Intravenous drug-using hooker with malaria

Oooh, I'm so close to 20% I can taste it! I've never got this far with a novel before, so i'm pretty chuffed. Not to mention the pages and pages of long-hand i've yet to type up, which could put me nearer to 35%, I reckon!!

Been MIA for a while ~ I've hit the time when my baby would have been due, and it's been a difficult time for us, especially as we're not yet pregnant again. So, there's been one minor emotional meltdown, and lots of quiet time, while I attempt to surf over this particularly messy few weeks. I'm almost out the other side of things though, so hopefully I'm headed in the right direction.

Scarborough ~ ah, what a dichotomy of a place! Pensioners vs hen parties, Kiss me Quick vs Victoriana. I loved it! Could I have spent a week there? Probably not ~ we had as good as run out of things to do by the time we left (fish & chips, funfair, pirate ship ride around the bay, art gallery, castle, publishers discount bookshop). I reckon a weekend was just about right. Hotel was marvellous ~ if you're ever staying in Scarborough then the Crescent Hotel comes highly recommended by moi.


Currently reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. Enjoying it thus far, but the reviews suggest that it jades after a while. We'll see......



PS: Didn't manage to give blood in the end ~ because I have acupuncture I was required to take a copy of my therapist's certificate to prove that they are registered and therefore I have not contracted some hideous blood disease from allowing some backstreet quack to stick dirty needles in me. But of course they don't tell you this until you get there (Me: Oh, I didn't know I should have brought that with me. Them: That's right, we tend not to tell people). Embarrassingly I had to walk back out IN FRONT OF EVERYONE, clearly having been turned down as unsuitable ~ so there's a room full of people who probably think I'm an intravenous drug-using hooker with malaria. Marvellous.

Here comes the bride!

Shoes that look pretty but inflict blisters the like of which (wo)man has never known before? Check!

Paul Durcan poem for my ceremony reading (five copies thereof, in case four get lost en route)? Check!

‘Bird of paradise meets Danny La Rue’ style fascinator that I had specially made but am now having serious doubts about as it may be a bit too “Vegas showgirl”? Check!

Tummy holdy-in pants for when I make my fourth trip to the buffet table? Check!

My best friend in the whole wide world gets married on Saturday, and I’m already an over-emotional nervous wreck. I’m excited, yet a little sad that by Sunday it will all be over and I won’t have it all to look forward to. And I’m terrified ~ I’m up first for the ceremony readings and I’m so scared that I’ll get it wrong or trip over my dress on the way to the lectern or suddenly start speaking in tongues….

The bride-to-be is marvel of tranquillity, which, come to think of it, I was at this stage before my wedding last year. Maybe the bride is always the calm eye of the storm, and it’s everyone else who absorbs the anxiety on her behalf?

I’ll report back after the weekend (i.e. how many times I cried, how long before I whipped my blistery shoes off and chucked them in the Tyne, etc!)

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Novel is on a bit of a standby at the moment as I’ve been struck, out of the blue, by an extremely powerful short story that descended and has taken me over completely. I’ve been working on it everyday, and it’s more like taking down dictation than anything else ~ for the first time ever I understand what writers mean when they say that a story choose a writer and not the other way around. The voice, the plot, everything is all ‘there’. It’s a very exhilarating experience, and all going to plan there’s a few comps I’ve got in mind for it.

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Acupuncture tomorrow, and frick do I need it?! I’ve been a bitch on wheels today and have bitten off the heads of anyone who crossed my path, and then spent all evening feeling bad about it and getting weepy. I think a giant glass of vino might be needed…..