It’s Saturday blog time. The sofa calls. After hoovering up the crumbs from yesterday, of course. It genuinely looked liked I’d tipped the bottom of a packet of biscuits I’d sat on, out on the floor. And I wouldn’t have done that, I wouldn’t dream of wasting a crumb. Not functioning on all cylinders as sleep patterns are erratic. But the good thing about that is that I have been reading the Mick Herron Slow Horses, Slough House books. I’m absolutely hooked. I love the writing, (am jealous of). It’s good and funny and shocking all at once. And I thought there could be no hero better that Dalziel from Dalziel and Pascoe but Jackson Lamb is the ultimate anti-hero. Anti-health, hygiene, political correctness and well hidden care for his joe’s. Sorry, never meant to end up reviewing other people’s novels. But as I said before, I never know what is going to happen to this blank page. So jealousy apart, Mick Herron’s first novel was published in the States because he couldn’t get a publisher in the UK. So very slightly mollified by that.
The week before last, writing went well. Monday this week got a bit lost so I thought I’d do a read through of book 3, on Tuesday morning. Had decided by ten o’clock that it was terrible. The writing was grey and sad and I kept getting stuck on where to put the commas. My education was late sixties, early seventies comprehensive. So all I learnt about English was to take a breath, and that’s where a comma should go. That a semi-colon is bigger than a comma, but not so big as a full-stop! And overuse of exclamation marks was annoying. And yet, here I am, typing away again as if I know what I am doing. But you know I don’t, don’t you?!…
So after Tuesday I ate the chocolate bunnies I’d bought for Easter. (They were on offer). (And I have only eaten one of them but the second one is inevitable.) (And its quite safe to write this, because Mike doesn’t read my blog and I did eat his, not mine. Saving mine for later!) Opened a bottle of red on Wednesday, (we normally try and stay dry on Monday to Thursday) and then didn’t sleep that well the rest of the week. And I know I am not alone. This wretched lock-down is exposing, high-lighting all the bits we normally manage to keep hidden the rest of the time. And it’s not pretty. But I also know there are any number of people I can ring and moan to/at. That my family is still well. Hannah must have been the only paramedic training in Birmingham who didn’t get COVID. And that the numbers are gradually coming down. So though I still don’t know what to do with a comma or a semi-colon, I will have another go at Missing You. Accept I will never write as well as Mick Herron and see what tomorrow brings.
