| Imaginary Friends |
[May. 13th, 2008|08:39 am] |
Here's a look at the cover art for this forthcoming anthology (Sept 2nd 2008) from DAW/Tekno Books. My story in it is called 'Walking Shadows' and working with the editors John Marco and Martin H Greenberg has been a pleasure.
I'm really looking forward to seeing the other stories, since part of the fun of writing for a themed anthology is finding out just what other authors made of the same idea!
(It's already listed on amazon.com but amazon.co.uk don't seem to know if they'll be carrying it as yet) |
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| Moving onwards and hopefully upwards |
[May. 11th, 2008|11:54 am] |
So, the sons come home from school on Friday and I'm hot, tired, headachy and have generally Had Enough.
Only husband is due to be going to Pinner Aikido Club that evening as a guest instructor and I'm due to go with him. Another of our club members is giving us a lift (the aikido plumber as it happens) and boy-minding arrangements have been made. It's just going to be more hassle to say I'm not going and have to change arrangements, make explanations and all that kindathing. OK, I conclude, I just have to grit my teeth and get through it.
Y'know what? I had a great time. An hour and a half in the car with cheerful folk who hadn't had the same kind of week as me proved a really good way to unwind. We were warmly welcomed by Pinner Aikido, who were ever so keen to see what husband Steve had to show them. I got to practise with new people including other black belts. This meant I got to compare and contrast my aikido with theirs - one of the interesting things about aikido is the variation on technique that develops to suit different physiques and intentions. So we discussed the pros and cons of different approaches .
Then we all went down the pub and drank beer and chatted about aikido, life, the universe and everything. Got home in the small hours of the morning feeling thoroughly cheerful.
Then had younger son bring me tea in bed (at a civilised hour) on Saturday morning, by way of an excuse to ask with curiosity coloured with just a hint of disapproval, 'just what time did you get back last night? Because I didn't hear you come in.'
I did try to explain why that made me laugh but I don't think he quite got it. |
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| How soon can I have a new week please? |
[May. 9th, 2008|11:15 am] |
Bad news: I've just spent the last hour and more resolving internet connectivity problems hereabouts. I could really do without this in a week that's already been a disaster as far as productivity goes.
Good news: parents' evening yesterday was a series of teachers saying nice things about junior son and offering advice on how to improve on already impressive performance.
Bad news: the proceedings were thrown into considerable confusion by the fire alarm going off.
Good news: we did still make it to aikido class on time.
Bad news: my practise ended ten minutes early thanks to an inadvertent clash of heads. It was equally as much my fault as his. Given I'm the senior grade, that makes it all my fault.
Good news: I have an offer of some very interesting teaching work in June - that may well lead on to something even more interesting. Details to follow in due course.
So, overall, this week probably just inches into the plus column.
But I would really, really like one with fewer peaks and troughs next, if you please. |
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| Life is just too short for small-minded, self-important jobsworths. |
[May. 7th, 2008|01:39 pm] |
So, I'm in town doing banking and such admin and I get a call on my mobile from the school nurse saying senior son is down with what she's diagnosing as a migraine.
Okay, since I'm passing Boots the Chemist on the way from the bank to carpark, I stop in and explain to the lass on the pharmacy counter that I've just had this call, that we've nothing stronger than ibruprofen in the house, so what can she sell me without prescription that will help my son? She refers me to the duty pharmacist - fair enough.
Who refuses to sell me anything because I am not the patient and I cannot describe his symptoms. I explain that the school nurse has diagnosed a migraine. No, he's not prepared to sell me anything without seeing the patient himself. This is for my own protection, he says patronisingly. I say I find his attitude astonishingly unhelpful and walk away. Because if I stayed, well, fill in the expletives for yourself.
I have collected pale and throwing up son from school and he's lying down in a darkened room. I've attempted to ring the local branch of Boots to make a formal complaint but all the listed number gives me is a range of options that connect me to answerphones.
Well, that'll be a formal letter of complaint to head office then.
Thankfully I have found some paracetamol and codeine left over from the last time I had dental work done, and they're still well in date, so he's had some of those.
*addendum* Going online to find out who to write a complaint to, I find Head Office's customer care number. So I've rung them and told an audibly astonished customer service person all about it. She apologised profusely, took all my details, a description of the pharmacist since I hadn't made a note of his name, and the complaint is going to the Pharmacy Superintendent. Heh.
