Shops, hoods and Bones

Sound the trumpets, people, but Lord H and I have actually done the sales today. Huzzah indeed!! How very brave and British we are. I mean no other ruddy country gets themselves up and into a crowded town in order to get an item you probably wouldn't have bought in the first place at full price, do they? Or am I missing the point?

And, really, it has been a sales experience of two halves. Total failure for Lord H who managed to buy one item only: a rodent repeller, as we fear there is the scamper of tiny feet in the neighbour's attic (which due to the layout of the house is actually next door to our living room). Unless of course the neighbour has taken to running round the attic very, very lightly, whilst scrabbling at the skirting board. I would not put it past them ...

However, set against that, I have done relatively well - buying three male shirts from Marks & Spencer which will suit me fine (the colours are so much nicer than girly pastels, you know), and two pairs of earrings from All That Glitters. I even tried on a pair of trousers in Debenhams, but was so shocked that the Size 14 was too large for me (did you get that? - it was too large) that I walked out in astonishment without trying the Size 12s. Which I know would have been too small and the moment of triumph would have been lost. Best to quit while you're ahead, eh.

I've also visited my hospital friend, who is doing better than the surgeons expected in that (a) she's still alive and (b) she's not likely to die in the foreseeable future as far as they can tell. Double huzzahs! Always good to have a Christmas miracle in the here and now. Though it's still a long road and she'll be in hospital for weeks and weeks yet, I think. However, the two of us agreed that we don't much mind long roads provided they don't lead to wooden boxes they take you out in. Now there's a philosophy for life. Also, extra nice news - which shows that even my own natural cruelty can be turned to the good on occasion: I took along Mother's dreadful Christmas present (the red thermal hood-with-scarf) in order to give Hospital Friend a jolly good laugh, but she loved it so much that I have donated it to her. We did the mirror test and it certainly suits her a zillion times better than it suited me! So I'm glad it's gone to a deserving home.

Talking of home, back at the ranch, I have been fiddling away with The Bones of Summer and have even added another 1000 words to it, thus taking me to 58,000 words and the vague knowledge of what my next scene actually is (a rare event, I promise you). Which means that I might even get to my magical figure of 60,000 before the end of the year, depending on how things go over the next few days. Which was the figure I'd promised myself I'd get to by then - thus proving how desperately anal I am about word counts even when I've promised myself some relaxation. Lordy, is it time for my pills yet, nurse?

Tonight, Lord H and I will be watching TV until our eyes fall out. Well, it's good to have a hobby - though I suspect we will have to resort to DVDs, as there's absolutely bloody nothing on TV!

Oh, and I've just finished reading Jodi Picoult's Mercy. It's very different from her others, having elements of magic realism in it and starting off with way too many characters and sudden turns of sexual fortune (hey, there's a phrase I can conjure with). But in the end I quite liked it. Though the hero, Cam, is a bloody selfish bugger, and James should have smothered him rather than the wife at the start. Would have saved a lot of angst later really. I loved Allie though, but have no idea what she was doing with that tosser, Cam. She deserved better. That said, Picoult is the utter page-turner of page-turners so naturally I'll be reading her next paperback, whenever it turns up.

Today's nice things:

1. A Size 14 item of clothing being too large for me (did I mention that?)
2. Finding a home for that hood
3. Writing.

Anne Brooke
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Goldenford Publishers