Hallsfoot, lunch and a rambunctious rabble

Took a while to get into Hallsfoot's Battle this morning - but suddenly in the last half hour before I had to leave I was there. In that skin-tingly zone where the writing is okay and even almost flowing. Ye gods indeed. Lordy, but it's so good when that happens. Ideas were zipping their way from the head to the fingertips and I knew how to end the scene and start the conflict. Ruddy hurrah! It's thrown up a whole load of other ideas and themes for the rest of the book too, but hell that's the way I like it. It's best to have too much in the head than too little. Here's hoping I can remember at least some of it, eh. Anyway, I'm at 29,000 words now and might even reach 30,000 over the weekend. That's about a quarter of a fantasy novel then. Heck. Somebody phone for an ambulance - I need a lie-down.

I've also - gosh! - had even more parcel excitements today. I came home yesterday, collected my first parcel from the opposite neighbour and then found yet another City Link delivery notification card in the post. This time, it told me this second parcel had been taken back to the Guildford depot so I braved the automated telephone response system again - much easier with the consignment number, you know ... - and spent ten minutes pressing the correct numbers in order to be able to pick it up from Guildford myself today. However, this morning as I was in the bath (typical! typical!), they delivered it anyway and the middle neighbour had to respond to the frantic knocking at the communal door and sign for it for me. All that in his dressing-gown too, Gawd bless 'im. But hey at least he was decently attired. If I'd attempted to answer the door, it would have been way too scary for the poor City Link man, I'm sure. Never do anything with unbrushed hair and a towel is a motto we like to live by here in the wilds of Surrey. Anyway, the upshot of all that is I now have a copy of Navkirat Sodhi's wonderful first poetry collection and I am thoroughly looking forward to reading it.

Oh, and The Book Depository believe my order of five copies of Maloney's Law has now officially gone missing, so they are nobly sending me a second order. Here's hoping Paul arrives here this time. Perhaps he just doesn't like the countryside, poor boy? It wouldn't surprise me. So my wait to have real-live copies of my novel that I can actually keep continues ...

Meanwhile I've had lunch out at the White Hart, Wood Street Village, with Robin & Liz, so fab girly chat, fab food and (mmm ...) lovely waiters. Hell, what more could women in their 40s ask for? It's like Pre-Menopausal Heaven (PMH for short). And the loos are magnificent too - though I could do with towels rather than the wretched air blower thingy that never does the job. Only a slight niggle in a glorious couple of hours though, so hell I'm not complaining.

Tonight, Lord H and I are out at the Mill Theatre in Guildford to see Moll Flanders. Now there's a woman with a Fine Pair of Lungs, as Lord H would say. We are promised "a rambunctious rabble of prostitutes and pickpockets, perverts and peers in an uproariously compelling tale of incest, bigamy and crime." So much like the plot of one of my own novels then. I can't wait.

Today's nice things:

1. Getting some steam going on Hallsfoot
2. Delivery of Navkirat's book
3. Lunch out with the womenfolk
4. The glorious Moll (Gawd bless 'er - and all who sail in 'er ...)

Anne Brooke
Anne's website