfamiliarity. I’m scared. The bins are going out tomorrow, and the floppy binvelopes (yes, it’s a word) that they use in our street will make the perfect hiding places.

I don’t want to be without either of them.
I’m terrified whichever is the one he can’t see under the bed.

Finally. Finally I get home. I half-run from the station, and enter our street calling both names in my usual sing-song voice.

In the house I run upstairs and down, looking in all the usual places and using the same sing-song voice, with varying degrees of tearfulness.

Widget comes out from under the bed. She blinks and looks up at me with her little worried face - big eyes, little brown lips always formed in a little frown beneath her little pink nose.

Squirrel is nowhere. Not in any of the usual places, not in any of the unusual ones, no where that I can see. I grab the feeding bowls and go out the front, clanking them together in their ‘you’re about to be fed’ noise we’ve trained them to come to.

Nothing. No Squirrel. The people over the road haven’t seen her. The pub down the road has a yapping dog outside, and they look to have been there for hours.

I go home again. I sit on the sofa and pet the cat I have left. And cry a bit.

I pick up the phone, and ring my landlord, to give him an update and thank him for spending all morning looking.

“I have Widget. But Squirrel, No, she’s still gone. I wish I’d left a note saying not to let them out front, but there wasn’t time, and I didn’t think he’d be in and out and no, it’s not your fault I just wish I could find her and …”

Squirrel sticks her head through a gap in two bookshelves.

She looks at me like she is slightly annoyed at being woken up, though pleased to hear the crazy-lady is home, rather than those gruff and panicky men she had to put up with earlier.

“Oh! Baby, hello! She. She’s here!” And I burst into tears.
The phonecall ends in a shower of Yays.

My prodigal cat has returned.

In fact, my prodigal cat never went anywhere.

And isn’t prodigal.

But my life wouldn’t be my life without quite a lot of overdramaticality (it’s a word) in it.
And that is that.
End of story.

(and how I wish they’d do it, or at least have subtitles)

Or maybe it’s just me. I have weird hearing, and a volume control problem. I don’t like loud noises, and I don’t like sudden noises, and so I generally watch TV with the sound quite low, and the subtitles on if at all possible.

And that’s all fine, and all good, and has served me well. But not everything has subtitles. There’s this sinking feeling in my chest when I realise I’m going to have to watch something without them, because I know I’ll spend an equal amount of time lunging for the remote control to turn the sound down again if adverts suddenly start shouting or an atmospheric song start suddenly (and loudly) accompanying the action - or just squinting at the screen and rewinding every now and again to try and catch whatever important point I’ve missed.

I can’t remember, because I’ve lost my copy, but rule number one in the actor’s handbook must be:

1. If you have something to say that is important, make sure you say it quietly. The more important the line, the quieter you should say it. e.g If it is a vital plot point without which the rest of the story being told will not make sense, you should endeavour above all else to be almost silent, only moving your lips if there is no way you can avoid doing so.

Because it’s all, as far as I can tell, ALL about the mumbling. Because so many conversations seem to run along the lines of:

Frank: “And you know what’s more, Tony? You know what made me come down here and do alla this for you?” [leans in close] “Itwas mumble mumble mumble. Mumble. Mumble mumble mumble mumble.” [Gets a little louder] Waddaya got to say ta that?!”

Tony: “Mumble mumble mumble. Mumble mumble. YOU SEE IF I DON’T!”

And therefore my watching them goes:

Frank speaks.
Tony Speaks.
Anna sits and squints at the television (because squinting helps you to hear, of course). Anna Rewinds.
Frank speaks. Tony speaks.
The moment between shouting and mumbling is too brief and the difference too great. Anna misses it again. Rewinds.
Anna rewinds slightly too far, and has to sit through thirty seconds she has already seen. Being of limited attention span, her thoughts wander and she only remembers what she was doing when someone shouts ‘YOU SEE IF I DON’T!’ and she realises she’s missed it. Rewinds.
This happens three more times.

Which of course I can only ever do when I’m on my own. Because that’s a really really antisocial way of watching television, frankly.

So the rest of the time (if I haven’t got subtitles) I have to watch it at other people’s volume, wincing every time a loud bit happens, or I watch it quietly, hearing the shouty bits and making wild stabs at the bits inbetween.

I think the worst example of this has been Lord of the Rings. I have never been able to join fully in LotR conversations, and, when pressed on the matter, can only express the opinion that it wasn’t really very good.