*addendum secundum* Had a call from very nice Scots lady Lorraine in the Pharmacy Superintendent's office. Her first concern was to establish I had managed to get some painkillers for son and to offer useful advice on migraines, rehydration and such. Did you know you can de-bubble soft drinks by giving them a minute in a microwave, to make them easier on a queasy stomach? No, neither did I.
As to my experience in the shop, they'd also been unable to get through to the branch by phone, so that's something they're looking into. Having called the pharmacy dept direct, it turns out Mr Officious Pharmacist is a temp doing holiday cover and the actual branch head of pharmacy was on her lunch break. Not that they're offering that as an excuse, she assures me.
It has been explained to Mr Officious Pharmacist that a high percentage of people asking for advice and medicaments will be doing this on behalf of other people who cannot come into the shop, not least because they're simply too ill. A lot of those people won't be able to describe the someone else's symptoms particularly well. If for whatever reason he wasn't prepared to accept my assurance that the school nurse had diagnosed a migraine, there was still a choice of painkillers that he could reasonably have sold me, together with the necessary cautions and advice on migraines - and what to look out for in case it wasn't a migraine but something more serious. This is the level of customer service that Boots expects to provide.
Am I satisfied with this, asks Lorraine? Can we consider this complaint dealt with? Certainly, I assure her. The call wraps up with thanks on both sides etc.
Hopefully this has been a more valuable learning experience for Mr Pharmacist than me swearing inventively at him on the shopfloor would have been.
Son has had a sleep, is now sitting up, had something to drink (which hasn't reappeared) and overall looks a good deal better. |
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| Good news, bad news |
[May. 6th, 2008|09:29 am] |
Good news. Self, sons and husband went to see Iron Man in the cinema yesterday. Excellent fun, and yes, we did stay to the end of the credits. Mind you, we normally do.
Bad news. Came home to find water dripping through the ceilings of both sons' bedrooms. Turns out the fittings where the mains cold water supply goes into the attic tank have been slowly corroding and leaking. This was the day the fibreglass insulation reached saturation point and dirty, mouldy water came through the plasterboard.
Good news. We renovated our previous house ourselves, being penniless not-yet-weds. Thus husband has the tools, the skills, ptfe tape and the tin of miscellaneous bits of pipe, joints and salvaged stopcocks to deal with such crises. I played my customary part as the 'stand there, hold this, pass me that' member of the team.
Bad news. So, the grand redecorating and recarpeting plan now includes replacing and replastering two ceilings. They're still there, but will not be salvageable. And a fair amount of plumbing work will be necessary to solve underlying problems stemming from everything being done on the cheap when the house was built. Husband spent a goodly while on the phone discussing matters with one of our aikido club who happens to be a plumber. He's going to fit us in asap - for the going rate obviously. Him sorting out a dodgy tap for us as a favour is one thing. This is a whole different scale of thing.
Good news. At least we hadn't already done the grand redecorating and recarpeting.
Bad news. Finding a plasterer round here who's free in the next six months is currently nigh on impossible. All the houses that flooded last summer have now dried out sufficiently for new plastering to begin.
Good news. Um. Sure there's some somewhere. Beyond the obvious like, at least we don't live in Burma. But this morning started at 5.30 am with senior son having a catastrophic nosebleed, and another during breakfast.
(I originally typed 'over breakfast' but then my brain caught up with my typing and I got the visual - urgh)
So. An admin day today, I suspect, since I don't think the creativity thing is going to be happening overly much. |
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| Gamekeeper's gibbet |
[May. 2nd, 2008|05:58 pm] |
You know what I'm talking about? A fence or a tree with dead crows, weasels and such nailed to it, supposedly to deter other so-called vermin from preying on m'lords pheasants.
I could really do with a good literary reference to one of these, ideally from some well-known author like Hardy or Dickens or such. Less immediately well-known writers perfectly acceptable, mind you.
Explanations in due course. |
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| Email conquers the Atlantic |
[Apr. 29th, 2008|12:41 pm] |
As regular readers of most authors' blogs will know - at least, of those authors who are UK resident and published in the US - some production departments of some US publishers seem to think the Atlantic Ocean is as mythical as anything in Middle Earth.
Hence the tales of unheralded packages of page-proofs arriving, needing to be turned around instantly if there's any chance of them getting posted back across the Atlantic to meet the enclosed deadline. Long time ago, such a situation saw me taking page proofs on holiday and working through the night before going in search of a copy shop and a post office in remotest Derbyshire.
