It’s King Richard II’s six hundred and fifty first birthday today.\u00a0 I hope he’s celebrating somewhere in the ether.<\/p>\n
It’s also Epiphany but one of those, personally, is somewhat far off today.<\/p>\n
This whole blog-and-write entrerprise is already foundering.\u00a0 I usually spend the first few days before starting chapter one by getting into the zone but it seems as if everything is conspiring to drag me back to the world of trivia – fridge breaking down, orders not being delivered, being overcharged in stupid shops, Ten Weeks That Changed England<\/em><\/strong> not downloading properly and would-be readers blaming me, and worse, car not working and the RAC who are supposed to help made me waste an hour on the phone yesterday, the only result being that my car still won’t go and their telephone operatives still need further training.\u00a0 How is it possible to write with all this mundane stuff going on?\u00a0 I’ve always seen the need for writers’ retreats but don’t fancy travelling overseas at this time.\u00a0 Why are there so few retreats in England?\u00a0 ( I bleat). There used to be the great St Deiniol’s Library in the Welsh Marches, perfect in every way until it was ‘modernised’ and turned into a ‘hotel with books’ as one of the habitues described it.\u00a0 I don’t want a hotel, with or without books.\u00a0 Couples sitting silently opposite each other at breakfast.\u00a0 Everybody avoiding eye contact.\u00a0 Conversation level zero.\u00a0 It used to be full of erudite fellows with a sharp line in banter.\u00a0 Outside the solitude of the library you had to be on your toes. Sadly that was yesteryear. Where are they now?<\/p>\n Moan, moan, moan.<\/p>\n I’ll never write anything in this frame of mind.<\/p>\n At least Amazon have just rung me re my call for help and a charming woman in the Caribbean sorted out the problem in under ten minutes.\u00a0 Ten Weeks<\/em><\/strong> is now completely downloadable and if it’s not on your ebook device a short call will bring help.\u00a0 It’s a free download for Hildegard’s fans on Amazon prime. \u00a0 Great system. Very grateful (the RAC could learn a lot).<\/p>\n Next, deal with the car.\u00a0 (Trip to Netley Abbey scrubbed for now)..<\/p>\n Deal with car tax.<\/p>\n Deal with Waitrose.<\/p>\n Deal with unexpected bill.<\/p>\n Deal with prosopagnosia training.<\/p>\n Deal with the day’s food. (Forget wonky fridge for now.)<\/p>\n Think about lovely phone call\u00a0 last night (more later, I hope, re Dragon of Handale).<\/p>\n Go to gym.<\/p>\n Then think about The Alchemist at Netley Abbey<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n The WIP somebody called it.\u00a0 The Work In Progress.\u00a0 More like The WNIP.<\/p>\n On the positive side I’ve at least started reading the Dennis Wheatley for his slant on the occult.\u00a0 Not very relevant but a good read.\u00a0 No wonder he was a best-seller in his day.\u00a0 It’s a bit dated but even so he pitches right into the story on page one with strong characters, cliff-hanger chapters and, 100 pages in, an ever more labyrinthine plot.\u00a0 Not characters mindlessly killing each other but real moral dilemmas, or at least real if you accept the existence of a left-hand path.<\/p>\n After lunch it’s going to be Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe.\u00a0 Read it ages ago but couldn’t make sense of it.\u00a0 This time will try harder.<\/p>\n Nowhere near The Zone at present.<\/p>\n Chapter One on Monday seems very very far away.<\/p>\n Onwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s King Richard II’s six hundred and fifty first birthday today.\u00a0 I hope he’s celebrating somewhere in the ether. It’s also Epiphany but one of those, personally, is somewhat far off today. This whole blog-and-write entrerprise is already foundering.\u00a0 I usually spend the first few days before starting chapter one by getting into the zone but it seems as if everything is conspiring to drag me back to the world of trivia – fridge breaking down, orders not being delivered, being overcharged in stupid shops, Ten Weeks That Changed England not downloading properly and would-be readers blaming me, and worse,<\/p>\n[Read More...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":622,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions\/622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}