Monday

1416 words, and secret project sent off to the agent. It is still in its most inchoate form, but I rely on her gimlet eye. She will dig the bones out of it, if anyone can.

It might seem a bit bonkers, to be writing two books at once, but I had a catastrophic loss of professional time, for reasons too crazily dull to go into, and I am now head down and driving to the finish, like Ryan Moore on a Stoute hotpot.

It may also be insane to embark on two such speculative projects. They are equally eccentric in their own ways, and I have absolutely no idea whether they shall ever see the light of day. Good thing I am cussed as an old mule. I am very, very good at channelling S Beckett. Try again, fail again. Fail better.

The mare was all over the shop this morning. She always does this when I get cocky and think I’m all that and start boasting on Facebook. She is like my own little delegation of hubris police. I had to work and work, and that light harmony which we have been in for so many days eluded us. I got strict, and asked her for her most strenuous effort, and she was so hot in the gleaming Scottish sun that I threw a bucket of water over her afterwards as if she were a runner at the Royal Meeting, coming back into the unsaddling enclosure. She gave me a very slightly reproachful look, as if to say What happened to the cowgirl mooch? We’ll find it again. We always do.

And now I am about to go away for some days. I have a memorial service for one of the great old gentleman, and a happier thing too, the confirmation of my beloved godson. I have to dig out my posh frocks and find some shoes which do not have mud on them.

I am very slightly melancholy. Perhaps it is the exhaustion of writing and writing that damn secret project. I put on 55,000 words in four months, which is a stupid amount. No wonder my brain has been going phut. There is also that naked feeling, of sending something off, and waiting for the terrifying verdict. My poor little babe is tottering out into the real world. Perhaps too it is that at last I can stop, and think of the losses of the last few weeks. The latest of the Dear Departeds were put in a box, because I had work to do. Now they are close by me, and I miss them. Bloody, buggery old death.

I’ll be off the blog for a while. It’s not a holiday holiday, but it is a break, and I’m going to stop all the clocks. I shall be back, brighter and better, with my dander up and my joie de vivre restored, on the 13th of May.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are of the sunshine:

I don’t know what she was up to this morning, but that picture pretty much sums it up.