writer's block and house prices

Day four of the blog and this big empty white square on the screen has been glaring at me accusingly for about ten minutes, no doubt wondering whether anything will be imparted. I'm anthropomorphising a website dialogue box so that can't be a good sign.

A lovely house, a while on the market, has had its asking price reduced. Can we afford it? Who knows..? It depends on whether a buyer can be found for the flat, how generous that buyer feels at the time and, more desperately, whether the (no doubt forthcoming) book deal brings a flood of untold riches.

Anyway, the house is great but the location is potentially rubbish. We are discussing testing it by finding a volunteer to walk around late on Saturday night (around ten past eleven ought to do it), braying into something that looks like an iPhone and carrying something that looks expensive. Mind you, it'll probably rain tomorrow night which would invalidate the findings.

Speaking of rubbish, the new kitchen bin still hasn't arrived. The replacement, nearly three years ago, of our old Brabantia pedal bin by a gleaming, brushed steel SimpleHuman bin was a day of joy. No more would the disposal of kitchen scrapings be announced by the harsh clang of the lid closing. Instead, a smooth glide and a soft clunk would reassure that the smell would be kept in.

Well, that was the case until a couple of weeks ago when the hinge went all squiffy and the lid went all wobbly and clang-bang-wallop ensued. To my amazement, a simple email to SimpleHuman elicited a promise to replace the entire unit free of charge due to the surprisingly generous ten year warranty. But the replacement is yet to arrive and we are now outside the seven-to-ten-days. Maybe it was working days. The clanging continues.

We need a good bin in order to collect an aspirational price for the flat. We could even risk the wrath of the taxman by trying to sell the bin separately for a few thousand quid as a stamp duty work-around.

This plan, however, is probably contingent on the bin being new and fully functioning and also on my being a famous published author, thus endowing a potential receptacle for my rejected scribblings with a value far exceeding sensible expectation. Didn't Dickens sell his dustbin for a few thousand? Amis probably wouldn't even get out of bed to sign a bin unless he was paid a six-figure sum. Archer would be cheaper but one could argue that he never discarded any writing, just gathered up the off-cuts and put them in the next book of short stories. Oh dear - am I having a go at successful authors again?

While writing this, N has woken up and stridently complained that I didn't give her a good-night kiss. This is blatantly untrue but, to be fair, she was asleep at the time so may not have fully appreciated it. She then scrambled around the bed, retreating under duvet, turning suddenly, flailing around as though drumming up business for the dentist. I could almost believe she was trying to prevent another loving fatherly kiss from being bestowed and thereby, in half-asleep infant logic, proving herself right.