Thursday, January 26, 2006

Without a seam or fine needle work

All my clothing is falling apart. It is not that I am bulging out, it is just all failing through wear and tear, seams disintegrating, pulls becoming holes etc. I wear too many tiered or patchwork skirts. Lots of sewing and not enough colours of thread.

The underwiring escaped one side of my bra. I was busy at the time, so I pulled it all the way out to stop it digging in to my chest and… put it on my head. Well, it is the size and shape of a head-band and my hair was annoying me. All this is done largely subconsciously, which is why I didn’t think about it until I noticed myself in the mirror after I had had a conversation with the postman at the door.

But he wouldn’t have known, would he? Anyway, it was the same guy who I answered the door to in nothing but my dressing-gown, having abandoned the defoliation of my legs half way through the job. Imagine one leg from The Pirelli Calendar, one leg from The Planet of the Apes. He clearly isn’t a man easily disturbed.

In other news, Dad has offered to print out my book so I can do the editing on paper. He has access to a laser printer which prints off hundreds of pages of stuff a day so he reckons he can do my entire book without anyone noticing. It is true that when I used to write essays and short stories I would always print them off and read them on paper as part of the editing process, and I am becoming bogged down by the sheer scale of my own work.

I didn’t think I would be printing anything out until its finished and I’m quite excited at the prospect of being able to work with it on paper. At the same time, I am thinking irrational thoughts about my Dad reading some of it or else pages of it getting accidentally mislaid amid health authority protocols. Right now I would be mortified should anyone read any of it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Congrats on getting on with the opus! I think it was Ngaio Marsh, or might have been Margery Allingham, who let her dad read one of her early novels in proof. Apparently it came back all marked up with comments like "on page 16 you have him light a cigarette but you never show him putting it out" and she was so in awe of him, she dutifully altered the copy accordingly.

For future editions she had to go through and take all the extra details out again.