Today's post brings me some page proofs with a deadline of 1st May. Thankfully it's a short story and even more thankfully, there's an email address. Phew. Mind you, that's my plans for the afternoon binned.
Hey ho, all part of life's rich tapestry in this writing game. At least they didn't arrive last week when I was dealing with the copy edit. |
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| Alt.fiction, Derby |
[Apr. 27th, 2008|12:54 pm] |
Now in its third year, this was (another) excellent event, with a good turn-out of fans/readers/aspiring writers, familiar and new, and a nice mix of known and new faces among the other writers/editors/agents etc present.
And I could relax and enjoy myself since I finished up the copy edit of Irons in the Fire at lunch-time Friday - hurrah.
So I had some useful professional-related conversations as well as some interesting readerly conversations. Did a couple of good panels with Sarah Ash and Chaz Brenchley, along in the first instance with Brian Ruckley, on world building. Not met Brian before but very pleased to do so. We had an interesting chat amongst ourselves and with the audience that *wasn't* the usual World-building 101. Later me, Sarah and Chaz tackled Innovation vs Expectation in Fantasy, with Stephen Hunt, who I have met before and was thus delighted to improve my acquaintance with. Another interesting discussion ensued.
Being in the audience, I heard Graham Joyce, Michael Marshall Smith and John Jarrold offer excellent advice to would-be writers, and later, Graham and MMS tackled screen-writing, along with Philip Palmer - a writer I'm aware of but not as yet met/read. Both things I intend to rectify, after hearing him talk a good deal of common sense with a wryly Welsh sense of humour.
Drove home rather than staying over - a decision that could have gone either way. An evening's chat and socialising would have been lovely. But coming home does mean I have all of Sunday at home with the family - and er, the ironing.
Already looking forward to alt.fiction 2009! |
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| Life in True Blue Tory Oxfordshire |
[Apr. 27th, 2008|12:46 pm] |
Okay, so I live in Friendly Dave Cameron's constituency. I have come to terms with that. I don't have to like it but hey, that's just the way it is.
But every so often something winds up my inner socialist. I was heading off to Derby for Alt.Fiction yesterday (of which more later) and took the back way to the motorway. Stopping in one of the villages to top up with fuel, I thought I'd buy a paper to read today, Sunday. As is usual nowadays, the filling station serves as the village shop.
So, I could see the Daily Malice, The Torygraph and the array of Murdoch Press Fish-wrappers. Rather puzzled, I pay for my fuel and ask the studenty lad behind the counter, 'Don't you sell The Guardian?'
Halfway between shame-faced and exasperated he explains, 'We only get one copy and that's reserved.'
And presumably handed over in a plain brown wrapper, so the local radical can remain under cover?
Or, as my husband remarked when I told him about this, perhaps it's actually for the local Head Tory, so he can keep tabs on the lefty enemy thinking?
grrrrrr |
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| Back home and back to work |
[Apr. 22nd, 2008|05:13 pm] |
What I didn't say in my last, hurried post was we were spending the second week of the Spring Holiday in Berlin. A very interesting city, on all sorts of levels. As has become our usual practise for family trips, we stayed in an apartment-hotel, which meant we had two bedrooms, a lounge, kitchen and bathroom all for less than the price of two hotel rooms. In this instance, we were staying with HSH, which I can heartily recommend.
We did a goodly amount of things; the excellent zoo, a good city bus tour that took us around the main sight-seeing highlights, the Technical Museum (most interesting even to the non-engineer/design and technology student of the family i.e. me), the Schloss Charlottenburg (most interesting even to the non-historians of the family i.e. the rest of them), the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie museum, the German Historical Museum, and yes, we went up the Fernsee Turm (TV tower). Even on a rather grey day, the view was astonishing.
I dusted off my schoolgirl German and managed to make myself understood well enough. I got a lot more fluent and confident with each passing day. For a change, people didn't assume I was Swedish as has happened previously. The only person to venture a guess, a waitress, assumed we were Irish. This was a bit of a surprise. Then we realised I had paid cash, including coinage, when we'd been in that restaurant earlier in the week, so the change in my purse will have included Irish euro.
