In which I am not Doris Day. Or: incapable of any sense at all.

For various complicated reasons, I had to do another late pass at my manuscript today and the whole thing was so intense that I even missed the racing at Ayr. I was in such a tense, filthy mood that I even shouted at my beloved red mare this morning. She blinked at me as if to say: yeah, yeah, I really don’t give a stuff about agents and deadlines and publishers and careers, so get your shop in order. She is bloody flinty when she is not being a duchess. Actually, sometimes even when she is being a duchess.

I was ashamed of myself. I’ll make it up to her this evening with extra love and rubs and scratches and strokes and confessions of human frailty. She knows all about human frailty, and is quite good at making allowances for it. Which is very lucky.

Stanley the Dog, also resolutely not interested in my boring and minor travails, has taken himself into the next room and is barking at a bluebottle which had the temerity to buzz at him. This is not entirely helpful for my startle reflex, which is on high.

I think of what I wrote yesterday, and I think of the small, mundane, scratchy human stuff in which I am enmeshed today, and I think of bathos. I know that every day can’t be Doris Day, but really.

I hope I shall make some sense on Monday. I can’t guarantee it, but it would be nice.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are from last week: