Home birth in London, 2011

I got a letter from King's Hospital the other day asking if I would mind sharing my birth story with them. It's something I've been meaning to write down for Eliza anyway and so I was quite grateful for the prompt. A birth story is a strange thing: go looking on the web and you will find scores and scores of women have taken the time to write down fairly hefty blow-by-blow accounts of how they brought their babies into the world. For me it is a subject of endless fascination. In fact, the first birth story I read was when I was about ten, written by the mother of one of my best friends, describing in gratifyingly strong detail the actual marvellous truth of how she, my friend, had been born. I think that planted the seed of my interest. Any children I had, I knew that writing it down would be part of the birth. I wanted to hold on to their birth story - and pass it down to them.

Now it is 2011. My friend's birth was in 1982 and when her mother, a brilliant thinker and doer, wrote it she was following the example of those fearless feminists of the seventies: nothing hidden by prudery or ashamed of being out and proud and womanly. I wonder when women first started writing down these birth stories of theirs, because although I think of it as a modern phenomenon, a refusal to be abashed by something so primal, any woman with a birth story to tell and the power of writing must have been tempted, if she could only find the time and privacy to write. It is still difficult, though, because what we are dealing with is the body, the very last thing to sit comfortably in words. I reckon that when people told stories and hadn't the choice of writing them down there was probably also this love of the birth story. I imagine it fell to the most garrulous and earthy of women to relate these tales. Perhaps they were also the midwives. 'Midwife to the tale', now where did I hear that phrase?

Paparazzi Studios - closed?

Bring out your best widow's weeds and wear black for a respectable period. If the news is true and the last comment to arrive is correct, then the death knell has sounded for poor old shysters, Paparazzi Studios.

Don't quaff your sherry and down the canapes too eagerly, however. These people bear a remarkable similarity to cockroaches and do tend to keep on resurrecting themselves after you thought you'd shooed them off for good.

It was only last week that I got a phone call from them, my second free makeover in two years (are they trying to tell me something?). I wasn't nearly as brave as I'd hoped to be in telling them to piss off, but I did mention my blog. Maybe it was the blog wot dun it. Stranger things have happened.

But in the meantime, do get in touch if you've come across these scalliwags. Perhaps you know where they've gone next, these masters of makeover and disguise. If so, let me know.

Paparazzi Studios - another scam?

I can't believe I never posted this up on the blog. It's a former Studio London employee spilling the beans. He/She wants to remain anonymous, so all I can say is Mr/Mrs Anonymous, I am very grateful to you for gifting me (isn't that the parlance nowadays?) the gift of closure. Now read on...

Before I start, I'd appreciate it if (should you choose to publish anything I mention) you kept my name from the record. I'm a (thankfully) former employee of Studio London's.

I should probably begin by saying that Studio London has recently been taken into administration - they are now masquerading under the name Paparazzi Studio.

The comment you posted replies to about a month ago is largely a load of rubbish. When Studio London/Paparazzi Studio make a booking, they take a deposit for two reasons - firstly to try and ensure you turn up, and secondly to attempt to make *some* money out of you in the event that you decide not to pay them any more money for photographs (they will try to give you a print or digital image in return for keeping your deposit; though they will [begrudgingly] return your deposit if you are adamant that you don't want to buy anything.)

There is no 'cost associated with' reserving a photographer or allocating a time slot. All hair, make-up, photography, and sales are done broadly on a first-come, first-served basis. If you don't turn up, the photographer isn't going to sit on his arse for the time it would have taken to take your pictures; he'll simply be allocated someone else (and the make-up artists, photographers, and hair stylists have no idea who they're going to see right up to a few minutes before they see them).

As a matter of fact, the company is completely reliant on people not turning up - the management has a policy of overbooking, to the point that if even 75% of the people booked in on any given day were to turn up, the studio would have an incredibly difficult time dealing with them all, leading to the customers having a very disappointing experience, and the latest ones (those with appointments in the early afternoon) probably either a) waiting around until very late in the evening (after ten o'clock, in some cases) to be shown their pictures and given the hard sell, or b) after having had a further (refundable, but completely unnecessary) £50 'holding deposit' attempted to be taken from them, being told to come back another day in order to be shown their pictures and given the hard sell. Failure to be shown one's pictures and be given the hard sell results in the loss of one's deposit.

