Peachy karma
As minor bad karma goes, today was a peach.
My PEGASUS proof corrections were due today.
This deserves a solemnising blank space. And maybe some centring. Maybe even some colour.
My PEGASUS proof corrections were due today.
Yes. That dog-eared, grease-marked, red-penned, haphazard pile of pages was supposed to be tidied up into neat rows of rectification that, you know, other people could make sense of, by the end of the working day today.
Meanwhile . . . I’ve been trying to negotiate an on-site consultation with Computer Men for months. This is not entirely their fault—I don’t have time to have them. So they say, well, give us a ring about when you’d like us to come out . . . and I don’t get round to it.* They were underfoot quite a bit of this past week, however, due to poor Peter’s virus and you may remember the amusing evening I had a week or so back trying to persuade the cottage printer and the mews laptop to talk to each other, since my mews printer has been kaput for . . . uh, months. So they had taken the mews printer away to remonstrate with it in the secret ways of Computer Men with dastardly reprobate machinery** and then they had to come back anyway not only to deliver my chastened printer but to soothe and reassure Peter’s desktop*** a little further, which is presently inclined to jump at shadows and loud noises† . . . and the fact that nuraddin—my most heavily used email†† address—hasn’t been sending for, again, months, and I forget, and then I wonder why people don’t answer the emails I wrote them††† . . . has become rather maddening.‡
So last week I agreed that they could come today.
Having momentarily forgotten that my frelling proof corrections were due today also.‡‡ Never mind, I thought. It won’t take long.‡‡‡
And then as I tweeted, anguishedly, earlier today: they were here for three hours.§
I don’t want to have a lot of afternoons like this one after they left, and 5 pm Manhattan time bearing down on me.
Meanwhile, I had furthermore not allowed for the fact that America went over to daylight savings time this weekend.§§ We don’t slump into mindless collaboration with the global chronometric mafia until next weekend. This meant I had only four extra hours before closing time in Manhattan.
Yes, the corrections went in, at 9:05 GMT, which is to say five minutes late on the eastern seaboard of the United States. But if I hadn’t had daylight brangling time and Computer Men obstructing forward progress, I’d’ve been able to go bell ringing tonight. §§§
* * *
* Have I mentioned recently that I hate the phone? I never get round to things that involve picking up the phone.^ I have quite nice conversations with people on the phone now and then, but almost always by accident.
^ Yes, every fourth (or fifth) Sunday afternoon, when I have to phone round to inspire people to come to Old Eden practise the next evening, is torment and affliction.
** I’m sure I don’t want to know
*** No, no! Not . . . Google! I can’t! I just can’t!
† Darkness, for example, declaring that it is time we went out
†† Second most heavily used if you count the one that chiefly exists to attract the spam I’m going to get anyway, since I spend more time on the web than is good for me
††† Which are sitting on a hard bench in the Clandestine Highly Classified inbox wearing handcuffs and waiting for the SWAT team to get them out. That would be me. Sometimes they wait a long time.
‡ ARRRRRRRUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAA
‡‡ Yes, I frequently forget what day it is, what month, what year . . . and while I can probably do the president of the United States because he’s got a weird name^, our present prime minister exists to be forgotten.
^ I would have hated the Adams. And, you know, Jackson, Johnson, Taylor, Grant, Harrison, Ford, Carter . . . who can remember names like these? I think ‘Who is the president of the United States’ is a trick question.
‡‡‡ Never mind the frelling president! This is not a mere fit of absent-mindedness, this is a rift, a chasm, a void of memory! I could lose Wolfgang and the hellhounds in that gap!^
^ I am standing in the middle of this field . . . why?+
+ Look, I got the frelling proof corrections in about two hours ago. I am not in good shape.#
# All that medicinal chocolate rising to my head is further complicating the situation.
§ We are, however, under the impression that nuraddin is working again at the cottage.
§§ Allowed for it, very funny ha ha ha. It never crossed what passes for my mind.
§§§ Maybe. Maybe not. I might have proofed the corrections more carefully. I might have made better choices when I had to rewrite the paragraph about the pegasus, the giant triffid, and the exploding computer.^ I might have done a little practising for my voice lesson tomorrow, which I am going to go to even though I’ve done any singing like twice this week.^^ I might have just collapsed on the floor and moaned gently.^^^ I also wish to point out, in a deeply aggrieved way, that I missed the most gorgeous spring day we’ve had this year, when I could have been out there planting things.^^^^ And then going bell ringing.
^There were continuity problems.
^^ This week I’m going to learn three new songs.+
+ I haven’t the faintest idea. Maybe I’ll write them first.
^^^ Although see yesterday’s entry for the drawbacks to doing anything on the floor around here.
^^^^ Yes, I should have, while the Computer Men were here. But in their presence wringing my hands and muttering oh no seems to take all my attention.+
+ And I haven’t told you yet about the Walkperson Follies. Insert very, very, very bad language here. For a Walkperson which will not deign to copy opera onto its tiny lobotomised circuits hand-wringing and muttering is insufficient.
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