An absolutely pathetic excuse for a blog

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

There was actually quite a sweet and good blog today. I know it sounds like an awful lot of trumpet-blowing. It’s not so much that I wrote you some enchanting, ground-shattering prose; it’s that the three-year-old cousin said something funny, and I merely transcribed it. I was the stenographer. I can claim no more credit than that.

That will be perfect, I thought.

Then there was: family life and work storm. This is the third draft work storm, and it is more acute and in some ways more difficult to navigate than the first and second draft ones. There is more pressure of time; there is less room to manoeuvre. Things are getting serious now. Now is the time when every hour counts.

It was a good and productive day; more productive than days have been in a while. I felt drained but lightly exhilarated. The good news was that I had the blog stored and saved, with the pearls of wisdom from the miraculous three-year-old. Oh, how you were going to laugh. How wry and comical it was all going to be. (Those of you who have children also need to remember that for me, the quirky remarks of the small are like the sayings of Confucius. I find them both profound and really funny.)

Then, at last, day over, I came back to put on the pictures. The computer made a growling noise. Then it made a shouting noise. Then it made a noise like industrial machinery. Then the whole thing froze.

I jabbed fruitlessly with a pointless finger. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

I gave in, and rebooted.

I would like to say in my defence that the auto-save is on. It catches most things. The vital notes I had made for the book were only light by 77 words, and I have a feeling those were not crucial ones. But the blog was lost.

So now I’m afraid you just get this, which is written in a state of exhaustion. I always feel a bit of a fraud writing that, since it’s not as if I was down a mine all day. I have not been attempting to solve the Iran problem. I expect Mr William Hague is a bit more knackered than I.

Anyway, you must have something, and this is what I can muster. I suspect the next few days shall be patchy, as I adjust to my Southern regime. With any luck, there might be some reasonable prose by the end of the week.

 

Also, I'm most apologetic that I had no time to take the camera out today. All I can offer you is three Pigeon pictures. I like to think that a Pigeon picture makes up for a thousand omissions, but that may be mere fantasy on my part: