The mixture as before

Having reread last week's post, I'm wondering if I accidentally pressed Repeat by mistake. Apart from the exam, this week has been much the same again - teaching, ceilidh, allotment, stiff back by Sunday! If you add in a 'flu jab and an appointment with the dental hygienist, you have the peaks of my week's excitement.

Well, not entirely - I did manage to spend a whole evening editing Service of the Heir, including my favourite bit involving Murray and an open drain on a foggy night. That cheered me up slightly, and made up for waking early one morning mumbling, 'But Henry was at the funeral! So he couldn't have ... oh, bother ...'

One classroom that had no black or whiteboard last week has a whiteboard this week - with a projector pointing away from it, and a lovely big box of new chalk. Very useful on a whiteboard. I've liberated most of the chalk and intend tomorrow to transfer it to a lecture room where there's an ancient blackboard but only ever a few fragments of chalk. The boardless classroom is my favourite venue, but not that of my students as that particular tutorial is at 9am. They were so dozy on Tuesday I'm planning to take them coffee and biscuits this week, so they have no excuse.

Someone has commented that Number One Cat deserves to be spoiled as he's had his nose put out of joint by the arrival (not planned) of Number Two Cat. This is absolutely true. The tuna can is being opened even as we speak. Number One Cat is delighted he has a loyal supporter.

Now to go and put out the wheelie bin. Oh, the glamour of a writer's life!

The perpetual distractions of academia

I'm late with this this week. I ran my first exam, which did not go as well as I would have liked for various logistical reasons but the good thing was that for once none of them was my fault! However, heaving round exam papers and all the concomitent office equipment nearly flattened me - I think I've lost half a stone since this course started!

Friday's exercise was a very good ceilidh, with lots of terrific dances and enough good or experienced dancers to make it feel like a dance rather than a riot. Then yesterday I trekked down to Allotment Major and did some serious pre-winter weeding - and this morning I can barely move.

I'm not sure I've managed any of Service of the Heir this week. I like to think there was a point somewhere in the middle of the week - maybe before Wednesday? - when I did some, but I wouldn't want to swear to it.

Number Two Cat, who lost his third collar last week, lost his fourth this week but recovered the second, which he has now also lost. In addition, he appears to have attacked something with his nose. This does not enhance his good looks, but has given Number One Cat a laugh. Between them recently they finally destroyed the catflap, and Number One Cat does not like the new one. He sits and bats it back and forth noisily, and if we manage to ignore that - and the fixed stare - he starts miaowing loudly. We're thinking of building him some steps outside to facilitate his ingress. Is it possible that he's very slightly spoilt?

The rain it raineth every day ...

October has arrived with chill weather which today turned wet. This was great, as I had set aside this afternoon to go to Allotment Major and fix the main path, and possibly weed the side paths before winter. It was not a dry job.

Good progress with Service of the Heir this week - lots of ideas, fair amount of typing done, not too much staring out of the window and contemplating mugs. I really felt I was getting somewhere and now that it is 75% typed it might indeed be out by Christmas as promised. I do prefer to keep promises and rarely make them, just in case, so I'm on tenterhooks.

Lovely Canadian houseguest this week, whom we hadn't seen for a couple of years - she's off moving round other friends, now, too. She tells great tales of her life in the North West Territories and is in the process of getting her first book out, an academic text. A real delight to see her again.

Blackberries picked, crumble made, blackberries picked and eaten for lunch, more blackberries picked. What greater joy could there be? and what greater combination than blackberries and apples? I love autumn!

The Pied Piper strikes again

The one classroom I hadn't got to, partly because it wasn't on the original schedule, turned out to be masquerading as a lecture theatre but actually being a computing lab. Very high tech, meaning that you can't write on the white board, you have to switch it on and then find out how they've wired it before you can do anything with it. The class decided, for purposes of mutual security, I assume, to follow me round the building as I tried to solve the problem, watching in reverent silence as I negotiated with the receptionist for telephone time and rang my departmental secretary. Not my best lecture so far.

Today's distraction has been trying to take Number Two Cat to the vet for his check-up, only to find fifteen minutes before the appointment that the cat carrier was nowhere to be found, and Number Two Cat himself was watching me with detached interest from the roof of a distant shed.

Wild ceilidhing last night with inexperienced new postgraduates: hilarious but very dangerous. Amazingly, no blood had been shed before we left!

Honestly, I am trying to finish the book! If it's any consolation, I still haven't picked enough blackberries for either a pie or wine, either ...

Autumn, progressing as slowly as the book ...

The leaves outside are still faded green, but on the other hand the geese flying down to the Solway Firth are becoming more numerous. The days are starting dark and damp but finishing in a blaze of glory. I spent yesterday guiding three small children round the delightful Drum Castle and its woodland, and blackberrying - though those blackberries are no longer fit for human consumption, having been used more as warpaint than foodstuff. Who says Mel Gibson's 'Braveheart' is historically inaccurate?! But I hope to find something for a pie tomorrow! (and three small children would just fit nicely...)

The teaching and its related administrative and promotional and pastoral work have been overwhelming this week and will probably be so next week, too, but I'm striving to keep up at least 15 minutes editing and typing a day just to remind myself what is happening and keep a flow of thought going. I'm not a natural teacher - just fallen into this, really - but I do try my best. I took a long walk around the university the other day to find all the rooms I'm supposed to be teaching in, everything from a seventies slum to a mediaeval tower to a dodgy science basement with radiation warning signs on the doors. I think I should make sure my students have good maps! Oh, well, all part of life's rich soup ...

Autumn approaches

The tree outside my study window is fading fast, and some of the horse chestnuts around are already turning copper and red. The evenings are definitely chillier and darker - I love it! Every change of season brings such delights.

Among them is not CreateSpace. I spent most of yesterday, or it felt like it, carefully formatting Death in a Scarlet Gown for the inside PDF, but lost all hope when I saw the complex instructions for the cover PDF. I'll conquer it soon, I feel almost sure. Then I unwisely clicked on a button which Amazon told me would tell me what to do to avoid paying 30% tax to America's remarkable IRS, and the small furry animals that inhabit my brain went into a bit of a tizzy.

Never mind: I carried on typing and editing Service of the Heir - over halfway now! - and remembered to book the chimney sweep who usually comes in August but I was on holiday and forgot. Quite how he will get into the house is another matter - we emptied our storage facility on Sunday and brought everything home, which may have been a mistake. Let's just say that running from one end of the house to the other would be less of a flat race, and more of a steeplechase. Service of the Heir is a great way to turn my back on the mess and pretend that I, too, have servants who can be trusted to tidy it all away ...

Another week of not being able to write!

This week has been devoted to the paperwork for one of the courses I'm teaching - why are there always more urgent things to do than writing? In the meantime I fret about the plot of next book, principally because I can't actually look at it!

I dug up the Pink Fir Apples yesterday evening and they look great - one of them twisted itself round the root of a broad bean and is the very shape of a small bird perched on a stone. Where's That's Life when you need it? It was a beautiful evening: the swallows seem to have departed, having been extraordinarily noisy on the telegraph wires last week, but it was calm and mild and sunny up to sunset. In a neighbouring field are two little (relatively) Highland calves, which look as if they're wearing woolly trousers.

I also managed, in the briefly dry weather, to harvest a load of herbs from the garden and dry them in the oven. One hour at the lowest gas mark and they were perfect - and the house smelled fantastic! Much better than fresh coffee.

Still can't find the maps ...