Haircut, dinner and a peculiar number of words

[Anne Brooke]

For reasons I can't now explain, I booked a haircut today at 8.15am. Horror! Which, as Lynda is always always early (in fact she may well have been sitting outside the flat since last night ...), meant that Lord H and I had to be sure to be up, bathed and decent by 7am. Hell, we managed it too. Almost. But there wasn't much intelligent conversation going on, I can tell you. When it got to 8am, I decided to nip out and see if Lynda was there. She was. So I crept up to the car, leaned over the bonnet and whispered hello in my most scary Psycho fashion. My, you should have seen her jump. We both screamed. Which I'm sure the neighbours were pleased about. And she still gave me a decent haircut without cutting my ear off, so the woman is obviously a saint. I've also booked her in for highlights at the end of June, so I can look relatively interesting over the summer - so I'd better make sure to be a good client then ...
The rest of the morning was spent typing up what I've done to The Gifting thus far. And guess what! I came to the point when I'd actually typed 111,111 words. Bloody hell, I've never been there before! But I suspect that I'm never going to make it to 222,222 in one book though - at any point. Bugger. Sadly I did so enjoy realising it too - it made me feel quite binary. So much so that I kept typing another word and then deleting it just so I could go back to 111,111 again. I think it appeals to my borderline OCD Control-freak personality. Borderline? Pull the other one, eh. Anyway, you'll be relieved to know that I did manage to type some more after that in the end, and Simon is now therefore just about to face his (long) final scene - or series of linked scenes, which is what I think it'll turn out to be. Will he make it to 120,000? I can but hope.

I've also done some critiques for my Writewords (http://www.writewords.org.uk) groups, which was fun - there was a great novel beginning which had me completely hooked and some deep poetry to enjoy. I really have no idea why those ruddy publishers out there aren't taking any of this stuff on. I mean what the hell do they think they're doing? Answer: giving us way too many "poor child made good" dull tomes and celebrity claptrap, that's what. Yawn. I long for the day when the mainstream publishers will go to the wall (or at least start publishing more interesting and less copycat market stuff), and the small publishers/writer-publishers will inherit the earth. Or at least the decent shelf space.

Oh and I've found out that the reason my copies of A Dangerous Man (http://www.flamebooks.com) haven't yet arrived (I ordered them in March) is that the courier delivered them to the wrong place, and Chevonne was unfortunately on holiday till now so hasn't been able to sort it out. I'm hoping that I'll have some copies to wave around at the book circle event on 30 April, but you never can tell. Thank God I have my one reading copy, so won't look like a complete buffoon on the night. At least not for that reason.

This afternoon, I popped into Godalming to get a barrel-load of shopping, including lots of relaxation oil and a job-lot of birthday cards (why does virtually everyone I know have a birthday in May??). I think I've worried the lady in Boots though - she was telling me that if I joined the Half-Price Club I could get special discounts for any relatives I had who were over 60. She didn't take kindly to my suggestion that it might be cheaper just to bump them off and bury their bodies under the patio. Ah well. Worth a try though, I would think. Oh, and I've found out, much to my surprise (and worryingly I found this rather interesting, but see above for personality disorder paragraph ...) that when I key in the funny numbers on the card machine in order to pay, I'm happier using my left hand. Strange. Then again, all our family are cack-handed in some way or other. As for me, I write with my right hand, but I wear my watch on my right hand too, and I deal cards left-handedly and fold my arms the left-handed way. And now I can add number-keying to the left-handed list. What excitement indeed. Um, sorry. Are you still awake at the back?

Tonight, I think I'm going to have a snooze on the sofa, nicely curled up with my essential cuddly lamb, or possibly the cuddly crocodile -whichever comes to hand - and then Lord H and I are out at Robin & Gavin's for dinner. Bliss. I think Liz might be there too, so I must remember not to get over-excitable during our inevitable disagreements about art - we enjoy them, but I think Lord H gets worried. I still love Liz to bits though (even though she's wrong! - oh, sorry, that just slipped out ...). As it were.

Today's nice things:

1. My hair looks good today - hurrah!
2. Writing
3. Dinner out.

Anne Brooke
http://www.annebrooke.com
http://www.goldenford.co.uk