The family had a lovely day on Tuesday – it was daughter’s birthday and boyfriend had organised a splendid day. They picked us up and we headed to Bristol where we went to a brilliant place for breakfast – daughter’s favourite meal of the day. We went to Prime by Pasture which gave us a great meal – plenty on the menu but we all went for a variation on a traditional English breakfast. Having consumed it, boyfriend produced a birthday cake with candles like fireworks, and we all sang happy birthday and then munched on the light-as-a-feather sponge.
We set off to the second oldest pub in Bristol, Ye Bristol – “a cosy pub in a timber framed house originally built in 1636 and restored in the 50s after the blitz,” before heading into the centre. From there, having been suitably refreshed, we headed on to the next venue where we were booked in to play shuffleboard. It’s a classic pub game, “ in which players use cues to push weighted discs, sending them gliding down a narrow court.” The ‘court’ is actually a long slim table, with short sides and a gully between the playing surface an the edge so the weighted discs don’t shoot off onto the floor. The far end is the target area with different scores on which you try to get your disc by sliding them along. If you slide too hard, or not straight, they shoot off into the gully, not hard enough and they don’t reach the scoring target area. You are also trying to knock you opponents discs out of the way. It’s quite tactical, simple but needs skill, and enormous fun. I was spectacularly useless, but really enjoyed it, as we all did! A splendid day, and later on we reconvened at a pub near where they live (which I have written about here before)
It’s just as well I was fortified by such a fun and enjoyable and downright lovely day because the day after, yesterday, I had a depressing annoyance which will potentially create great difficulty, and yet one more delay on the birth of my next Radwinter book, possibly the last in the series. It is complete, and as usual when I’m writing it I seem unable to use ten words but insist on using several times that number. When it’s finished I go through several winnowing several times, getting rid of all the extra adverbs and adjectives and the repetitive witterings of Thomas Radwinter. You might wonder why I’m not more disciplined when I write to begin with and carefully craft my sentences, balancing each word – Well, I don’t know why I don’t, except when I’m writing it’s as if I’m watching something happening before my mental eyes and I’m galloping along trying to record it all. When it’s done, and I have my whole lump of narrative, I attack it with vigour and whittle it into shape, then smooth and polish it… well that is always the plan.
However – after having such a wonderful day on Tuesday, last night, suddenly and for no apparent reason, the end chapter of my story completely disappeared! Now I do of course, have a copy (several copies, actually) but I’d spent several days, actually more than several, working on this last twenty or so thousand words, doing what I’ve described above.
This book has been so delayed, technical difficulties, rewrites, computer problems, procrastination, and the end is so in sight, and to have to go back a week or three in terms of getting it finished is more than annoying. I want it done and published! I want to get on with my Peggy story, I actually have another Radwinter story, I have my 1950’s story of Mike Scott!
Never mind. Think of the lovely family birthday celebration, grit your teeth, soldier on, and write it better than what has been lost!
PS I still haven’t got a title for it!!
Lois Elsden 