Ahh… November. The time for splurging words on keyboards and growing moustaches. Two activities I can start, but have yet to accomplish (in the latter category I can grow some very fine individual hairs, but persuading them to huddle up in some form of hair-buddy bonding ritual appears beyond me. Tant pis.).
So instead, I am proposing new time-based challenges for things that I am good at, and perhaps you are too. Navel-gazing. Sighing. Forgetting the plots to CSI episodes before the Five announcer has asked her ‘where you watching closely’ question. (Actually, that’s a lie — I sometimes forget the plot during the Kia Soul adverts. Ok, ok, that too is a lie. I forget to watch the episode and then simply make up the plot. And then wonder why there’s so much talcum powder on the floor in my house. And why there’s a decaying pig swaddled in blankets in the garden. I digress. )
What else? Tut-tuesday, where one ‘tuts’ a lot. ‘Pretending to watch a lot of BBC 4, but only ever actually tuning in for Wallander.’ ‘Losing the enthusiasm for running the day after entering lots of expensive races.’ Ooh! Cheese-nibbling. I do like a nibble on some hard cheese. I’m also a chocolate block nibbler. But not a cheese block nibbler. And when I say hard cheese (old bean) I don’t mean fromage de ma tante.
Silly. It’s posts like this that give my neurons a bad name. I’m simply warming my fingers and tangents up (speaking of which, I wonder what a tangent looks like — is it like an appendix, or more like a little toe?). In the novel Tom is currently a little giggly and stoned and he is about to be told some serious shit (man). So I need to get myself into the right frame of mind. Which, despite all appearances to the contrary, dear reader, I’m finding quite hard.
Perhaps this is due to the first chill of autumn. The sky is a Wedgewood-blue, and I keep making elementary typing mistakes. The two could be related, although to keep this up I would have to know more than one porcelain maker. Denby! Ha! Fooled ya. I suppose Poole doesn’t count. Anyway, my feet are cold and I’m fidgeting. And transposing letters and typing too many rrrrs.
I have taken to writing in the kitchen, as it’s light and I can keep an eye on my nemesis, Mr Nuts. He pays me frequent visits. And displays a full gamut of rodent-inspired bastardry. I like ‘bastardry’. It’s my new favourite made-up word. I can also watch in mild amusement as the local CSI-episode cats (it’s taken me two years to realise that my neighbour has twin cats, so cunningly had they played their ‘never be seen in public at the same time’ routine. Hmm. Or is it perhaps more likely that the sun refracted off the glass and made two images. Or I just hallucinated it having inhaled some peyote dust that had brushed off a passing grey heron when it collided with a pygmy mosqueetle, the most unlikely insect in the universe, that only grows in tartan picnic blankets wrapped around dead pigs. Or I simply transferred my hostility towards Mr Nuts towards Fat Kitty and in the resulting time-space stargate banjax I created his alter-matrix cat, Dopey) edge their way along the garden wall and hop past bushy/tree obstructions with all the grace and charm of a tub of lard. Not good feline spokescats. They would be voted off the Miaow-Factor, pronto.
Speaking of being voted off, I can hear the distant bing of disapproval. Or is it a microwave? Anyhoo, mes chums and chummettes. I approach halfway to final wordcount of the novel and I must depart for more difficult mental pastures, where the grass is smoked, not green, and secrets not told for forty years are about to be revealed.
