At the ball!

 
          I haven't been anywhere for ages, but last week spent the weekend in a cottage at Kirriemuir with my new best friend, who seems to have lost a bit of her head in the photie, and her dog, Fergus. Fergus is a very smart dog since he only wants to attack old decrepit folk with walking sticks. This makes going to the pub with Fergus very interesting since that's where the decrepit old folk with walking sticks tend to gather of an afternoon. Woof, woof!

          I was thinking that I might be spending Christmas in Brussels. This evening most of Brussels seems locked down due to loonies going around looking for a crowd to blow themselves up in, so I don't know if that's going to happen. When the weather gets cold and horrible, you just want to stay in. The cottage at Kirriemuir had three open fires. Just the job for a break at this time of year.

Still in the war against the machines

          I've spent the last three times I've tried to write anything dealing with word processing problems, but today I decided only to spend only half the time on that and actually wrote down some words.

          Yesterday was the first day of not smoking. It's embarrassing to still become addicted to tobacco when I've given it up so often, but I've been smoking now for about three months. Not yesterday or today though.

          First day off yesterday and I went to the bank to clear up some stuff on my statements. I was led into a room to phone the credit card folk in the bank. I was asked to pay £45 last month when I hadn't used the card for a year or so. The folk in the bank said my credit card was £45 in credit, so I was phoning the credit card folk (they are the same folk as the bank?) to ask for the £45 back. I could not access my account there because I failed to answer the security questions properly. I handed the phone to the bank teller. You speak to them, says I. She was the one who told me to go into the room to speak in the first place, but of course they would not talk to her. No way. I tried to hand the credit card to this person. I do not want this, I said. She said she could not take it. Why not? Because it has £45 in credit on it. They said they could send me something special so I could speak to the credit card folk (who are the same folk!). They asked me what I wanted. I want to be left alone, I said.

       The first day off nicotine and you could murder someone, so you could.

       I'm going to try and finish a first draft of my book before I go to the Holy Isle. There's lots of stuff I could write here about the developments in the inner heat juju, but no one who reads this is interested, so ....Oh, I went up the allotment today and did some digging. |That's what the photies are about.

In the war against the machines again!

          I| took quite a few photies today up the allotment, but I cannot find them on my camera. Sometimes all this digital age crap can become a little irksome. Oh well.

           I didn't do much writing last week since I had some friends from Holland staying in my flat. Also, the last time I tried to write anything, I was trying to divide the prose into sections using some  of these *******. But when I hit the enter key, two think bands appeared. Well, one thicker than the other. I  could not get rid of them, try as I might, so I abandoned writing then. Tonight I started trying to get rid of them by using two copies of the text and cutting and pasting round the offending lines, but this did not work either. So they'll just have to stay there, at least for now. Does anyone know how to fix this problem?

           |I was trying to read a book called Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban. This book is written in a way that I would never write since I try to make my prose simple. This book is written in a made up language, but it is good and probably worth persevering with. I also bought a second hand copy of The Story of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow. I read this book about thirty odd years ago and really enjoyed it, but I can go and read all the books I read in the long ago because I can't properly recall them. So reading it again should be a certain treat.