That is because: I watched it late at night in the living room of a relative’s house, unable to sleep while everyone else could. It was a shonky copy - something that someone had recorded from someone else on the cheap; and while I of course didn’t approve of this kind of behaviour for copyright reasons, there was nothing else to watch, please don’t arrest me.

I was curled up on the sofa trying to feel sleepy, while still determined to watch this film that I had heard spoken of so highly.

But with no remote control, lunging across the floor to turn the volume up and down got very tired very quickly - and having to choose between what I could deal with hearing.

Basically: long story short (“too late!”) my version of Lord of the Rings was three hours of mumbling with intermittent shouting, during battles and heated elf-exchanges and the like. And lots of watching hobbits bimbling about.

It’s not a great film watched that way. Take my word. Take my word quietly. Obv.

I have writers block. Well, no, I have several different kinds of block, but since the most pressing one is the one I’m meant to do for a living, I was kind of thinking I might deal with that one first. So I thought I would do the answering questions thing, which has traditionally helped in the past. I have done it, oh, lots. Well, at least once, twice, three times, um, a lady.

Update: So people asked questions, and I answered them under the jump, and I will kept a running tally up here, like this:

I have currently answered THIRTY-THREE and a HALF questions! And I am DONE now

But now I am tired and going to bed, and this has been very helpful and you are all lovely.
Thank you!

(more…)

It is always important to remember, I think, that there are a world of possibilities out there for us.

The nice thing about diversification, you see, is that there are now more jobs than you can possibly imagine. In fact, if you can imagine it, it IS a job. You have made it exist, just by imagining it (as posited in the ‘Mr Meebles Hypothesis’, which I will explain in full another day - with pictures).

Therefore I am thinking, today, of other things I could do really, REALLY well.

1. Sandwiches. I could be the foremost overcomplicated sandwich expert in the history of the world. See, people have a simple cheese and lettuce and pickle sandwich and they think there’s all that there is!

But that’s just because they haven’t CONSIDERED putting some jam and some crisps and some celery and some vegemite in there. It’s not that they’ve closed their minds to it: they Just Don’t Know.

Of course, it will take a long time to get people to understand the power of the overcomplicated sandwich. I will have to start by getting them to eat other multi-flavour wonderfulness, like burritos, and then move them on to other kinds of sandwich.

I have added this into the vague plan. I must go somewhere to train as the world’s most brilliant burrito, and then (eventually) the world will be at my feet (really quite substantially eventually, let us face it)(still, it is a plan).

2. DVD player-technical expert person: I admit I haven’t really looked into this.

BUT: I did spend a year listening to My Beloved convincing me that the best and only way to stop the dvd making that ‘Brghrrghrgrghrghrgrghrghrgrh!’ noise when you put a new dvd in was to press ‘OPEN’, then hold your finger at a particular place under the DVD while you pushed the drawer back in with your index finger. And to try that two or three times until it stopped.

HOWEVER: I - Yes, I, Anna Pickard - then discovered that the correct way to technically fix this complex anomaly was to a) smack it on the top lightly with your fist. b) … No, that’s it.

I could make my MILLIONS imparting this information to the consumer industry. Well, the consumer industry who happen to own this particular ultracheap multi-region DVD player Still: my millions, will I make!

3. Bee Costume Designer: You know; for bees. Looking online, it is very easy to find people who make costumes OF bees. But people who make costumes FOR bees?! Nary a ONE!

If I want to make myself, or my child, or my dog, look like a bee? I can do that within seconds.

But if I want to make my bee look like a child; with, say, a tiny baseball cap and bee-sized school uniform? I will find it much harder to do so. Therefore the market seems to be entirely open.

4. Professional Apologiser: I can apologise for anything, anywhere, anytime. Whether it’s my fault or not, I am entirely prepared to take the blame, rationalise and completely take responsibility for whatever it is that someone would like something to be apologised for.

Seriously. At the moment I mainly seem to apologise to placate angry pedants and bitter people with a dislike of flippant people or things - as well as the usual: my family and friends (to everything, for everything, at any time) - but I really could, and would, expand that to include whole social groups, professional bodies, even countries.

If anyone wants someone who can, with only a few jumps of logic, take responsibility for something and apologise for it, I’m THERE. And I’m sorry.
No, I really am. I’m sorry for it.
(You see!?!? I’m Great at it!)

5. Murder investigator cop person: I’d be GREAT at this. AS long as I didn’t have to look at any dead bodies, or talk to any really sad people (I’d only apologise). But I truly and honestly believe that I have watched so many murder mystery programmes now that I could solve any murder you threw at me.