I should also say that the people who work 'on the front line' of the company, and actually deal with the customers, do, in general, an excellent job, given the farcical way in which the company is run. They are aware of the dubious business practices they are employing, and are as dismayed by them as the customers are - but are usually unable to do much about them without going out of their way to deceive or placate the management staff (which does occasionally happen). They are not paid anywhere near the amount they deserve for the hours they work and for what they have to put up with - but I suppose that that is true for many jobs. Management (or 'directors', as they prefer to be called), on the other hand, are paid far too much for what they do - but again, that is true for many companies.

I think that's all for now.

Tinketty-tonk

The following turned up in my comments box. Am I being paranoid, or does it seem to you that it could have been written by someone in the pay of Studio London? I publish it in the interests of fairness, but in answer to the questions it lays out...

a) why on earth indeed? Read back through the blog to find out. I was feeding the baby when, out of the blue, the phone rang and some lovely-voiced lady told me I'd won a prize.

b) none of that makes the slightest difference to me, the customer - or should that be 'prizewinner'. Potential sales are just that - potential. And I shouldn't forfeit any money to, or be made to feel guilty by a company that can't cover its own costs as a photography studio.

And if you're not saying their methods are right, stop defending them! Thank you for writing in, though, and do get in touch if I've misrepresented you. Now over to you.

"I read all these comments and two things spring to mind.

a) why on earth do you give you card details to a person you don't know, from a company you haven't contacted and whose product you're not sure if you'll buy?

b) do you realise that when you book a time slot for your photo session, they have a cost associated with it? They need to reserve a photographer and allocate a time slot. If you then don't turn up, they have lost a potential sale and still have to pay the photographer...

I'm not saying that their methods are right (although their are legal), but they aren't any different from any other makeover photo company or business that wants to get you in their shop so they can sell you their product."

Oh dear no

I take it all back - I'm not about to write about Mary Queen of Shops. After the first episode about the bakers' and the second about the village shop and the third about the greengrocers' - all subjects close to my heart - my interest waned. DIY? Interior decoration? Hairdressing? Leave it out. There was nothing to it, either. It seemed that Mary Portas just got the staff to pose for huge photos of themselves (to go on the walls of the revamped store - how very B&Q), changed the uniform and gave the owner a big bone-crunching hug. Sniff! And move on...

Don't watch this space, in other words. I think I'm a SAD blogger - seasonally affected and unlikely to write much in the summer months. I don't need the warmth of my overheated laptop to keep me going in July. Neither, I'll warrant, do you.

Seduced by the retail

I feel like I'm poaching from Exitainment's territory to do so, but what I really really want to write about is a t.v. programme called 'Mary Queen of Shops'.

It's not far from this blog's brief, in actual fact, since what Mary Portas cares about is shopping and, whether it's charity shops or greengrocers, when it comes to my local high street, so do I. I agree with her: I don't want everywhere to be cloned by the supermarkets and the chain shops. Kilburnia may not exist as an entity, but its many streets are my stamping ground, and where I have to walk this talk of mine every day.

So watch this space - or just put me on your blogroll and watch that space - and I will endeavour to deliver the goods, with the help of my new retail guru, Mary Portas. Gosh, even her name has the ring of quality to it.

A Jarvis moment

Having recieved a 'Cease & Desist' notice for my crusading work against a ruthless band of petty theives (fly-by-night photographers), I am taking time out from the blogosphere.

While I'm gone, why not have a read of this lovely Groucho Marx letter? I ask you, was there ever a word to be said with more relish than shyster?

Auckland

The wind is squealing at the window-cracks as I sit typing this on the 16th floor of our apartment block in Upper Queen St. The last time I heard that noise was in Edinburgh, in the swaying monstrosity of the David Hume Tower (Scandinavian Studies: 13th floor). Now I'm in Auckland - and while Mr Q dozes beside me and little Pie just across the hall, it's time to write about my New Zealand holiday.

It's two in the afternoon here on a gloomy and rainswept day. We can't even see the North Shore for the drizzle. I said I wouldn't blog unless I got bored, but today is the exception: it's dreary and hard work out there. Not as bad as Kilburn High Road in the rain, but still, we're taking the afternoon off. We've been out already and encountered the wet and taken a few buses, had lunch at a fun Indian canteen on Karangahape Road and now we're back at the flat, a little tired and not too keen to get out in the grey day again just yet.

To tell you about the trip in its entirety, in time-honoured amateur journalistic fashion I should begin by saying that the journey to the airport was uneventful. Considering that I had opted to take public transport and the Heathrow Express with a baby, buggy, little backpack and massive rucksack, this was a blessing. Mr Pie was very happy with Heathrow - he loves a good crowd - and boarding a plane at 10pm didn't seem to faze him.

