Well

Well. Having just read all previous posts (last one being in FEBRUARY!) and noticed that I started the last two with "Ok" and "Right", I just made the decision to start this one with "Well". Hmm. what will it be next time. Ah: "So"! (I'm not racist - one of my best friends is Chinese... That was terrible).

Well. Again, I feel tempted to tell you that it's night time, Sunday the 5th (very nearly Monday 6th) June. But I won't because you will already know that. I'm just going to change the font.

There. That's better isn't it? The Piton (formerly and mistakenly known as MF) AKA Wikepeter is away in Tripoli playing NewsStud and not here to drive me mad, ergo is doing it remotely by not being here. No that's not fair or true. He doesn't actually drive me mad much any more. Quite the opposite. Keeps me sane and anchored to the rockface we call life.

So I promised him I would write. He agreed to let me read his near decade-old book proposal if I made an earnest promise to write. So I'm trying. I wrote a paragraph last week, or maybe it was the week before. And I wrote an email to my Saturday students yesterday. I know you're thinking (or you would if you, a reader, existed) "Email? Does that count as writing?"

Well, it was a long and detailed email. God, they must think I am nuts! It was all about how I had to change the dates a bit again so that I can spend a fun two-night weekend at a country house with Piton and our kids (his boy and my girl. Not "our" kids, if you see what I mean) for his friend's 40th birthday, along with uber-people invitees. Most people in my situation could have invented a perfectly plausible excuse for this thus maintaining a facade of sanity. Like: My Grandma died (which she actually did but I won't use that as an excuse to cancel a class). Or A Family Wedding. Or A Family Tragedy. Or more plausibly: The hall is not available that day due to a death/ wedding/ tragedy/ scheduled gas leak. But no. I had to tell the truth. In a way that quoted the need to take advantage of "stepping stones of happiness" and "rainbows over valleys" and the fact that sometimes, for many people, life is like "clinging to a dinghy by one's fingernails in a sea of misery". I'm using quotation marks even though I'm not sure if these were the actual words and I'm too embarrassed to go back and read what I wrote in order to copy and paste. Anyway. You get the picture. I'm supposed to be teaching them baby signing, not trying to play with their psyches. Jeez. I don't know how I'm going to face my Saturday class this week...

Maybe this is why I have to start writing properly. Otherwise it will come out in other, ever more mortifyingly shocking ways. Right. Now I'm supposed to be zapping but it's too late. Tomorrow is another day. Instead I will make a hot chocolate and read a bit more of The Pregnant Widow. I must finish that damn book and return it to the library. And renew it tomorrow. I'm so sick of seeing it lying around. And to write, you have to read. Those called "They" are said to say.

Goodnight. x