Back to Basics

I thought that this November would finally be the November where I sat down to write that novel… For as long as I can remember, I’ve had people tell me that I should write a book… And currently sat in draft are a few opening sentences and a list of phrases that amuse me. Words laid down as I thought that maybe yes I should write  a book… Afterall, life has gifted me with enough material to write at great length about the misadventures of a modern mystic… Working title An A-Z of crazy cunts I’ve met so you don’t have to! Yeah, yeah, yeah… I know… It needs some work… Or maybe I should write about The 95 95 Split (I’m not explaining that title until I’ve spoken with my lawyer…).

It occurred to me that there are lots of things I could write but are they actually things I want to write? With that thought, came the ginger intervention. My trio of Toms that mostly loathe one another, formed an uneasy truce to join forces and keep me away from the keyboard. They took it in turns to commandeer my chair, sleep on my laptop and drool on my notes… Experience tells me that when these furry bastards form an alliance, there’s something that I need to work out…

Ginge 2 is a cat who has many names but answers to none… Prometheus, Prom, Promo, Tommy Ten Sheds, Tombo Bombo, Skit, Pwerp… The list goes on… Finally after 6 years, I found a name he will respond to – Tom Red Tomredson Son of Tom Red Lord of Shedton. I say respond, it is only on the condition that it’s voiced in mock Viking accent and comes after the instruction Form the shield wall! Why can’t I have normal cats? Anyway, solving that riddle didn’t budge the buggers…

Driving this evening, I finally get for the first time in weeks, a solo jaunt where I can blast the stereo and sing badly at full volume… When I say sing badly, it’s not so much the notes, I mostly hit those OK… It’s the lyrics I murder… So solo, I can butcher and bastardise words without the interruptions of people asking Karen wtf? Or commenting that they think they’d be a great person to do drugs with. Just for the record, no, I’m not a great person to do drugs with… The haze of drugs days is long in the past though I do recall I had a habit of silently disappearing and taking random train rides… Wow! Do you remember when the train was a cheap way to travel? Oh… That makes me feel old! 🤣 Where was I? Not that it matters… The crux is that singing uncensored blows away my cobwebs in the same way that a pre-lockdown swim of 60 lengths used to… So, I pull up outside my house and I remember the book I started to write 9? 10? years ago… Pages and pages of handwritten notes that I’d put together because I could not find a book on a topic I wanted to know more about… I tried to visualise where I might have stored them and I got the sinking feeling that I’d put them through the shredder… I remembered typing them up… I remembered it being on a dodo laptop that I may or may not have backed up… Again, the sinking feeling as I became more and more certain that I didn’t manage to save them… A little glimmer of hope in my brain as visualised summary charts… Hmm… I wonder…

I sit on my sofa, a triangle of feline heads surrounds me… Evernote! Could it be in there? I scroll down down… down… 2015… Summary chart… Hmmm…Wrong date? Or did I dust my notes off for round 2? I wonder what’s in there? Surprisingly the contents, for once, match the title and I’ve found my notes… I print them off and as I pick them up, new ideas form and come together… Yup, round 3! Time to finish this project before I get too far stuck into any new ones… The A-Z of Crazy can remain a private joke between me and my pen name (for now… Plus… Chapter C is likely to be massive). And the ORRO…? Well I’m pretty certain that that’s going to pour out much better if I give it time to brew… For now, I’ve got half of November left… Screw the novel… I’ve a deck to make.