Mighty fine edit and the strangeness of Godalming

Have spent most of the day editing Mark Wagstaff's The Canal for Mighty Erudite. He's a really wonderful writer - so dark and bitter, and so very "London". I love it. And he's polished it so much that the edit is delightful. I'm about halfway through now, so should get it finished by early next week. Then it'll be back to The Gifting Part Two of Four.

This afternoon, I popped into see my recuperating friend and stayed for chat and tea. She's got follow-up tests next week, so here's hoping all is well. On the way home, I decided to get some shopping done in Godalming - which is obviously having a funny five minutes and deep, deep within the twilight zone. I was walking innocently down the High Street on my way to Waitrose (well, I'd got my posh accent on, so I thought they wouldn't chuck me out ...) when some idiot driver ploughed his car into the pavement barrier and instead of stopping he just kept on driving. He ended up knocking the whole barrier down, managing to turn the car just enough to keep on the road rather than mowing us all down on the pavement, bursting his front tyre and yet still dragging the barrier posts along the High Street. M'dear, it was wonderfully dramatic for a Friday in downtown Surrey! And so loud! A brave shopkeeper flagged him down, even though he wasn't really going very fast - not with that tyre - at which point there was a bit of argy-bargy before the driver agreed to wait for some kind of officialdom to turn up.

Deciding that the five or six people getting involved near the car was probably enough for the poor bloke, I continued on my way to Waitrose. Once I'd purchased the required posh item (which I can't talk about as it's a gift for Lord H's upcoming birthday - sorry), I stood in the queue at the till and a lady with a large trolley and a very small pink baby came and stood behind me. She loaded her stuff up behind me, then tutted and ... um ... walked off. Leaving the baby still in the shopping trolley. On its own. There was nobody behind her in the queue and nobody else with her. The cashier and I couldn't believe it. We stared at each other and then at the baby. The woman was gone for about four minutes. Isn't it lucky I'm not an evil childnapper prepared to act on the astonishing opportunity provided to sell the pink baby into the white slave trade?!? Eventually the woman came back, totally unfazed, with her forgotten item and just carried on. It was on the tip of my tongue to say something sharp yet fair but, dahlings, this is Surrey, and Waitrose, and we don't do that kind of thing. But heck I'm not a mother and I can't stand children, but even I would have picked up the child and carried it with me if I'd forgotten something! I don't know - do people not read the news at all?...

As a final flourish to my day, on the way home, I was passed by two frantic police cars hot-footing it to Godalming, all sirens blaring. Hmm, were they after Barrier Destruction Man or Pink Baby Woman? The plot thickens ... Perhaps indeed the two incidents are linked and Barrier Man was in fact the baby's father desperately trying to get to Waitrose, no matter what obstacles stood in his way, in order to retrieve his child stolen by an obsessive shopper with a penchant for pink? I fear I might be in the middle of a particularly surreal episode of "Midsomer Murders". I shall wait for Inspector Barnaby to come knocking.

Tonight, I shall do the cleaning and perhaps a little more editing. And it's pizza, garlic bread and ice cream night. What could be nicer?

Today's nice things:

1. Editing
2. Chatting to friends
3. Godalming peculiarities.

Anne Brooke
Anne's website
Goldenford Publishers