PEN HAS BEEN PUT TO PAPER! I HAVE PENNED ANOTHER 12 PARAGRAPHS of my book! Which is really something as all those other times I said "right I'm off to do my memoirs wish me luck" (because I certainly needed it) I did not write a single word, rather fell asleep into the dead of night and woke up usually with Sly and the Family Stone or Barbra Streisand warbling away in the roborovski-active redlit gloom. (Red lights equal darkness to small rodents so you can see them pinging about at optimum force if you install fireglow lighting by their enclosure.)
All I seem to have put to paper so far involves anecdotes about getting stuck in blizzards on the Brecon Beacons/North York Moors... on the second occasion (which actually happened first) my brother and I came down with scarlet fever. I fell asleep in a snowdrift. I vaguely remember being carried back to the van through horizontal snowfall. I spent the journey back delirious and being sick.
When we got a little better we took out metallic poster paints and midnight blue sugar paper and painted rather wonderful pictures of the November 5th (Guy Fawkes Night (do they celebrate this in Australia/New Zealand btw?) fireworks). These we popped in the post to Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace... forgot all about it only to be astonished a couple of weeks later to receive a very grand embossed envelope in the post containing the poshest typewritten letter I have ever seen (it was typed in a Times-like font, which was unknown at the time)... from Her Majesty's Lady in Waiting Lady Lavinia Whassername or whatever reading "I am commanded by the Queen to thank you ..." haha!
Oh. And here the story endeth so far...
When I was little my parents' main hobby (I mean, who actually has the requisite paragraph full of hobbies we're all meant to list in our employment resumes and CVs?) was hillwalking and hiking... on a couple of occasions I got stuck in the most severely inclement weather you get in this country... which pretty much adds up to horzontal snow flying in the face at 50 miles per hour which is not very pleasant aged 5, 6, 7... my point being I did not ever think of giving up in such a situation. Or crying. Or even complaining. All I ever did was march on. After one such occasion my Dad seemed really impressed (though I think this was through rain not snow as I vaguely recall being utterly sodden through). ... All of which resulted in an adult persistence, I suppose. Which persistence has been partially destroyed by this addiction of mine... partially has actually gone against me because (as I know I've said before) Willpower is the Power of Will. And if your Will is to Use. You will go on Using. And that is what I've done.
I feel this addiction of mine has turned on their head all my former strengths and driven them against me... Now I only want to harness them back and recapture their old power!
Right I gotta go I got boil-in-the-bag cod in parsley sauce hubberbubbling violently on the stove and I gotta get back before the bags melt into the bottom of the pan!
Gled! You can't just leave things on the stove like that and leave. I haven't seen boil in the bag fish like that for ages. I like the boil in the bag invention, it's very handy if you don't have an oven or microwave. I'm still at work and feeling unwell today. I think a flu or bad cold has started to infest me. Hope your cod didn't melt!
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you write to Queen again? Say something nice and get a letter back. That would be cool. Ask her if she still has your picture?
ReplyDeleteNicole: ... I wish I DID have a microwave bc when I returned it had BURNT INTO A THICK BLACK COATING all over the bottom of the pan which was dreadfully inconvenient to scrape off!... I hope it is not the flue... I've always thought a good cold actually CLEANS the system OUT.. do you agree? They say it boosts the interferon levels which might explain why I've always thought catching the odd (uncomplicated by bronchitis, laryngitis, sinusitis etc) cold was in a paradoxical way quite healthy ... (??(!))
ReplyDeleteLiz: Do you know that's just one of the things I think is way classier about the Queen than the modernday ubercelebrities who imagine themselves megastars... write THEM a letter you won't get an answer in a million years... why not just have an assistant who answers the letters for you like she does?
I wonder what she does with such pictures, gifts from South Sea islanders etc? I'm sure she doesn't throw them away (well I wouldn't)... maybe it's in a dated archive somewhere? But I doubt she'd dig it out just for me, come on!!