...and so, after the thirteenth posting had sounded, he did look back at his work and consider that knocking out two pieces on the same day, while in a slightly picky and mean-spirited mood, might not have been the best way to create great art, or even slightly readable writing.
So I took yesterday off to recover and refocus and got talked into giving the URL of this blog to a friend and thereby got my first comment after what were probably the twelfth and thirteenth best entries. Thank you, Joan, for showing that I'm not just howling at the cold, spinning Californian servers - but please read one (or more, but all would probably be beyond the call of duty) of the other entries. They show the writing which I wanted to force myself to produce when I created this blog in the first place. No pressure, but if they aren't better than Tuesday's maelstrom of whinging, then I might as well give up now.
And it was tempting to stop writing after that last sentence.
(Incidentally, as an aside, I looked up 'whinging' on dictionary.com - no, not because I don't know what it means - I just wanted to see their attempt at a definition. And part way down the entry, it says, "To learn more about whinging, visit Britannica.com". It reminds me of the old joke that used to be in the Yellow Pages - if you looked up 'Boring', it said "See Civil Engineering". I couldn't resist checking and, I'm sorry to have to report, that joke has been exorcised. This means that the only remaining Yellow Pages joke is that, if you put the book upside down on your bookshelf, the logo on the spine looks like it's sticking two fingers up at you. The cartoon style means it is impossible to tell whether the gesture is Churchillian or Sex Pistollian and so must be left to the preference of the beholder.)
(And, to comment on my previous aside (I apologise if this appears to be becoming a regular occurrence), I did mean to say 'exorcised' rather than 'excised' since I am sure that the original joke must have been caused by a mischievous spirit.)
N is sleeping tonight under her own twinkling, twinkling little stars. We visited Smyths, a large toy shop which has, thankfully, not reached the level of 'Toys R Us', either in size of establishment or in speed of making its visitors long for death as a blessed release from twenty-first century consumerism. Having wandered around the shop, collecting a few small trinkets and trifles, I had paid before I remembered that we had only gone there to buy some fluorescent star stickers. The lady at the till not only knew what I meant when I asked if they had any but even went so far as to get up and lead me across the store to show me where they were. I would recommend the shop on that basis alone - the staff will bother to help a customer even if he only wants a product that costs £1.99. My only complaint is the name because, if you pronounce Smyths as Smiths, everyone will assume you mean WHSmiths and, if you pronounce it as Smythes, everyone will assume you mean WHSmith but are trying to sound posh. I see no way for them to get out of this quandary except to introduce some random letters in front of their name, as long as it doesn't end up so similar to WHSmith that it looks like a typo.
The stars are lovely and you get 350 for your £1.99. I've used about twelve of them so far. If only they had sold them by the dozen - that would have been about 7p. As it is, I've got 338 spare stickers which I can hide in bizarre locations to surprise people when the lights go out. Perhaps my wide readership could make suggestions?
Earlier today, we visited a toy exhibition at a local museum. The museum is warm and welcoming, closed on Fridays and for lunch, and has a shop selling items most of which cost less than 65p. The toys are a temporary fixture but are mostly to be played with and arranged across the floor of an upstairs room which leans at a slightly disquieting angle and has disturbingly precise warning signs stating that no more than fifteen people should occupy the room at any given time.
(It does not give guidelines for the maximum number of adults who may safely "do the timewarp" although, if anyone were to try it, I would suggest that they do not all stand in a line facing the same way for the opening jump to the left for fear that they may not get as far as the step to the right.)
The contrast between the beautifully crafted wooden toys of yesteryear and the gaudy plastic baubles of today was stark and saddening - although that might merely be a sign of my age. Can we, as a society, not afford wooden toys in bulk anymore or do the large chains merely not want to sell them to us?
Finally, in today's exciting installment, I feel that I should add a regular feature. I feel that I owe it to my public to state exactly what efforts I have made, since the last posting, to further my journey from the nadir of unpublishment to the Nadal of bestsellerhood. (I refer, obviously, to Rafael and not merely the Catalan word for Christmas.) Today it may have appeared to the untrained eye that I made neither progress nor effort and indeed that I did not spend even a few seconds contemplating this Fiennesian uphill struggle. (That would be Ranulph, not Ralph or Joseph and certainly not Geoffrey Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes).
It is unclear which will happen first - the untrained eye being wide of the mark (a metaphor best not literalised), the beginnings of a big push towards literary superstardom or the regular feature being axed.
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