sheldrake

Hello. I thought I'd post an update, for the benefit of the mice and ghosts who now inhabit the dusty, cobwebbed corridors of journal land.

What to say, what to say... time passes. The boiler continues to die slowly. Every day one or two more people on the train appear to suffer from terrible respiratory complaints. Today I kicked my freezer, which I feel is fair enough.

Every now and then I have to work a Sunday, which is never very much fun, for dull reasons. It's boring, I'm on my own and there's always a mountain of work to get through. To distract myself, I like to listen to the reporters doing phone interviews and try to work out what the story is. This can be quite entertaining, for instance, one day we were treated to the long-running saga of 'trying to track down Lobster Man'. (Turned out he was at sea.) Yesterday started off, fairly typically, with vegetables:

"So yeah, it turns out there are potatoes all over the road..."

"Hello, I was wondering if you'd have a time for a quick chat about your giant pumpkin? Yes, it's really... very large isn't it, looking at the picture? Mm... Even bigger than last year, you say? Wow." [AFTER PUTTING PHONE DOWN] "I didn't think it looked that big."

Then, after a chat with the local MP about the Multicultural Festival, and another about a vintage car show, came a rather dramatic change of tone.

"Hello, I was hoping I'd be able to have a few words with the Sheriff. I'm calling from a newspaper in England. Thank you... [LATER] Right, so as well as father- and son-in-law, they were also lovers? [...] Sorry, you're saying he shipped the children over to be his own personal butlers? [...] So it is looking like a murder-suicide pact then... [AFTER PUTTING PHONE DOWN] That was the weirdest interview I've ever done."

Blimey.

Yes, local news... Soon enough, another tree stump will be found that looks almost like a dog.

***

In other news, writing. Why. Mostly a rhetorical question, but seriously... *howls forever like a wolf, not that a wolf would howl forever, unless it was a really unusual wolf and also immortal, then it might I suppose*