
I’ve decided that I want to take a mechanics course. Announcing this to the nearest and dearest didn’t bring very inspiring results.
‘But you can’t even check your oil’ – one encouraging bystander.
I can though; point me in its general direction and I’ll check it more thoroughly than it has ever been checked in its life.
Personally I think it’s a worthy idea. Yes, cars and I have an interesting relationship that is lukewarm at best and downright hatred at worst, but still … I like to know how to deal with things should they go wrong. ‘Forewarned is forearmed,’ as they say.
And besides, I don’t mind driving as long as I don’t have to park.
besides these grand ambitions, life is …
Life is trotting onwards and these winter days seem to be impossibly dark – dark to work and dark home again.
It’s got to the point when I look out of the window and exclaim: ‘Look! The sun’s out!’ (Which then leads to a sympathetic correction: ‘well, it’s trying to come out.’ Poor sun, how you do try.)
words, and the reading of them
I’ve been reading, of course. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is almost finished and it’s oddly gripping – a little like 12 Angry Men, though with lamentably worse language.
The Lunar Chronicles were devoured after I’d finished Cinder – she took a little warming up to, but after that? Sleep was doomed and even the mammoth of Winter (eight hundred plus pages!) was not left unconquered.
words, and the wielding of them (and also: hyenas)

And what of writing? I’m dabbling in a little novel this month, but this year, I have grand plans to release my dragon slaying trilogy into the world. This is no laughing matter, I assure you (dragons! danger! the dire threat of death!)
Speaking of laughing, my own laugh – a cross between a cackling chicken and an uncontrollably amused hyena – has twice thrown me into awful incidents. I laugh – ha ha ha ha – and then there’s this horrid ‘HA!’ which is a cross between my normal laugh (unfortunate) and a high pitched ‘hic’ (tragically embarrassing).
It feels as if that last note throws itself into the room and, should I be walking at the time of It, trails after any nearby hearers like some mad ghostly echo.
It is a trial, but I try to not mind it. The ability to laugh at yourself is rather important – it means you can dance wildly (like a stiff limbed robot, in truth. But what of it?), laugh happily (for the laugh is quite unique and why should you be ashamed of it?) and all the while be blissfully unminding of the opinions of others.
Have a splendiferous week, my friends.