I could diligently add the links to all those sights, and go into a lot more detail besides, but I have come back with the copy edit of Irons in the Fire needing dealing with pretty much instantly this week and there's a fair amount of other stuff to sort out, notably The Write Fantastic's calendar for the rest of the year. Oh and a couple of reviews to do. And Derby's Alt.fiction day on Saturday...
So I shall get back to it. Definitely refreshed for a change of scene and a week of family DVD-watching of an evening and reading absolutely nothing to do with work. |
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| 'Nother quick update |
[Apr. 10th, 2008|06:07 pm] |
Just to say, me being the speaker at the Hertfordshire county library service training day went with a swing. My talk was apparently just what they wanted - hurrah.
And as we did a tour of the various discussion groups, lively discussions were indeed in evidence - about their sample reading list, about what I had said and such evergreen topics as 'but comics are just for kids, aren't they?'
Less fun was the crash on the M1 which put an extra two hours on my journey home. Not that I was using the M1, but the motorway had to be closed which meant all the surrounding roads which I was using gridlocked solid. No, there wasn't an alternate route. I had the map book in the car and believe me, I was looking for one.
Ho hum. So the things I was planning to do this afternoon will now happen tomorrow with consequent knock-on effects for what I had planned for tomorrow - and there's the lads on holiday to contend with. This is our 'spring holiday' what with our local LEA having abandoned Easter some years ago.
So expect something like normal service to resume, oh, Monday 21st April, when the aforesaid sons head back to school. |
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| A quick update |
[Apr. 4th, 2008|10:41 am] |
Just to say, the lack of a post by now saying how very much I enjoyed P-Con V in Dublin last weekend is not coz I didn't.
Okay, just to untangle that rather convoluted syntax, I really, really did enjoy P-Con V - what with interesting panels, the chance to chat to assorted pals who I'd waved to and passed in corridors at Orbital, plus the chance to catch up other pals, make new ones and improve my acquaintance with C E Murphy, her husband and Oisin McGann among others.
P-Con VI next year is already looking like a winner, since the GoH will be Paul Cornell and we'll also see Liz Williams and Chaz Brenchley over there for the first time. Yey!
But for some reason, about a week's worth of stuff needing doing urgently landed here in on the Friday/Monday while I was travelling and that's been taking up all my time.
Now I'm working on the presentation I'm giving next Thursday as keynote speaker at Hertfordshire County Libraries Staff Training Day. Explaining why SF&F is A Good Thing, what with it being National Year of Reading.
This is taking more time than I expected. Not on account of lack of material. But what with the necessity to keep it down to 45 minutes. I mean, there's just soooo much I could say by way of explanation and recommendation.
Oh and I'm also tackling a powerpoint thingy to go with it. Which has meant asking for my twelve-year old son's help, since I've never used the wretched software before and he has been using it since upper juniors at primary school. Needless to say, he's finding this highly amusing - and actually, so am I, when I hear echoes of my own voice coming from him as he patiently explains something to me.
Right, back to it! |
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| Irons in the Fire |
[Mar. 27th, 2008|02:01 pm] |
There's a lot going on here, so that's an appropriate title for a post. It's also now officially the title for the first book of the Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution.
Phew. Glad that's settled. I shall now get on with writing the second book, Blood in the Water. In the meantime, here's a look at the cover art for Irons in the Fire.
And I've seen the sketch for the second cover which promises to be another cracking piece of work from David Palumbo.
You can see the picture in more detail here on my website. I've also done a few other updates, notably to the diary page.
Aspiring writers may be interested to know I'll be running a workshop at the Winchester Writers Conference (27th-29th June) this year.
The Write Fantastic diary is shaping up to be an exciting one as we're discussing a whole slew of activities to promote SF&F as part of the National Year of Reading. Details to follow in due course.
And now I had better get stuff ready for heading off to Dublin first thing tomorrow morning for P-Con V! |
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| Eastercon 2008 - Orbital |
[Mar. 26th, 2008|11:38 am] |
Overall, an excellent convention and the biggest Eastercon in – well, I’m hearing ‘ever’. Speaking as one who’s been involved in organising conferences etc for work and fun, I really do know just how much intense advance hard work and behind the scenes activity will have gone on to achieve that. Everyone involved in the event deserves hearty congratulations and sincerest thanks.
