Saturday 1st September
It is already September. Hard to believe how quickly the months come round, and here I am still wrestling with the second book a good two years after I finished the first. Although wrestling is the wrong word, actually getting to grips with it would be a start. I did manage quite a bit of revision while in France, but haven’t touched it since I have been back. The trouble is that work keeps getting in the way of my life-style. I am realizing that rather than being a well-worked five thousand metre steady jog it is turning into a marathon marathon. I really need to carve out at least a couple of hours a day, and when I am fresh too; it is no good at the end of a working day when your mind is rattled with numbers and the television becomes a way of just letting go of all those thoughts as your mind unwinds. So, how to resolve the problem; well, I am here at Walton and have just done about 5 hours of catch-up from the time in France. There is the garden to do, and a couple of odd jobs, but at least for the next two hours I am going to write – and there is tomorrow too. Actually I am in first revision mode, trying to brighten up my first draft, a bit more snappy conversation, shorter sentences – that sort of thing.
And it is a lonely occupation. It can only really be done on one’s own, and like in a long-distance race, where you become focused and forget anyone else, and just keep putting one foot in front of the other I know I still have an awful long way to go. But each sentence is another footfall, and one day the finish line will loom into sight, and I will have to say goodbye. I wonder quite how I will feel then