I wasn't such a happy bunny. Never again will I fly to the opposite pole, alone, with a baby on my lap (apart from for the return journey as I'm anxious to get back to Blighty whilst the last shudders of Election Fever can still be felt.) All the things aeroplanes do to make travel palatable, fun even - such as alcoholic drinks and up-to-the-minute cinema - are rendered completely useless. The baby wants to crawl around the aisle and explore neighbouring seats. The baby doesn't want to sleep in the bassinet when the lights are switched off. The baby wants to stick to UK time whilst everyone else bends to the will of the International Dateline. And so on for twenty-seven hours (or however long it was. I lost count and sanity).

After this test of my endurance, Auckland would have had to pull off something utterly spectacular (fireworks and dancing horses) to have convinced me that the journey had been worthwhile. It failed. Ratty and sleepless, I complained continually to Mr Q about how ghastly everything was. Our first walkabout, the day after my arrival, took us down to the Viaduct Basin, a piece of land 'reclaimed' from the harbour to make space for all those pretentious chrome'n'glass restaurants and faux-bonhomie pubs that need to be built. And then back up Queen Street, the main shopping and banking street, as featureless and American-branded as any rotten high street in the UK.

Luckily it was Pie's first birthday, and so his parents put aside their grievances against the modern world, and took the gentleman baby to the park for a go on the swings. This place, Myers Park, is directly below us when we look out of the apartment windows. There are palm trees and many other species of native arbor spread out below us. From our eyrie perspective we had believed the park to be flat, but down on the ground it has steep grassy slopes: it is in a sort of gully. The swings and slides are second to none. Pie was delighted, if a bit dazed. He woke me at two the next morning - attempting to make his bleary eyes bright and his crumpled tail look bushy - and lunged hungrily in the direction of the jalopy. I think he wanted to go out and have another go on those New Zealand swings.

Location Location

I've changed the location on my profile to Auckland, New Zealand. I can't find any other way to search for people who actually live there and write blogs from there. I wanted to find out a bit more about those people on the other side of the world because I'm meant to be going there in two weeks time (with Mr Pie on my knee for the 24hour flight). Although, with the volcanic ash situation showing no sign of blowing over, it could be that a cyber Kiwi experience is as close as I'll get...

Studio London

It was exactly a month ago that I was phoned by Studio London and told that I had won a "magazine-style photoshoot". You can read all about it all below, in my post 'May their ears fall off'.

For a week or so after wrangling with them on the phone to extricate myself from this daft/sinister arrangement, Mr Q and I were fascinated by the wickedness of these people. Mr Q went right to their door at 120 Great Portland Street to establish that they really did exist and to talk loudly on his mobile (to put the frighteners on them).

I, meanwhile, told many people about my folly. It amazed me how much everyone else knew about this kind of scam. "Haven't you ever heard of NLP?" asked my sister. 'Neuro-linguistic programming' - it frightens me more than any ouija board. And my friend Moonbeam rolled her eyes and told me fondly about rescuing her mother from an online scam for a holiday.

The marvellous news is that - after threatening Studio London with The Law - my deposit was returned! It was even returned within 10 days, true to their word. But there was still a bit of funny business: in reply to my email - with its attachment of a letter quoting the Distance Selling Regulations 2000 - I got this (by accident, I assume):

Hey ya,

Does this
stand? I spoke to Craig earlier & he seems to think that we can still use
the ‘leisure’ thing! ?????? Sorry really cannot remember the technical term!
xxx

Regards,

Bookings Team
Studio London

The 'leisure' thing, eh? ?????? indeed! I'll waste no more juice on them, dear reader.

And another thing...

Do you get a smile when you shop on Amazon? Or to look at it the other way up, does your local bookseller try to press on you the tempting news that 'people who bought that book also bought these other ten?' (Change bookseller if they do!) Or, as Robert Crampton - go Red Bob! - put it in his Beta Male column in the Times magazine recently, "customers who viewed this also viewed that, if you like Ecstasy you may well like crack cocaine... Some people might find these suggestions helpful. I don't."

No, the local bookseller never does the hard sell. He does smile, though, in a way that says, I'm glad you stopped by. And guess what? He can also give you directions to Roundwood Park on a hot April afternoon. So you don't need to look it up on your iPhone or nuffink.