All the Guests of Honour were working their socks off – being entertaining, informative and amiable in their very different and yet wonderfully complementary ways. No, sorry, I must not get into writing up detailed reports – I just don’t have time what with getting over to Dublin for P-Con this weekend. Suffice it to say Neil Gaiman’s readings and remarks were an unobtrusive education in what makes him such an outstanding author. China Mieville took on the ‘but it’s just a story’ objection to literary criticism and reduced it to smoking rubble. Charlie Stross wowed us all with insights into where technology is going – without leaving the non-techie like me either utterly at sea or patronised for feeling dumb. Not an easy trick. Tanith Lee was, as ever, a delight.
And there was so much else! Bryan Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland presentation – wow! Panels on comics and criticism and religion and ancient history and oh, lots more – all good meaty stuff for debate that saw plenty of laughs as well. Plus the things that big conventions can offer - the Twilight Zone play and Mitch Benn’s entertainment. As has been mentioned before on this blog, Mitch Benn is a rock god. And money raised for good causes, notably research into Alzheimer's Disease and oesophageal cancer, thanks to the splendid generosity of good-willed folk.
My twelve year old son came along - his first ‘proper’ convention - and he had an absolutely splendid time. He went to panels with and without me – and by Sunday, apparently, was chipping in with contributions. Politely, I am assured. Phew. He also tackled Battling Daleks, Stargate Crazy Golf and the K9 Agility Challenge – coming second in the first two and winning the last, quite possibly through sheer force of determination. I can report that the cool points at school for now having two giant inflatable champagne bottles and a similarly inflatable trophy are incalculable. And he got to see Mitch Benn live. From about four feet, actually, since he grabbed us seats in the very front row. And he got talked to by Mitch Benn – well, to be fair, the aforesaid giant inflatable trophy was a bit eye-catching!
As ever, the only downside was not actually getting to talk more to folk I’d have liked to have a conversation with. And then there are the folk I never did get to talk to, just passing them with a wave in the corridors. But that’s just life and conventions – and email is the answer there, once we’ve all caught up on our sleep. On the plus side, I had a good many of those unforeseen and hugely rewarding conversations with entirely new people that make a big convention such fun.
So that was Eastercon 2008. Just as soon as I know when the school holidays fall in 2010, we can start making plans for coming along to Odyssey 2010.
Hopefully we’ll be along for at least some of Eastercon 2009 – that’s a bit more problematic as senior son will be coming up to his GCSE exams this time next year so there will be revision and revision classes to be factored into the family holiday and travel equations.
( One final note on my panel programme over the weekend – and on programming generally - for those who are curious ) |
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| On blogging and publishing - variously |
[Mar. 18th, 2008|11:04 am] |
Good grief, that went off with a bang, didn't it? The whole Robin Hobb Blogging Rant and the Rants in Reply. Check my flist - and just about any other SF&F writer's - for proof and a whole gamut of responses.
Not for the first time Neil Gaiman encapsulates the whole debate with a great deal of common sense on March 15th. (You'll have to scroll down a bit)
In other news, I have spent the past few days under the cosh of a vile cold. I really do hope that's the last one of the season - and at least it's out of the way before Eastercon and P-Con the weekend after.
In the meantime, I came across this very good article in UK independent publishers. Worth reading for anyone still musing on the whole business of strategies to cope with the current hostile market conditions. |
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| Robin Hobb on blogging |
[Mar. 13th, 2008|09:23 am] |
read it and - weep/chuckle/look thoughtful*
Delightfully tongue in cheek while containing more than a grain of truth.
So I shall leave it at that and get back to the typeface.
*delete as appropriate |
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| "The free-thinking reader is not dead, but found online" |
[Mar. 7th, 2008|10:00 am] |
So says Stephen Page, Chief Exec of Faber & Faber in The Guardian yesterday. According to him, "as most book publishers bow to bestsellers and celebrity culture, serious literature can still thrive thanks to the internet."
An interesting article, especially in light of that marketing/retailing analysis piece I posted a while back.
He concludes"The industry is closer now to a tipping point that would see a dramatic reduction in range, a shortening of writers' careers, and a reading culture that errs towards mass forms of entertainment alone. Perhaps one day the ebook will play some role in this, but for now hope lies in the new technology-spawned networks and print technologies that give oxygen to diversity, resulting in demand that allows online and range-holding booksellers to thrive."
