The wild social whirl and the beginnings of battle

Something of a social whirl day today, so I got up early and got down to getting another 1000 words of Hallsfoot's Battle into the pot. Which meant actually starting the big battle scenes, which I suspect will go on for some time and have a variety of different viewpoints in them. So that brings me safely into the 108,000 word range. I'm still a tad (well, more than a tad) worried about whether I'll be up to the task of making the concept of battle terrifying enough, particularly as I don't think war is my strong point, but I'll do the best I can and see what comes out - or goes in - during the edit. Thank God no-one ever sees the draft version, eh. That would be very frightening indeed. Even I can barely bring myself to read it.

This morning's meditation, meanwhile, is this:

Meditation 106

A vow
is like a pearl.

It belongs
to the man

who pays for it,
not to she

who wears it.

Talking of poetry, I'm very happy to say that Perpetual Magazine will be showcasing some of my work as part of their May/June Featured Poet slot, so that's good news indeed. Thank you, Russell!

Had a pub lunch out with Liz from the choir today, and we managed to find the last remaining pub in Godalming that actually does baguettes for lunch - which was wonderful news, but no doubt now I've said that they'll probably take them off the menu, dammit. Sigh. Had a great chat, and we were also joined for coffee (coffee, my dears - how very Surrey!) by another of her friends before doing a spot of shopping in the garden centre opposite the pub. Lordy, we are women of a certain age, aren't we? I even stocked up on my dwindling supply of Epsom salts for the bath, so that puts at least twenty years on me, to start with. I'll go and order my bathchair immediately ...

Tonight, I'm seeing Jane W in London for another chat and catch-up session so, as I said, it's one wild social whirl today. I have carved out a day tomorrow though where I don't have to talk to anyone apart from Lord H, so there's time to recover at least. I don't want to get too excited after all, not with my rapidly advancing years.

And I've been gravely disappointed in Leslie Marshall's novel, A Girl Could Stand Up. Quite, quite dreadful, my dears. I think it thought it was cleverer than it really was, but to be honest it had absolutely no charm and very little plot. Oh and some very dull characters to boot. I cared not a jot for any of them. The girl, Elray, is the only survivor of a freak accident that kills her parents at the start of the book, and I then spent 400 pages or so wishing that she'd died too and wondering if in fact her parents had arranged it all simply in order to escape. I could not find it in my heart to blame them. On the front cover, no less a literary icon than Edmund White says it's "the best first novel I've read in years" - which leads me to think that he hasn't read many first novels in a long, long time. The trouble is it's trying to be surreal when it doesn't know how, it's trying to be a novel when it should be a piece of flash fiction and it's trying to be literary when it's simply languid. Enough said already. Don't buy it.

Today's nice things:

1. Meandering along with Hallsfoot
2. Poetry
3. Being a future featured poet, well gosh!
4. Lunch out with friends
5. Dinner out with Jane W.

Anne Brooke
Anne's website - less of a party animal than she evidently appears