Of paper and vinyl

Sorry to bang on about books, but what with the psycho-geography of the Kilburn High Road (a.k.a. the Main Artery of Kilburnia) getting utterly ripped up this week in the wake of the bookshop's closure, I find the topic is still foremost in my mind. Sorry, also, to be lazy and simply copy out someone else's words, but they are quite touching - and they purport to come from, of all people, Zadie Smith's mum, Yvonne.

"The closure of The Kilburn Bookshop is indeed the saddest of news. It is true that I used to take daughter Zadie and sons Ben and Luke there on an almost weekly basis. All three have a massive love of books and I sure that The Kilburn Book Shop was a massive inspiration. The shops owner positively encouraged small children to sit on the floor and leaf through the books rather like they were in a library. To me, there is nothing more beautiful than standing and looking and shelvings of books. Browsing in a bookshop and purchasing new books is just a great thrill. Bookshops do not have distractions. They have books, so no danger of me coming out with some horribly expensive item that I really don't need. Frankly I don't really care how cheap books are on the internet. I prefer to go into my local bookshop and look, leaf through and buy what I want. I and all my children, friends, neighbours are keeping everything cross that the sister shop, The Willesden books shop does not go the same way. I am positive that bookshops will return to our high streets once this recession is over."

God, I hope she's right about that prediction. Someone else in the Telegraph comments section compared paper books (i.e. not i-books or blogs or whatever hi-tech faffery is hip) to vinyl records. They meant this in a gloomy end-is-nigh way, but to me it's a heartening thought, in its way. Vinyl is, to my ears, the best sound bar none and I'm absolutely bloody jubilant that I can't take it for a jog or use it for a ringtone.

On that note, I've added a blog to my 'Go see!' list: 17 Seconds is my brother-in-law's blog. He likes vinyl so much, I'm always braced for the news that their flat has finally collapsed into the flat below, under the weight of all those records.

Books: delicious hot, disgusting cold

The Kilburn Bookshop closed forever on Sunday. I popped in and out almost every day last week, checking its pulse and scavenging for books. The atmosphere was funereal, the shelves got thinner and thinner, people dashed in saying 'Darling! Is this really the end?' and the guys at the till got weary of saying the same old things. Yes, we're closing. Yes, it's true. Yes, Amazon, the book trade, the rent hike...

To counter the despair, I thought I'd post a list of some of the books I came away with in the vulture-mobile/jalopy. These are books which will illuminate my life in years to come. There was a separate pile for Mr Q and for Pie, and some that I won't mention because they're presents; these are the ones I chose for me, myself and I.

• Burnt Diaries - Emma Tennant
• Selected Poems - Wallace Stevens
• The Complete Poems - Emily Jane Bronte
• Singing in the Dark - Alison Brackenbury
• Drives - Leontia Flynn
• The Broken Word - Adam Foulds
• The Forward Book of Poetry 2007
• Time Bites - Doris Lessing
• The Unknown Matisse; Matisse the Master - Hilary Spurling
• The Artist's Way - Julia Cameron
• Sign Language Companion - Cath Smith
• More About Boy - Roald Dahl
• The Jolly Postman - Janet & Allen Ahlberg
• Wizard of the Crow; A Grain of Wheat - Ngugi wa Thiong'o
• Catholicism - Gerald O'Collins
• The Child that Books Built - Frances Spufford
• Selected Letters of Edith Sitwell
• A Tale of a Tub - Jonathan Swift
• The Discovery of France - Graham Robb
• A Book of Silence - Sarah Maitland
• Speak, Memory; Glory - Vladimir Nabokov
• Revelations of Divine Love - Julian of Norwich
• The first person and other stories - Ali Smith
• On Beauty (audiobook) - Zadie Smith

The last is poignant. I'm listening to it at the moment and it mentions Kilburn, Zadie Smith's childhood stomping ground, giving me a warm glow on the inside when I hear mudane details of the houses round here and how far it is to the nearest tube stop. But it also reminds me of the article posted up in the window of the bookshop (from the Telegraph, Apoca-lit Now) in which I read that Zadie used to get books from the Kilburn Bookshop as a kid. Where would a young bookaholic go now?

Like when a pen is picked up and writes on its own

Oh yulp. I haven't written a post for almost a week so this is what you get, a piece of stream-of-conk drivel. Well, the sun is shining mutely but overpoweringly through grey cloud (single grey cloud over London, probably looks like a lumpy duvet when viewed from an aeroplane window) and as I write it is coming and going, glowing as strong as a lamp in a teenager's ganja farm - one minute - and fading in cold afterglow the next. Cars a-go-go mostly downhill towards town [as I call the City Centre] on Finchmore Road. Occasional pedestrians.