And thus we see, not for the first time, that SF&F is out there well ahead of the curve! |
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| Diary update - Ireland |
[Mar. 6th, 2008|08:49 am] |
Chapters bookshop on Parnell Street, Dublin 1, have organised a signing event on Friday 28 March with three of us authors who will be attending this year’s P-CON SF Convention, which takes place that weekend in the Central Hotel in Exchequer Street, Dublin 2.
The authors signing include C.E. Murphy, the convention’s Guest of Honour, excellent writer and highly entertaining company; Oisín McGann, very talented chap who's a dastardly opponent at Pictionary, and myself.
The signing will take place from 6.30pm to 7.30pm, after which all parties involved will be going over to the Central Hotel for the official launch of P-CON at 8.00pm.
So if you can't make the convention, come along and say hello. |
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| Talking sense on Print on Demand |
[Feb. 28th, 2008|02:12 pm] |
Over at Shelf Awareness today, there's a very good article about Print on Demand by Robert Gray, who's been talking to Ken Arnold, who's a chap who's setting up a new publishing venture and who knows exactly what he's up against. "I suspect you are right about the low-bar syndrome as a precondition for bookseller and reviewer suspicion of POD publishers. And the market has been flooded with self-published and subsidized merchandise. An easy response to the sheer quantity is to reject an entire category that has proved to be too often full of defective goods.
"On the other hand, he notes that university presses and other publishers already take advantage of POD's economy of scale to keep titles in print, "and that seems to be a real solution to a problem that's been around a long time. Hittite grammar is not a popular subject, but a few people need it. Entire areas of scholarly research are moribund because there are no publishers who can afford to carry the results of academic research."
And, as we see in genre fiction, PoD is an obvious way for authors to give their own out of print titles a new lease of life for their dedicated fans.
I'm keeping a copy of the whole article and a note of the archived url for the next time some hopeful aspiring writer emails asking for my advice about getting reviews and/or publicity for their first self/subsidy/vanity published novel.
I got one of these just this week. It does feel brutal to reply that their biggest problem is going to be the near-zero credibility of such efforts, referring them on to Absolute Write, Preditors & Editors and Writer Beware so they don't have to take my word for it. But in all honesty, I just don't see an alternative. |
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| Pico-con-report |
[Feb. 26th, 2008|09:36 am] |
Saturday and Picocon at Imperial College was definitely a winner.
Paul Cornell was, as always, a class act; entertaining as well as informative on his life working in the different media of books, comics and TV script writing. He was also charmingly and inadvertently insulting to a few select folk, to general hilarity, includign among those he'd just dissed.
Liz Williams is an author I've been aware of in the general sense, without having ever met her or read her work (so many books, so little time etc) and from her bio it's clear she's an interesting person. So I was curious to see precisely what values of interesting might arise from 'runs a witchcraft supply shop in Glastonbury'. She proved to be one of those rare people who can balance a clear-sighted understanding of the practicalities of the book business with an bright-eyed and outward-looking imagination fuelling a passion for really creative writing. Younger son and I are agreed we must buy her forthcoming book The Shadow Pavilion so we find out what happens to the badger.
We're also itching to read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother after hearing him read from that. Again, Cory's someone I'm aware of (how can one not be?) but haven't previously encountered him personally. Very entertaining and someone with a mind, well, one could say 'like a razor,' but I find myself thinking more along the lines of a swiss army knife.
So as you might imagine, all three of these discussing why futurism sucks made for a fascinating and stimulating panel to round off the talks part of the event.
Beyond that, there was chatting to pals and catching up with news and there were tours of the new Imperial College SF Society library - now refurbished with splendid new shelving in its permanent home that other uni sf societies can only envy. There was the traditional destruction of dodgy merchandise and silly games (some involving fish...) and networked gaming for those so inclined. So younger (twelve year old) son had a fabulous time and I can console myself that if my rapidly silvering hair means I'm definitely part of the greying of fandom, at least I'm doing my bit for Fandom:TNG. We're currently discussing whether or not he gets to come to EasterCon for a day.
Elder son and husband were enjoying their own day at home with their respective computer games. I did ring in at lunchtime to remind husband that son did need to source some materials for his biology class this week - namely an animal heart for dissection.
husband: where's he going to get a heart?
self: try Bakers the Butchers in the Woolgate
(it gets a bit Lancrastian in the Cotswolds)
husband: OK (not missing a beat) and do they sell brains and courage as well or do we have to go somewhere else for those?
People do look at you curiously when you burst out laughing while making a phone call in a Starbucks.
Anyway, back to work now! |
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