25.11.05..9:36 am

Totally didn't mean to leave it this long.

Last night I had a lovely lovely interview with Paris Motel's front woman after nearly two months of trying to find a date we could both manage, and how worth the wait it was. She's a fanscinating character, a roof-top gardiner, writing songs about Vita Sackville West. Quite self-depricating, very funny, highly articulate. I wish all interviewees were like that. We ended up sitting in this place in Stokey for over three hours chatting about the enormous horror of being a teenager, growing up in slightly unconventional families. We swung the gauntlet from the hystericisation of women in 19th Century France to the quest to grow the perfect broad bean; from the difficulties of women today wanting a fruitful career in music, yet not willing to reduce themselves to mere bodies with voices to trying to find a knitting circle that's local and crafty, but not too big, yet has people of such vast experience that we could learn how to crochet little brooches and things, and maybe do a little felting. My interview will be posted on PennyBlackMusic.com sometime in the next month, should you like to read the whole affair.

NEWS FLASH: PORRIDGE NOT GOOD WITH COFFEE AS LUBRICATING AGENT, so state Matthew of Emmms' Squash Room.* Nonetheless, he proceeds to eat it anyway and lick the bowl clean.

*The Squash Room: in actual fact just a dumb name for our spare room, created out of both laziness (having to explain that it's a studio/study/spare bedroom/loungy type area.. it's tiring) and hardcore WACKINESS. Because man, are we WACKY.

The NaNoWriMo thing has taken hold of me in more ways than one. I'll be heading to work grumbling under my breath about how it's so unfair and why can't I just stay at home and surely those kids are old enough to walk home alone. I'll discover there's no milk left in the fridge and decide that actually I prefer my coffee black anyway and I've just been playing into the hands of Rachel's Organic all this time. God help you if you come to bed thinking you'll be getting some sleep lying next to me. I've been a mad insomniac for days.

And please don't talk to me about sex. I've been an absolute hornbeast since the whole thing began, even more than usual and yet we start getting it on and suddenly I've got a great situation for my main character to get from lecture halls to finally defeating the bad guy -- NOT, I repeat NOT related to the sex, there are no porno beats to my novelling rhythm. My main character will not suddenly turn to find the lecture hall full of a naked writhing orgy that she is compelled to join posthaste; she will neither have to give head nor fake an orgasm to save the day. -- I just meant that even when the bright lights of nookie start heading my way I'm having to physically struggle against infiltration from the never-ending story.

The weird thing, or perhaps the totally normal thing when you're writing something that you're actually ready for, is that this has stopped being something that feeds my ultra-competative MUST-WIN-OR-DIE streak that gets me into so much trouble. It's no longer the contest, or making it to 50000 words. The 50000 words is pretty much in the bag, but the story will be nowhere complete. I'm on chapter 8 right now, I've written the climactic point of revealment in which my main character discovers who's behind it all, I have a pretty good idea where this is all heading, though I keep switching on little twists I hadn't reckoned for consciously, so it could go anywhere. The bottom line is that 50000 words will mark the third-of-the-way-through mark, possibly the quarter-mark.

The other HUGE-ASS TREMENDOUS NEWS is that I got my results back. I actually got them twice, except the first time they weren't mine. Last Friday I got the Goldsmiths envelope through the door freaked and tried to hide it before Matthew could see. It didn't work. He found it and forced me to open it. I couldn't so he did. I asked how I'd done and he was all, well..you did o-kay... Except that his eyes didn't match the 'but you did AWESOME' fake-out that I was hoping for so I grabbed the results list and started reading and my heart fell and then I noticed they were all for classes I hadn't taken. When I looked at the top of the sheet where it says STUDENT: and it wasn't my name I felt a mixture of relief and panic again and guilt that this someone else had probably received my results and I shouldn't have read what they got because I sure as hell didn't want them reading mine.

The exam office was very apologetic about the cock-up and promised to rectify the situation for the following day. So Saturday morning comes and I get the post and there's another envelope and I hide it again. I'd gone through it once and didn't fancy having to go through the panic and anxiety all over again, thank you. I didn't bother hiding them, I just threw the envelope on the floor and forgot about it until Matthew walked into the squash room holding it. Once again he forces me to open it although this time I read it myself.

I passed.

With a distinction.

Pleased and grateful doesn't begin to cover it.

Incredibly my thesis got me the highest mark of all those participating in my programme. Even more incredibly, this means that I will be able to get into a Ph.D. programme with very little difficulty and I may even qualify for funding. FUNDING!

I've really got to get going, the Novel beckons. If you can think of a title for a story about a literary zombie-fighting academic with a penchant for Ionesco, let me know. I'm a bit stumped on the matter.

I've got an entry somewhere about an insane amount of bigotry, too much for one small person to face over the course of one weekend, but I can't find it. Sorry. You won't find your second-hand hatred quota with me..

****emmms