(as long as it was quite obvious and the murderer was famous enough for me to have seen them before in at least one other Murder Mystery show. It’s kind of a rule I live by. You know, as a detective)

6. Barmaid: I’m a great barmaid.

7. A Thousand Other Things: And a thousand other things, including things that I have forgotten that I will add in in the morning, and, more importantly, things that you will add.

So. What other jobs are there out there? Not that I could do - that you could do. That we could do. That could be done. That, when you’re banging your head against the thing that you do, you come up with.

Because there are thousands of things!
(But we still choose to do what we do. Mainly)

(more…)

We’re trying to clear out the house a bit - for various reasons - and one particular problem is the huge amount of small change My Beloved strews around the place.

I don’t know if it’s an aesthetic or a moral decision, but he has something against small change.
He comes home at the end of the day, pockets rattling, and pours the contents of his pants (US Eng.) on to any available floor or sideboard.
I am, therefore, always tripping over little puddles of pennies and scooping them into jars and bottles and bowls and boxes.

The bigger denominations are creamed off the top (it’s a service charge, what?!) - and then I go to the shop and buy milk or bread or washing tablets in ten pences and twenty pences and occasionally five pences if I’m feeling bloody-minded.

However, not even I am bloody-minded enough to pay several pounds in tuppences, so those have been a sticking point, and have sat in their jars and bowls and boxes and bottles with their little penny friends until we could think of something to do with them.

There are two obvious choices of things to do with very small change if you live were we live.
You can either:
a) Take it to the change machine at the supermarket and pour it into the slot and have it converted into larger denomination cash or shopping vouchers, OR
b) Take it down to the pier and put it into those pushpenny arcade machines that send coins hurtling onto a moving shelf with other coins, hopefully pushing those other coins off, in the hope of making our fortunes.

The sensible option, I think you will agree, is obvious.

Therefore we found ourselves at the pier late this afternoon.

Well, we have a guest (my sister-out-law, hello Amy!) and it is FAR more sociable to go for a walk on the pier than it is to go for a saunter around Sainsbugs.

Anyway - this whole thing is just to tell you about thirty seconds of weirdness.
I will get there soon.

We were throwing those two pences into machines, watching as they sat on the moving platform, pushed other two pences onto the shelf below, pushed all the two pences on the shelf below slightly forward but failed to push them over the edge of the very last shelf and so, frustratingly, failed to make our fortunes. I personally have begun to suspect that those machines don’t offer an honest return on your investment and therefore might not be the key to longterm financial success.
(I know! No, really, it’s a pleasure)

Still, there we were, wandering around and having general fun; me My Beloved, and my sister-out-law, and I had our little baggie of tuppences, and they had an air of boredom, and one minute they were there, next to me … the next, they were gone.

I did not let that detract me. I had a vague notion that at if I stood there and put enough two pences into the two pence machine, it would eventually pour forth thousands of twopees, and then we would be able to afford a deposit for even a tiny weeny house.

I put 2p in the 2p machine. It rolled down a clear plastic ramp, bounced off a plastic peg and came to rest on the metal shelf where, when the shelf moved back, it pushed another 2p off the front and caused the whole process to start again on the lower shelf. The coins moved forward (slightly) on the lower shelf, but the coins didn’t tip into the tray.

I put 2p into the 2p machine. It rolled down the clear plastic ramp and fell straight onto the tray, on top of some other two pences, and therefore did nothing.

I put 2p into the 2p machine. It rolled down the clear plastic ramp, fell onto the tray and pushed the 2ps so that three fell onto the lower shelf of two pences, and then four fell off the edge and into the winner’s enclosure below. Hurray!

I put 2p into the 2p machine. It rolled down the clear plastic ramp, fell onto the tray, and failed to push anything off anything at all.

At this point, however, I realised there was a presence at my elbow.

I thought it might be My Beloved, or possibly my sister-out-law, but, with a subtle look, I realised it wasn’t. It was a pretty young teenage girl that I had never seen before in my life, and she was fixated on my 2p machine.

I put 2p into the 2p machine. It rolled down the clear plastic ramp and fell on to the clear bit of the tray which - when it moved back - pushed other coins to the lower level and the mountain of coppers further over the edge at the very front.

A hand nudged my back. A voice mumbled behind me. I glanced around and realised that my one person watching wasn’t just one person. It was four people. There were four young teenagers standing around me, staring intently at my pushpenny machine, and mumbling to each other.

In French.

I put 2p into the 2p machine. It rolled down the clear plastic ramp and bounced from the top level onto the bottom level, hitting the pile of lower coins without making an impact one way or the other.

