20 years ago...

I've just checked the latest draft of Wish You Were and it appears I haven't managed to write anything since November 26th. Ouch. Face to face with my inadequacy (one of the many), not a nice place to be at 9am on a Sunday in January.

It's not as if I didn't know I haven't been writing. I've been giving myself that fruitless bedtime lecture every day. You know the one: 'Tomorrow, you will not look at a book/pick up your kindle/turn on the tv until you have written 500 words'. It's worked about as well as the lecture on getting up early to go for a walk before work and the one on not drinking on a school night. Final score - no words, no walk and half a bottle of wine.

Poo bum willy.

However, this morning I am consoling myself with two things. The first is that our festive period is now over. The eldest loinfruit and her companion left this morning and the household is back to its usual composition – Mr W, the youngest loinfruit plus his myriad electronic gadgets and me. I dislike intensely the distance between the two oldest LF and me, but their absence signals the return of economy catering which both my purse and my stomach welcome. Bring on the chickpeas. The end of the festive period is also, of course, the beginning of the new year and belatedly I'm getting a mini new year buzz. Such potential! Such possibilities! Finish the novel! Run 20 miles! Hit 10 stone!

Okay, okay, I know. Let's just go for more words, more walks and much, much less wine. (Although, for the record, the novel WILL get finished.)

The second consolation is Gary's Good Idea. Bobby, the Twynam dog, has long legs and incredible energy which means that Gary spends several hours a day out in the countryside walking with him. Bobby's energy may be almost limitless, but his conversation lacks depth, so Gary has plenty of time to cogitate. He sent me an email after one such cogitation with a line that made my day. Oh, but I squealed. I bounced up and down in my seat. I grinned my head off all afternoon.

Was thinking on my walk we should do a series of detective books - with a wise-cracking pair of 50 year olds - publishers would go for the two writer angle.

That's all it was. That's all I needed. She popped into my head in the 15 minutes it took me to drive home from work. This is how it all began for her:

She was a single parent to her kid(s?) following her bastard husband's affair. She'd known he was stepping out, she had just bloody known it. The signs were obvious to anyone who watched Brookside and Corrie.  But knowing wasn't enough, she wanted proof and the only way to have proof was to get it herself. So she asked her best friend to look after the kids one day and followed him.  She just walked ten feet behind him everywhere he went, the bastard. He didn't notice her, didn't once look her way and she wasn't even disguised. And, yes, she saw exactly what she'd known she would.

Her husband meeting Lorraine Nolan, the slutty bitch whore who'd made her teenage life hell. Her husband and Lorraine Nolan spending three hours eating a lunch that cost the equivalent of six months child benefit. Lorraine Nolan with her slutty bitch whore from hell tongue down her husband's throat.

Enough was fucking enough. They deserved each other, the bastard and the slutty bitch whore from hell, but she was going to get her own back first.

It was interesting to discover that getting her own back really did make her feel better. Interesting and thought-provoking. Then her best friend joked she was so good at it that she ought to make a living out of it. Now, wouldn't that be a great job?