Speculation, Fact and Fiction

It's been a bit like that lately. I had my latest eye test last week and picked up my new glasses this week - which necessitated a separate appointment to pick them up and get them fitted which I found somewhat irksome. But not as irritating as the dire selection of frames currently offered for women. Someone has decided all we get is frilly/sparkly and/or insanely narrow so it's like looking through a letterbox.

Then there was the cats' check-up, and subsequent to that, Sable's dental appointment this week, resulting in two extractions and subsequent cossetting of her subdued self - plus dosing with antibiotic and painkiller.

Then there has been the ongoing saga of senior son's DT GCSE project. Which took over the entire weekend as he bought wires and circuit boards and tech-stuff from Maplins and made up a proximity sensor kit to be mounted on the Action Man Car. Ripples continue from that, like 'I need some PP3s, can you buy some today, so I can test the circuit when I get home after I've checked it with Sir?' So I did and it works (which it didn't before...) so halle-bloody-lujah for that.

Not to mention the ongoing rest of the GCSEness.

Oh, and the Xbox 360 which got Red Ring of Death and so we had to negotiate the helpline and then the website and then sort out packing/collection by UPS/tracking the shipment and being here when it came back.

A literary lunch in Oxford on Monday which was pleasant enough but was rather dominated by one individual who kept saying, deprecatingly, how she was nothing special, before launching into yet another anecdote to show that actually, she really is. Her ability to strangle any other conversational thread at birth was remarkable.

A taster aikido session for half of the scout troop that our junior son belongs to. Which went very well and hopefully so will the second session. This is by way of our being helping-parents this term. Amusing feedback from that includes a couple of parents who had just about got their heads round me being a fantasy novelist being visibly startled to see I am also a martial arts blackbelt.

Best discussion between scouts in the cars going home, as reported back to me, was the debate on whether 4th Dan Husband actually has a real samurai sword at home - because he was explaining the martial origins of aikido and showing how basic technique derives from sword-related moves. Nothing like weapons to grab the attention of 11-13yr old boys. They concluded he almost certainly has, on the mysterious logic that he was the parent who supplied twenty-odd foam-and-latex swords when we ran a LARP game at a camping weekend some years ago when they were cubs.

What else? Oh, y'know, booking convention hotels and travel, for me to P-Con at the end of this month and for me and junior son to go to Eastercon in April.

Plus usual aikido practise and junior son's parents' evening.

Workwise, in between all that, I've finalised the WH40K short story - which is rather longer now since the extremely helpful editorial feedback. Incidentally, anyone who thinks writing tie-in fiction is money for old rope is cordially invited to try it...

And I'm cracking on with the 3rd Lescari book. Banners in the Wind is definitely gathering momentum.

So, back to it. Looking at the delightful blankness of the next two weeks in the diary, till P-Con.