My adoption of a 3310 instead of my usual iPhone has had some interesting side-effects: texting takes forever, for one, so I’m texting less. I can’t idly surf the net whenever I’m bored either, which is good. I can’t check for emails when I’m out, which is bracing. It takes up less space in my pocket and only needs charging once a week.
It’s stopped being a prop for my whirring mind and is becoming just a thing. A tool. Not even a very useful tool either.
I can happily leave it at home.
I’m supposed to send a promo picture to my agent.
Jackson took some for me, but I guess they weren’t good as he never got back to me. I had one selfie I took last year so I asked Lucas to use her tech-skills to erase the background junk (it was taken in my kitchen, and not in a cool ‘country homes and hounds’ sort of way) which she did.
But I don’t like looking at my face. It’s not that I dislike it, it’s just a normal face, but if I wanted to parade my features I’d be an actor, not a writer.
I wonder if it’s possible to hire a stand-in?
As mentioned multiple times previously, I suffer chronic migraines and I have to take a tablet every day to keep them at arm’s length. But I’m also an eternal optimist so every now and again I try and cut down on my daily dose, because the way the tablets make me feel is second only to the migraines in its crapness.
And then the migraines return, like they did yesterday, in their burning, flickering, head-twisting glory, so it’s back to full-strength tablets again.
Which feels quite nice really, if only I’d surrender to it.
The re-edit of DN1 is back with the agent now, along with four ideas for the next novel. Any of these follow-up ideas would work, so it’s a case of seeing which, if any, flick a switch with the the publisher.
I know which one would work best for me, but that doesn’t mean it’d make the best novel in terms of sales, or success.
I only know my favourite.
This month’s story is It’s Just the Sun Rising, which is very late, for which I have no excuse.
It’s also a key chapter in a forthcoming novel Shoreline Gold, due for completion in a year or so.
Been playing regularly with the Count – him singing and playing guitar, me on the sax, Miyagi, my battered old alto. Got a gig at a beer festival in a fortnight, so that should be fun.
Can’t practice at home though cos my pooch Angus howls at the first note.
Playing music with loud bands has made me a bit deaf, so I went to the doctor’s and he told me I had glue ear, I’d probably had it since I was a kid when I used to get a lot of ear and throat infections. My left eardrum is scarred too.
Might need grommets.
Here is good:
Of course, being back home after my three-day holiday, I now have to start laying the concrete base for my shed.
Which is going to be fun.
I like London.
Went down for a couple of days, and enjoyed it, visited the Tate and the V&A, and I enjoyed getting drunk in the Churchill Arms on Friday night. But it was hot, the air was dense with traffic fumes, and sitting on a crowded tube next to a young mum holding a screaming baby felt like an audition for some associate-level of hell.
Back in the north now it’s still hot, the sun is shining and the sky is blue, but I can feel the breeze coming off the North Sea.
I know which I prefer.
I’ve never had trouble sleeping, I can sleep anywhere at any time, but recently, it’s been eluding me. I find myself getting out of bed after a couple of hours of not sleeping and coming back downstairs and listening to the radio, reading, sharing mini tortillas with my pooch.
I realised, I like it. Not sleeping. I’m like a baby who is tired but won’t go off because too much interesting stuff is going on.
I have a book, podcast, a dog sleeping next to me in his basket, the only light coming from my kindle. It’s after midnight, so not too late, and it’s peaceful.