Nuts!

Forgive me, have been SLACKING! Its been a whole week since my last blog.
This is partly due to the vagaries of my phone and internet provider who are cheap for a reason. They are shit. The only reason I stay with them is that when I actually finally speak to a technician they are usually pleasant and efficient ....unlike British Telecom. BT have the worst customer service of almost any organisation in the world. It is easier to get through to a cell in Guantanomo bay then it is to get help from BT. Average on hold times were 1 hour and 30 minutes when I was last with ‘em and when you got through some dippy sarcastic bint called Shona would immediately transfer you to someone in ‘accounts’ which was really Barry on the next desk and you would be back on hold again. Purgatory is a BT holding line.

So I prefer my lot who are useless when it comes to the actual connections (my phone goes dead on average once a month) but when I get through to ‘John’ in Mumbai he is occasionally still gripping onto his sense of humour with his fingernails.

But enough of that… .

I wasn’t having a partially good week. Reya had asked me if I missed being ensconced in my book and I can only say I have been BEREFT! I know I should just start another whilst my friendly editor does the first read through but my brain has gone into a sulk of withdrawal. It freezes up at job applications, won’t turn over when prepping proposals for possible bursaries, doesn’t light up at the prospect of the gym. My brain has been sitting in a corner with its arms crossed sighing and puffing out its cheeks and refusing to participate.

To try and cheer up the rest of me I went to Bristol with the small golden hearted,bundle of energy that is dear friend Pol. She has had her car fitted with green alternative fuel (LPG/ Autogas) the only problem is finding services on route that stock it and not blowing up whilst filling the car. (It has an unsettling habit of hissing a noisy spurt of flammable stuff at you when you disconnect the fuel pipe from the car. For the first time at a service station I turned off my phone.)

Pol and I were off to the Egg Theatre in Bath to see Hattie Naylor. She is a horribly talented, award-winning writer (annoyingly beautiful too) who has transferred her darkly funny gothic radio version of ‘The Nutcracker’ onto the stage and we had been invited for opening night. The original story by Hoffman was not at all the sickly sweet, sugarplum faired, ballet version most of us have come across. It was a dark, grotesque children’s story about revenge and black magik. At half time a small child behind me was heard to say ‘I don’t want to watch anymore. Its too creepy’. Perfect fare for Xmas!

Paul Dodgeson had composed marvellous music; songs and sound effects that made me jump, hiss, grin and sing and all in all, apart from being shot in the eye by a lump of confetti during the end fight sequence it was a great evening and I thoroughly recommend the play!

My brain however is still refusing to participate. I got home hoping it would have got over its sulk but no. It doesn’t want to do anything but write zombie thrillers and refuses to even contemplate helping me get organised for my trip to Tarragona to see Mum at Christmas or to prepare for a potential job interview in the New Year. Apart from cutting its gin ration I am held to ransom until it pulls itself together.