The secret life of shops

[Anne Brooke]

Shops are strange places indeed. Lord H came home last night with a pack of kiwi fruit emblazoned with the legend “Wash Before Eating”. Well, I have yet to find anyone who actually eats the skin of a kiwi fruit, but there you go. Lord H thought they’d be better off adding a label saying “Open This End” for the hard of thinking. Could be useful for eggs too.
Waving goodbye to Lord H this morning was something of a shock actually. I’d said goodbye at the front door and then rushed to the bedroom window in the usual way to wave as he goes down the path but, instead of his tall figure and elegant charm, I saw a grey-haired, elderly figure limping along. Goodness me, I thought, Lord H has aged since I last set eyes on him – are we in a temporal anomaly here in downtown Godalming? Luckily, I recognised the neighbour just before ringing the Husband Shop to see if they have a newer model …

Managed to get some more synopsising/timelining done to The Gifting last night. Am now about to start Chapter Thirteen (of Seventeen) and, with about 100 pages to go, the end is surely in sight.

Oh, and at work I’ve finally met the wonderful and supremely efficient Helen from Catering – whom I have been emailing at least every five seconds for about two years now and who is actually only in the office opposite (though it’s a secure office so we can’t just walk in …). We are indeed already in the virtual society – in so many ways! Anyway, she’s just as lovely in real life, so great to meet you at last, Helen.

Being the end of term, there’s a big 3-day bash on at the Students’ Union, which is just next door to our offices, and the Estates guys are already preparing for it. This seems to involve caging us in completely, supposedly so that students can form an orderly queue to get into the Union, but my theory is that they’re trapping us inside the block so we’ll never be able to go to the loo again at all. Legs crossed, gals!...

Sneaked out at lunchtime to do some shopping – it’s the end of term this week so the car park is easier to get back into as the lecturers are beginning to flee to the hills, and it will save time this evening – when I’ll only have to get the chilled goods – as I want to crack on with The Gifting. That is, if I can stop Lord H from being a Super-Husband and secretly doing shopping when it’s not his week for doing it. Sigh! Not that we’re a super-regimented household of course – after all, I’ve long since discontinued the enforced dawn get-up time and the morning salute. I like to think of myself as a benign dictator. Ho ho …

Oh, and I’ve scribbled a poem:

Summer madness

I don’t do
beaches,
tanning
and certainly not bikinis –
perish the thought! –
and I’m not that partial
to lazy afternoons by the pool
or in the garden –
if we had one.

No.
Summer madness
will find me
scouring the shelves
for sun-cream,
hiding out under trees
or lurking indoors
until the autumn chill.

Oh to be blonde
or brunette and be free!
It’s different for redheads
you see.


And at last the office has found a use for the ball of string that Ruth ordered three years ago and which we’ve been teasing her about ever since – so more fool us then! The mentors will be using it today in their Fun Day for the races, so we have been silenced and Ruth is cultivating her Smug Look, aha!

I’ve also drafted a brief synopsis (more of an outline really …) for my next novel (assuming nobody wants The Gifting of course, as in that case, there’s little point in writing a sequel straight away) – working title: The Bones of Summer. As you can no doubt tell, it’s in the crime genre. Better give it to my agent (http://www.johnjarrold.co.uk) sometime then to see what he thinks. I’ve taken the basis of it from a short story I wrote last year – which is something I usually hate doing as I think short stories are what they are and shouldn’t be stretched into novels. But for this one, I’ve put the character into a different situation six years on and he’s also reacting with Paul Maloney from Maloney’s Law – so it a quasi-sequel … almost. Anyway, we’ll see.

I've just finished reading Martin Seligman's "Authentic Happiness". Hmm. Started off well enough but got very flabby in the middle, to my mind. And his quasi-theological ending lost me entirely. I think he might have needed a reality check pill there ... But at least I do now know what my key signature strengths are - love of learning, and humour apparently - so I must remember to use them every day to achieve quality of life. Ho ho. Somebody pass the encyclopedia ...

Tonight, I’ll be working my way through Simon’s life again and attempting to act like a normal human being. Is it just me, or do all writers get this obsessive need to complete when fiddling around at the end of a novel? Thank goodness it’s counselling tomorrow, eh? Heck, I obviously need it …

Today’s nice things:

1. Laughing at kiwi fruit
2. Realising that my husband hasn’t suddenly shapeshifted into a frail eighty-year-old
3. Sorting out The Gifting.

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