Behind me, I heard eight people sigh.

I checked. There were now eight teenage French students watching me play on a pushpenny machine.

I put 2p into the 2p machine. It rolled down the clear plastic ramp and, bizarrely, pushed a coin that pushed another coin, pushing 16 coins into the happybucket, and causing a small ripple of satisfied Gallic moans from the eleven French students now standing behind me.

I put another 2p.

Another 2p.

Another 2p.

Another 2p.

By the time I pushed through the crowd, head down, there were at least two dozen French schoolchildren standing around my pushpenny machine, gaping aghast at the marvel of me and my small change.

I stood in the middle of the horrible, horrible arcade and looked back. None of them had yet risked the danger of taking on the marvellous machine - they still seemed to be standing, staring.

I wandered off.

Far away, five minutes later, my beloved and sister-out-law were to be found shooting fake enemies under the cover of pointless camouflage.

“Did you win our fortune?” He asked.

“No, but I won over the French.” I said, not knowing why. “I had an audience to my rubbish gamblings. A HUGE audience” I said.

“Of course you did.” said my beloved. “Of course you did.”

I did, internet, I internet-swear I did.
And as everyone know my internet-swearing to be the very best swearing I do, it must be true.
I’m famous to the French school trips of Brighton.
Me and my small change.

I realise I don’t talk about my cats neary as much as some might like; and I also realise that as soon as I finish typing this, someone will say ‘Pictures please!’ or worse, ‘Video please!’, and frankly I don’t even know where the plug for my camera charger is right now, so it’s a little too much to ask.

Anyway. The cats are well. I will write about them at length at some point, because they have gone from being very sickly kittens indeed to quite boisterous little teenagers. The sicks have stunted their growth a little, so they’re still quite little, but that suits us, and they seem fine with it … anyway. I’ve been writing a post about them every time I look at them that last couple of months, so I’ll write a proper post about them when … well, later in the month sometime.

Anyway - the thing is, one of them, Cat 2 - who is, I have mentioned, quite special, I will tell more of this at a later date - Cat 2 has developed quite the thing for playing fetch, recently.

She initiates it, she brings one of her current favourite toys - a fluffy spider; an old collar with a bell; a foil wrapper from a kitty treat, tied in a knot - and she comes and drops it next to you on the sofa, or at your feet. You throw it across the room, she runs and gets it, and comes trotting back, same route every time, and drops it in exactly the same place every time.

Which is VERY sweet.

Apart from the fact that she now mainly wants to play two minutes before bedtime, which is fine, and 4am in the morning, which isn’t.

Until you’ve woken up with Cat 2 staring at you quizzically, purring madly and dribbling on you (did I mention she dribbles when she purrs too much? Well, she does), then got up four hours later to find the bed covered in not only the aforementioned toys but other things too that are small and toylike (necklaces, purses, keys) then you have never known the full possibilities of a morning.

It is difficult to describe to a very small cat the difference between 4 and 7.

And no, I cannot shut her out. Because they sit directly outside the door going

“MUW!” “meeeeiuw?” “MIU!” “roooooowr” “Miiiiiaow?”

all. night. long.

And I do not know what is worse.

Yes, I know, having babies is worse.
That’s not the point right now. My special cat is waking me up pre-dawn.
Then I spend four hours flitting in and out of anxiety dreams.

The day generally goes downhill from there. Brain-explodey-wise.

Sorry this isn’t very coherent.
I’m kind of tired.

Because I’m given to rhetoric. This evening, for example, there was an … ahem … discussion about the dishwasher.

Admittedly a discussion that began

“For the love of CHRIST, you stack the dishwasher like a NUMPTY, man. How have you advanced so far in life with such little apparent nous?”

Because apparently when I have been writing all day I speak like someone’s forced me to sit on a dictionary. Hard.

Of course, the whole thing could have passed without incident if, very tired, I hadn’t tried to advance the argument with the winning:

“Seriously, the top shelf is for glasses and cups and bowls and if we start throwing any old frying pan up there, how are we better than the basest animal? We might as well just give up now and spend the rest of our days urinating in ditches and tap-dancing for scrag ends, because there’s nothing more we can hope for in life. It’s FERAL.”

Which, I admit, might have been slightly over the top.

I’m tired, though.
I’m just really, really tired.
And we all deal with that differently.

As you can imagine, it’s great fun to live with.

My head’s just exploding.
Sorry.
In a good way, like. But still. Poof!
(that was my head)

I’ll be back. As soon as I can, you know, oh whatever.

You alright?