(That Your Chequebook Be Not Closer To Hand)
I have 50 white A4 envelopes.
I have 50 brown A5 envelopes (for returns).
I have stamps.
I have a story.
I have the entire afternoon to bring these ingredients together in a beautiful melánge, to blend and polish, to create and spin my little beauties off into the world.
I've done two, and now I'm bored. I see, finally, why printing speed is such an important spec when choosing a printer...
Have Just Got Back From...
I have returned from Alice's, after a great weekend, prolonged by a night by the winds. I got up at 0530 with her and the rest of her family to get a lift to Winchester station, from where she and her Dad commute to London daily.
OH MY GOD I'M TIRED!
How the hell do people do that, for a week let alone twenty years? I'm very, very impressed. I know there's so much of it that can be made easier by going to bed earlier, getting into a rhythm, routine, acceptance and a quality, non-ticking alarm clock, but still.
I am in awe.
Stuff I'm up to
Reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I know. I read the first two books on Friday. I avoided reading them for this long out of a streak of Pratchett-loyalty, and also the well-founded fear that I would become a Pottergeek.
***(Just made that word up - if it gets into the New Year Edition Dictionaries, I want a mention)***
Love them or hate them, the books are astoundingly well written, reinforcing my belief that the difference between a great writer and even a good writer is something that it's impossible to teach. You could give a similar 'magic-school' scene to JK Rowling and say, Jill Murphy (the successful to a 'pre-Potter' degree author of The Worst Witch) and, I don't think anyone will disagree, both would know which bits to write down to convey the scene well, and Rowling would do it in a way that would, grammatically and taken down to nuts and bolts English seem only slightly different to Murphy. Read them, however, and not only will Rowling have included the details that paint the scene for you, but she's missed out exactly all the bits you need to get the scene, too. The gaps are exactly the right size and shape for your imagination, if you get my drift.
I'll stop now.
Also read: Georges Simenon: Maigret Sets A Trap (top-flight Fench detective fiction), The first two Potter books...
Listening To:The Message: The Roots of Rap (various)
See y'around, kids...
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