Peaceful day

Golf is now in full swing for the men of this household, so I had a very peaceful morning. I listened to BBC Radio 4's BH in bed, then got up and had breakfast, which was a weird collection of things I fancied in the fridge, mostly smoked mackerel which I love. Then I went into the garden in my PJs. It's a favourite summer thing of mine to potter around watering and weeding in my jammies. The garden isn't overlooked, and frankly even if it was I wouldn't care.

My cut and come again lettuce is almost ready for a first picking - much better than the limp stuff in plastic pokes that the supermarket sells, and cheaper to boot. The basil is looking good too.

Yesterday's workshop was good, I met a nice woman from Dumfries who had come up 'specially. We collaborated on a few things, and worked well together. The theme was RLS' "Jeckyll and Hyde"

I learned a few general writing tips from Debs, though I'll never be a fantasy writer. Even as a kid I always liked real life stories, or massive reference books. And nowadays I find real life scary, strange and crazy enough.

I borrowed her copy of The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler, which explores the mythic structures of stories. Basically deconstructing famous stories and filmscripts to identify their shared patterns. It's interesting, but there's a lot of padding in it, it could probably be condensed without suffering all that much. I bet he updates it to include the Da Vinci Code at some point - another book/film I've no desire to see or read. I must be one of the few, add that to my ignorance of Harry Potter and I'm latter day cultural outcast.

I really loved Linda Smith when she said she wanted to batter all the adult Harry Potter readers on the Tube, and to hand them out copies of Jane Austen. Still miss her, keep expecting her voice to pop out of the radio with some really witty observation on life, or the state of the nation.
The news is so lousy I really feel like putting my head in the fire bucket. The World Cup is the only upbeat note, all those mad souls kicking every ball with their team. I loved the Mexicans today, they were having a ball. Main debate here is whether it's still pc not to support England. In my time I've gone for the everyone but England option, but these days I can't muster the energy to care. I do hope the experience brings them some pleasure, Lord knows they could all do with it. It seems to me England gets the bad end of the stick these days, Westminster's eegits, water shortages, post code prescibing etc, etc - they're due a break. Just don't shove it down our throats for 40 years, that's all I ask! I doubt they'll pull it off anyway.
We Scots can relax, we got the pain out the way early. Come on Trinidad and Tobago!