The yellow tulips on the table are in a parallel world, strange aliens. The Camden rubbish truck goes by. Two men: one in a baseball cap, one in a beanie - pause for a moment to imagine that for them they are the centre of their day, their path under my window is an ingrained track in their lives, for them all stories all songs centre on them. Not me, how strange!

A smart car has pulled up at the foot of the steps. The car has wing mirrors with their own indicator lights, wing mirrors that fold inwards under remote control. The Mercedes dreamcatcher on the front is snapped off, though; even smart cars must have faults.

A lady walks down the street in flip-flops (good luck to you madam, have you not seen the forecast in the Cloud over London?) and on the opposite pavement, in the opposite direction, a man pushes a buggy, causing me to wonder why why why, it always intrigues me - the story behind the man pushing the buggy.

May their ears fall off

The other day I was a total idiot, proof of the old adage that there's one born every minute. It took me the rest of the week to get over it, and I feel I have to tell people as a sort of penance. Think of me of The Ancient Mariner for Modern Times. The moral of the story is clear: don't answer the phone whilst trying to feed supper to a baby. Read all about my stupidity in the letter I fired off to The Guardian's consumer champion, Capital Letters, once I realised what a dolt I'd been!

Dear Capital Letters,

I had a run-in with a company called Studio London recently. They rang to congratulate me on winning a competition (which I couldn't remember entering) for a 'magazine-style photo shoot' and I gullibly went along with it, managing to drown out the sound of alarm bells going off as I gave them my bank details and authorised them to remove £40 from my account for a holding deposit (for a prize!). I then read up on the company on the internet and found to my horror that this was only the start of Studio London's machinations: people who actually went to the photo shoot wrote of parting with hundreds, even thousands, of pounds for a few photographs under the pressure of a 'hard sell' by the company.

Realising that I'd been conned, I contacted them the next day to cancel my booking and demand my money back. This they refused to do, saying that during the previous telephone conversation I would have been told about their 'no cancellations' policy. Their trump card seemed to be that all calls was recorded by them - the implication being that it was my memory versus their ellusive tape-recorder. They also attempted to guilt-trip me by saying that I had wasted one of their highly-prized bookings. Fortunately I was on my mettle by then, having already contacted Consumer Direct and received sound advice on my rights under the Distance Selling Regulations 2000.

Although the phone conversation came to a dead end (Me: I will get my deposit back. Them: I cannot confirm that you will. Repeat to fade) an email and a letter stating the law seem to have had the desired effect. I should be receiving the deposit I stupidly parted in the next 7-10 days.

Clearly I was a fool to get involved in the first place, vanity won out over wariness and cynicism, but I merely write because I want others to avoid my pratfall. I don't know if you need letters like this where there isn't an issue waiting to be resolved - except that there's a company out there still scamming people, that 's worrying enough.

Yours sincerely,
Q

Of course I put my name on it, I'm not totally loopy; I don't go round calling myself 'Q' in real life, like an MI5 agent, much as Mr Q would adore me if I did.

Beware...

... the Ides of March

Books

If there was one shop I'd recommend you go into on the High Road, it would be 'The Kilburn Bookshop', although of late it's been looking a bit down-at-heel. Now I know why. This lovely unassuming shop is to close at the end of the month. Why oh why? I've asked around and was told that the owner has been talking about winding things up for several years. This March is the end of the road. The good news could be that there is 30% off all stock - if that counts as good news.

How do the little tiddlers of the books industry survive? How on earth does an independent bookshop keep going these days? I know of three round here - West End Lane Books, The Willesden Bookshop and The Kilburn Bookshop - soon to be two. Now that my favourite is cutting its losses and closing its doors, I feel angrier than ever about the collapse of bookselling as it use to be and the 'net book agreement' (the ending of which led to, for instance, 'Harry Potter' being £15 cheaper in the big shops than the little ones). Only a fool would pay over the odds. I am one of those remaining fools and I can only say in my defence that fools (cf. Shakespeare) are sometimes credited with wisdom.

There are the second-hand bookshops, such as the ones I knew in Edinburgh as a student, which seem to get by on a budget of air and rolling tobacco. Perhaps they sell an expensive first edition once a year (on the internet of course) and that tides them over for the next year. Then there is Word Power on West Nicholson St, Edinburgh, which has always seemed to do a healthy trade to me - it's proximity to the university must help, but what really impresses me is that it has its own strong agenda (calls itself a Radical bookshop). This must count for something. Somewhere you can go and find unusual books that surprise and challenge you.

