Fruits of Labour
Currently reading: Rough Guide to Florence
Just finished: Janet Evanovich, "Twelve Sharp" (made me laugh out loud on the train - JE books should come with a warning)
Currently listening to: Tiny Dancers, Hannah We Know
Zonked out feeling from last week mutated into a ferociously scary cough over the weekend (obviously the cotton-wool brain was incubating something naaaaasty) - actually my coughs are generally scarier for those within hearing range than for me. I sound as if I've been smoking 40 Woodbines a day for 30 years, when in reality I've never smoked a thing, and it also sounds painful, but once you've had pneumonia, being able to cough without pulling a muscle in your back is a bonus. So, it may sound bad but believe me, it isn't as bad as it might be.
Anyway I have a theory:* when you've been investing a huge amount of energy into an activity, you ignore any signs your body sends about taking a break, but once you've achieved whatever it is you need to achieve, your body goes "OK, had enough, stop. Lie down now". And in order to make you lie down, your body succumbs to any germ in the vicinity.
However (and this is the bit where we stray into anecdotal over empirical evidence), there are benefits to being laid flat with a bug/cough/whatever. Your mind wanders (especially after a generous dose of Benylin) and - "kerching" - up pop all these ideas. Some of them are a bit mad, but some of them turn into something, and the upshot is, I got an idea which turned into a script which turned into a BSSC entry. It's a daft little story, quite sweet I think and it made me laugh (and it's also based on fact) and even if it doesn't get very far I feel happy that I managed to get something submitted.
The next thing on the list was to wake up a chunk of a play from last year to work on it and get it submitted for the Verity Bargate award. Problem - can't work on something that isn't there. I know that 25 pages of this play exist - thought the document was on my datastick - nope -unfortunately I suspect the pages exist on my old hard drive which is somewhere down south waiting for a chunk of money to pay for document recovery. Don't have the money so documents won't be recovered. Oh well. Who is it that writes second drafts without looking at the first, on the basis that if he doesn't remember it between drafts, it wasn't that important? One of the Three Amigos I think ... that seems like a good enough reason to me to go forward on memory only. Interesting experiment if nothing else. And if the play doesn't work, there's always the novel - most of that seems to have survived the crash.
Having given it some serious thought, I'm not going to the Screenwriters Festival in Cheltenham. Partly because its very expensive, and my email about bursaries to Screen Ywhatever last week hasn't been answered; partly because I'm off to Italy with A next week for a few days of culture, sunshine and food and I don't want to take any more days off from the research project (which has finally turned a corner); and partly because if I had a chunk of money spare to spend on going somewhere I'd rather go to LA, or at least to a film festival. But I hope everyone who is going has a lovely and fruitful time.
And for something completely different - here's what I picked from my garden earlier:
***apologies for being in one of those "don't bug a research scientist with inaccuracies" moods.
Just finished: Janet Evanovich, "Twelve Sharp" (made me laugh out loud on the train - JE books should come with a warning)
Currently listening to: Tiny Dancers, Hannah We Know
Zonked out feeling from last week mutated into a ferociously scary cough over the weekend (obviously the cotton-wool brain was incubating something naaaaasty) - actually my coughs are generally scarier for those within hearing range than for me. I sound as if I've been smoking 40 Woodbines a day for 30 years, when in reality I've never smoked a thing, and it also sounds painful, but once you've had pneumonia, being able to cough without pulling a muscle in your back is a bonus. So, it may sound bad but believe me, it isn't as bad as it might be.
Anyway I have a theory:* when you've been investing a huge amount of energy into an activity, you ignore any signs your body sends about taking a break, but once you've achieved whatever it is you need to achieve, your body goes "OK, had enough, stop. Lie down now". And in order to make you lie down, your body succumbs to any germ in the vicinity.
However (and this is the bit where we stray into anecdotal over empirical evidence), there are benefits to being laid flat with a bug/cough/whatever. Your mind wanders (especially after a generous dose of Benylin) and - "kerching" - up pop all these ideas. Some of them are a bit mad, but some of them turn into something, and the upshot is, I got an idea which turned into a script which turned into a BSSC entry. It's a daft little story, quite sweet I think and it made me laugh (and it's also based on fact) and even if it doesn't get very far I feel happy that I managed to get something submitted.
The next thing on the list was to wake up a chunk of a play from last year to work on it and get it submitted for the Verity Bargate award. Problem - can't work on something that isn't there. I know that 25 pages of this play exist - thought the document was on my datastick - nope -unfortunately I suspect the pages exist on my old hard drive which is somewhere down south waiting for a chunk of money to pay for document recovery. Don't have the money so documents won't be recovered. Oh well. Who is it that writes second drafts without looking at the first, on the basis that if he doesn't remember it between drafts, it wasn't that important? One of the Three Amigos I think ... that seems like a good enough reason to me to go forward on memory only. Interesting experiment if nothing else. And if the play doesn't work, there's always the novel - most of that seems to have survived the crash.
Having given it some serious thought, I'm not going to the Screenwriters Festival in Cheltenham. Partly because its very expensive, and my email about bursaries to Screen Ywhatever last week hasn't been answered; partly because I'm off to Italy with A next week for a few days of culture, sunshine and food and I don't want to take any more days off from the research project (which has finally turned a corner); and partly because if I had a chunk of money spare to spend on going somewhere I'd rather go to LA, or at least to a film festival. But I hope everyone who is going has a lovely and fruitful time.
And for something completely different - here's what I picked from my garden earlier:
Can't beat strawberries and raspberries eaten within ten minutes of being picked. Tomatoes and courgettes are shaping up pretty well so far too, as is the basil, and the three types of pepper (hot chilli, medium chilli, and sweet). Now all I need is the goat to (a) keep the grass down (b) provide the wherewithal for cheese.
*I am using the word theory here in its proper meaning, i.e. a system of ideas intended to explain something; a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena - and not in the way idiots use it.
**thanks to the online dictionaries of Oxford, Cambridge and Princeton***apologies for being in one of those "don't bug a research scientist with inaccuracies" moods.
posted by Sal at
8:43 pm
2 Comments:
Forget the goat's milk--you need a fiber producing goat! :-) Have a good week!
Forget being told to forget the goat's milk. It's much better than moo juice. Get a British Alpine, they're great.
My uncle used to breed new strains of strawberries. I guess someone has to.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home