Working on the novel

I’ve been assigned an editor, Jake, by Virtual Tales (http://www.virtualtales.com/) and I’ve been spending some time on looking through his few changes to my original version. It’s all moving along quite quickly. I’m also contemplating going on broadband shortly, because I’ve had so much hassle sending large files. My computer has been slowly grinding through everything I ask it to do, but neighbour, Celia suggested that I defrag it and I think that and putting it through its cleaning programme has helped.

The Christmas cards are gradually disappearing too, but still some sticky labels around (printed out from last year’s list) that I haven’t dealt with and I’m wondering – are they going to send this year? I wouldn’t recognise them if I met them in the street. Why are we still going through the motions? We got a card from our regular holiday resort in Majorca. A dyslexic secretary had addressed it to M with the name he never uses, except that she’d managed to turn it into Brain.

M took my car in for its service yesterday, and using the garage as a car park, went on into Guildford. He first attached the bike he picked up recently, with the intention of cycling, once he’d handed in the car. But the gears jammed up, and he had to walk in the end. When he got home, he was so irritated, he took his angle grinder and cut off the back gears. He’s unlikely to be cycling up hills on it.

It’s been a busy week. A committee meeting on Monday. A meeting of Goldenford (http://www.goldenford.co.uk/) on Tuesday. A nice relaxed meal last night to compensate M for the rushed ones of the previous couple of days and tonight a meeting of the reading circle. We discussed A short history of tractors in Ukrainian – a very good choice and much to discuss. Several of the group thought it was not hilarious, as described on the cover, but rather a sad book. Nevertheless we did find ourselves laughing at the descriptions. I think it was the author’s (Marina Lewycka) style and language that was funny not the events themselves. It was a very social occasion with savouries and mince pies provided by our hostess, Jackie. I took along some chocolate brownies. If you’ve got a recipe that works, you might as well use it.