The other great bookshop from my university days was Barnardos on South Clerk St. This was, I suppose, the mirror-image of Word Power: it sold back to the public the books of which the academics had tired. The prices were fair for second-hand books, the variety was astounding. Many of my favourite books came from there. I still wish I'd bought a copy of Robert Alan Jamieson's 'A Day At The Office' I found there - it was a signed copy, though, and the inscription (a personal one) was to somebody else. Why had it ended up in a charity shop? I felt bad about buying it, so I didn't.

I'm not wholly against the bullies in the playground of bookselling - I would be a hypocrite to denounce Waterstones or Amazon, having bought books from both. You have to admire their clout. I also take the point made by many that their local bookshop before the advent of better was a terrible store with no inspiration, nothing new, nothing you wanted to read and one smelly dog in the corner. The local one in our hometown (once, back in those sepia days, regarded as a treasure trove of good books) now sells mostly DVDs and my parents resent the way the owners are always sitting in each others laps. If Posy Simmonds hadn't done so already (The Literary Life), I'd suggest she satirised the whole scene with her wicked cartoonist's pen.

Then there are the blogs, doing their bit for the extinction of the face-to-face bookshop encounter. If you want to include a link to a book you've mentioned (I know because I've done this already), you're almost bound to link it to Amazon, because that's the first that comes up, silly, and we don't have time to go one better (the whole of the Internet seems built upon the idea of being 'short of time' - though we had a lot more time before it arrived, I remember those halcyon days). There is even the readymade add-on that links books you mention directly to their Amazon page...

200 visitors and counting!

Eek, as teenage girls - and everyone else once they get high on bloxygen - say. I must be doing something seriously good here. Thank you all for visiting. It makes my day - when I'm not beating myself up about whether this is the most sublime and egotistical waste of time ever thought up. (It is).

Posh lollies, chocolate mice, acid drops, midget gems

Pie and I decided to go to the One O'Clock Club at Hampstead Heath today. It's a wonderful free-form resource provided by the City of London somewhere down the south edge of the Heath, near the prison-like Lido. I am grateful to the friend who recommended it to me ("many clubs are awful" she said "but this one is excellent").

To be basic about it, it is a sort of big shed or barn (with windows and heating) with lots of well-loved toys and areas for children to play. Pie is at the still blissful stage of being a lowly bum-shuffler and that relegates us to the Baby Corner where other 'non-walkers' and their parents/nannies ('pannies'?) loll around on beanbags and foam mats. Mr Pie spent a long time gripping the gate of the Baby Corner, uttering low bellows and attempting to insert his head between the bars. This seemed like superb entertainment to him.

On the way back the devil, on special lentish duty, tempted me and we got out at West Hampstead instead of Kilburn High Road. We'd been on the Overland, you see, letting the train take the strain. Opposite the station is a tiny shop, more of a serving hatch really, called Beatties Sweeties. I purchased 50 grams of chewy beer bottles (like 'cola bottles' but revolting: taste of beer swept off the brewery floor) and 50 grams of black'n'reds (significantly better but a curious 'two stage' sweet - get rid of the tiny sugar pellets before attaining the gummy core). All for £1.20. I admit my choices this time were off... it felt like a penance to eat them. But I like sweets. My poor molars are a testament to that.

Bankers hours

Something is playing merry havoc with the upkeep of the blog. At the moment I get up at five-thirty (I know, even writing that down makes me feel tired) to get my 'serious' writing done before Mr Pie awakes. This seems to work and my pen-and-paper writing has really come along - in quantity, I'll say nothing for quality - but it means that at the end of the day, after Pie has gone to sleep, when I settle down to play at writing in the blogosphere, I'm dog tired and can hardly dredge up the energy to type.

I was comforted to read this in an interview with Dave Eggers in yesterday's Observer Review:

"I used to write in the middle of the night. I suppose I was surprised by the sedentary nature of writing. Like, wow, most of this is sitting down and typing! So I used to add a bit of adventure by starting at midnight and working until five. That was the excitement! But now I have two kids. So it's bankers hours for me."

I had that kind of superstitious nocturnal routine for writing as a student and O How I Loved It. And it wasn't having Pie in my life which put paid to it, it was having Mr Q. I think I'm still getting over the tremors of the cataclysmic shift he caused in my usual patterns.