My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.

I've found a new cafe to offer a port in a storm (actual and literal storm in this case). It's half deserted and the food is abysmal, and I realise these are not entirely unrelated phenomena, but, alas, my favourite cafe is now too good, too popular, too crowded and too noisy for me to curl up in the corner with my girlish scribbles.

This cafe still isn't as quiet as I could hope, but it'll have to do. The food is shocking though, not even the coffee is a safe bet (oh, so not, oh dear me, no). I realise now I will never be a writer, but never let it be said I've not suffered for my meagre arts. Certainly not with that coffee. That's real pain, that is.

No indeed. Dreadful coffee aside there were the blisters the size of turnips I gave myself trudging over Manhatten, though that was, originally, meant to be a street photography project but it somehow got sidetracked. Then there was the day I'd set aside for reconnaissance in Oxford that turned out to be blizzardy, and I still went out and took the icy wind in the teeth.

My trips to see the little tin bird, the wall, the baths, Yorkminster, etc, oh I wouldn't swap that. Best ever, it really was. Perhaps I should have stuck with number one fandom. Ah, well.
( more: when the revolution comes )

This morning as I was doing the old gallows trudge to the office (in the building I hated so much the last time I worked here I quit, but here I am, back again, and still hating it - people keep telling me to quit but all I can think of is been there, done that, and here I am back again like poor old crazed Number Six) and I apparently looked so miserable a complete stranger felt compelled to console me. Think positive, they urged.

I was trying to. I was honestly trying to come up with a list of pros for my current situation - hence the expression of grim desperation, no doubt.
( more: the beach house of doom )