Wonderfully sinister

Back to the village after Oxford jaunt to research for the JA. How do other people do research? I wandered about a bit though I needed- really needed - to look at Logic Lane off The High but got so involved in that oo-oh that wasn't here six months ago where's that really strange shop that used to sell...? that I forgot to measure how wide Logic Lane was- immensely important point this - then had to go back later. Then there was the Turl Bar. Easy that one - just wait till
11am when it opened go in have drink(s) jot down current colour of walls, etc- except it didn't. Into the Mitre Hotel at the front- who owns it - to ask why? Nobody knows. My character HAS to go into the Turl Bar at lunchtime. Is it often closed now I keep asking every member of staff in the whole place. It isn't closed they all say. Yes it is! It's locked but with a sign saying it's open. But it's really closed! Is it the man who brings the coffee says, why's that then?

Go back to rented place to rethink chapter.

Walk along Southmoor Road, where I spent my seven week honeymoon in a bedsit on the first floor of No 80. From the pavement I note that the bay window which once was at least eight feet wide is now down to five and a half, maybe. In a local magazine I find Southmoor Road being described as 'wonderfully sinister' by a more successful writer than me.

There's nothing sinister about Southmoor Road, mate. Not like a bar where you're trying to set a scene but locks itself up everytime you try to go in it. Compared to that Southmoor Road's got a touch of Disneyland.

A date with your ex

That's what it's like when you really want to be getting on with the JA - new book - but the proofs of the last one arrive. It's now nearly three years since you did the first draft of what's just dropped through the letter box. Some bits - some very few bits in my case - your editor didn't object to so they're now completely unfamiliar. Did I write this? Those are the best bits though. Most of the proofs are so like that person you once thought interesting but now...well, you've heard the stories, you know how they end. You know what they want to drink.

Finished the proofs yesterday. Can't just go back to the JA today. That's tacky. Decide to have another day off. Get out of this village. There's an added reason to do this. At home this terrible howling noise is making it hard to write a note to the milkman never mind anything new. The noise is coming from my dog Jem who has just had his second birthday. He's not celebrating -he doesn't know, after all, there wasn't a cake - but what he does know is that in dog terms he's now a man. And there are two female dogs in the village who are definitely up for it. Wild-eyed dogs that are complete strangers are appearing on the green and risking death by tractor just to find these bitches. Bitches is exactly what they are- they're making Jem's life and therefore my life a misery. Not exactly feminist this thought: why must people have female dogs at all? Without them, all the village companion animals could live in this sort canine Cistercian retreat, pleasures of the flesh not on the agenda. Well not that pleasure. There's still long country walks. And bones.

As it does every year, the eggspiracy interest has finally folded - we live at the end of a lane so it can take weeks for something else to come along. Last recorded mention of eggs from neighbour was that this time the eggs seemed smaller than previously. They weren't. But who do you complain to about a falling off in quality of anonymous gifts?
What I promised myself I'd do today is not spend any more time wandering round out there soliciting hot news of somebody's trip to the gym (You're going AGAIN today? - long pause - Yes, it seems just the once won't do it) and more time working on The J.A.

I've been thinking I need somewhere else to say things rather than to friends and family. Out loud. Over Easter what happened for the last three Easters happened again. Someone in our village left a chocolate egg on the doorstep early Easter Sunday. Not quite everyone in the village gets on but most do. This gives the inhabitants two things they can do. 1. eat the egg and 2. develop their conspiacy theories about who does and who doesn't get an egg. Me and my husband have eaten our egg by mid-afternoon. I don't need a theory. I know why some people don't get eggs. So I was telling someone who doesn't live here about the egg-gift (o-oh, nice they say) but I can't stop there. I have to say if I was writing this on the fifth year...I tell them what would happen. There's silence. Not even nervous laughter. Got to stop saying things out loud.