I’m truly FAT – and I always was on the plump and dumpy side. I looked in the mirror before I wrote this and wondered how Robbie ever fancied me…
[2]
…told me I’d failed my driving test. Well, it’s not my fault. Bristol is so confusing. I don’t think he should fail me just for getting us lost, though I did end up running backwards down Totterdown (I think the gradient is 1:5 there) because I couldn’t seem to remember how to do a hill start. Now I shall have to wait another month before I can take the test again. Pah.
I relieved my feelings by storming into the Vet Dept and applying to change to Philosophy. They said I was doing quite well and did I mean it. And I said yes. If they thought I was going to stick around watching Robbie Payne make sheep’s eyes at Davina Frostick, they thought wrong. They said that wasn’t a good reason to switch subjects. I said it was the only real one. So they ummed and aahed and said it wasn’t possible until after Easter, or maybe even until autumn, and obviously assumed I’d have changed my mind by then.
I WON’T. I’d let my fingernails grow while I was looking after Dad. Now I swear not to cut them for a year. They can’t make me do work on animals with six-inch talons. So.
Oh FRUSTRATION!!! Applying for a new driving test took nearly all the money I had left. I had to tell Uncle Ted I’d pay him for my bed and board every six months. He took it well. He’s pretty rich anyway. And Janine seems to be made of money.
But God those two are so boring !
I don’t blame Nick for diving away into that basement of his every evening. Before I got it sorted out that I could go away to my attic and pretend to work, I spent several centuries-long evenings sitting in their living room with them after supper (hm. Supper. Janine doesn’t cook, you know. She has what she calls her menus in the freezer, pre-packaged slenderisers. Nick and Uncle Ted eat them with ten-inch-high piles of reconstituted potatoes. She and I just eat them. I keep myself awake rumbling with hunger every night, but it must be worth it). They never go out after supper. Apparently Uncle Ted once got struck with an idea for a book in the middle of the Welsh National Opera and they had to leave so that he could go and write Chapter One. Janine is opposed to wasting money like that, so they stay in now. They almost never watch television because it interferes with Uncle Ted’s ideas.
So there we sat. Now you’d think that a world-famous author like Uncle Ted would be really interesting to talk to. The very least you’d expect was that he’d discuss the vileness of his latest demons ( no one does demons like Uncle Ted: they’re really horrific). But not a bit of it. He doesn’t talk about his work at all, or anything to do with it.
I asked him why, the second evening. Janine looked at me as if I’d remarked that the Pope was into voodoo. And Uncle Ted said he saved that kind of talk for public appearances. “Writing’s a job, like any other,” says he. “I like to come home from the office and put my feet up, as it were.” (He works at home of course.)
“Well, it’s a point of view,” I said. Actually I was scandalised. Nothing to do with the imagination should be just “a job”. My opinion of Uncle Ted, whom I’ve always rather liked and admired, went screeching downhill almost to zero.
Then it went down again, in a steady depressed trundle, like a sledge on a very small slope, because Uncle Ted started talking about the house. And money. Looking very satisfied with how much money he’d made lately, he told me just which bit of redecoration or alteration he’s paid for out of which book. And Janine nodded enthusiastically and reminded him that Nick’s basement came out of The Curse on the Cottage ; and he retorted with the fitted bookcases out of Surrender, You Devil ; and they both told me that after Shadowfall they were able to afford an interior decorator to revamp the
[2]
…told me I’d failed my driving test. Well, it’s not my fault. Bristol is so confusing. I don’t think he should fail me just for getting us lost, though I did end up running backwards down Totterdown (I think the gradient is 1:5 there) because I couldn’t seem to remember how to do a hill start. Now I shall have to wait another month before I can take the test again. Pah.
I relieved my feelings by storming into the Vet Dept and applying to change to Philosophy. They said I was doing quite well and did I mean it. And I said yes. If they thought I was going to stick around watching Robbie Payne make sheep’s eyes at Davina Frostick, they thought wrong. They said that wasn’t a good reason to switch subjects. I said it was the only real one. So they ummed and aahed and said it wasn’t possible until after Easter, or maybe even until autumn, and obviously assumed I’d have changed my mind by then.
I WON’T. I’d let my fingernails grow while I was looking after Dad. Now I swear not to cut them for a year. They can’t make me do work on animals with six-inch talons. So.
Oh FRUSTRATION!!! Applying for a new driving test took nearly all the money I had left. I had to tell Uncle Ted I’d pay him for my bed and board every six months. He took it well. He’s pretty rich anyway. And Janine seems to be made of money.
But God those two are so boring !
I don’t blame Nick for diving away into that basement of his every evening. Before I got it sorted out that I could go away to my attic and pretend to work, I spent several centuries-long evenings sitting in their living room with them after supper (hm. Supper. Janine doesn’t cook, you know. She has what she calls her menus in the freezer, pre-packaged slenderisers. Nick and Uncle Ted eat them with ten-inch-high piles of reconstituted potatoes. She and I just eat them. I keep myself awake rumbling with hunger every night, but it must be worth it). They never go out after supper. Apparently Uncle Ted once got struck with an idea for a book in the middle of the Welsh National Opera and they had to leave so that he could go and write Chapter One. Janine is opposed to wasting money like that, so they stay in now. They almost never watch television because it interferes with Uncle Ted’s ideas.
So there we sat. Now you’d think that a world-famous author like Uncle Ted would be really interesting to talk to. The very least you’d expect was that he’d discuss the vileness of his latest demons ( no one does demons like Uncle Ted: they’re really horrific). But not a bit of it. He doesn’t talk about his work at all, or anything to do with it.
I asked him why, the second evening. Janine looked at me as if I’d remarked that the Pope was into voodoo. And Uncle Ted said he saved that kind of talk for public appearances. “Writing’s a job, like any other,” says he. “I like to come home from the office and put my feet up, as it were.” (He works at home of course.)
“Well, it’s a point of view,” I said. Actually I was scandalised. Nothing to do with the imagination should be just “a job”. My opinion of Uncle Ted, whom I’ve always rather liked and admired, went screeching downhill almost to zero.
Then it went down again, in a steady depressed trundle, like a sledge on a very small slope, because Uncle Ted started talking about the house. And money. Looking very satisfied with how much money he’d made lately, he told me just which bit of redecoration or alteration he’s paid for out of which book. And Janine nodded enthusiastically and reminded him that Nick’s basement came out of The Curse on the Cottage ; and he retorted with the fitted bookcases out of Surrender, You Devil ; and they both told me that after Shadowfall they were able to afford an interior decorator to revamp the
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