The perils of drinking too much

Frances (a friend of mine from work) was away last week, as she had been to a party the previous evening and was hung-over on Sunday morning. She was back at work yesterday, though, and after exchaning good-mornings I asked her if she had recovered from her party yet. She replied in the affirmative ... but also said that one of her friends didn't.

Apparently, the girl involved actually drunk so much alcohol that she had to be taken to hospital in an ambulance. And she's still there. Frances visited her last night, and her friend still can't walk properly, as she is having difficulty co-ordinating her legs. She was completely paralytic until a few days ago.

How is it possible to drink that much? Unless things like Vodka were doing the rounds, you'd think that most people physically wouldn't be able to drink such amounts. We suspect that someone at the party was spiking the drinks with something rather stronger than people thought.

It's a common enough trick, and people think it's amusing at the time ... but not when it lands your friends in hospital, unable to walk a whole week later. It just goes to show that irresponsible practical jokes can have disastrous consequences. Especially when everyone's a little bit on the tipsy side and can't be trusted to think rationally.

And in other news

There is now one day left until the end of November ... and I have completely and utterly failed NaNoWriMo. My count is still stuck at just over 14K. Last year I remember laughing to myself at the people who hadn't "even" made 20K. I think it's fair to say that I have learned some humility.

Why didn't I finish? The plain truth is that I've been through a lot of changes since NaNo 2003, and my writing has evolved to fit a different set of criteria (Kate, you were right). Remember, Cold Witness developed in the intervening time, and that project has had a tremendous impact on my life. I now find it impossible to write crap and worry about the details later. I guess you could say I'm a fundamentally careful person: I don't do things without planning them first, and although I was going through a "spontaneous" phase this time last year, I'm a different man now.

For the people who are suited to it, NaNoWriMo is a wonderful idea and an inspiring vision. I wish present and future Wrimos the very best of luck in their months of madness. But, for me, I think this is the end of the road for NaNo. My current writing philosophy relies on the gradual, careful build-up of ideas, with a large planning and research stage, and an even larger revision stage. I just can't re-gear my mind to work in NaNo mode anymore.

But in the five years I've been writing to date, I still remember November 2003 as one of the greatest turning points. Indirectly, it allowed things like Cold Witness to be possible. It opened my mind, broadened my horizons, and persuaded me that I could write better and deeper stories. I shall miss that feeling of hope and new possibilities.

Weekly pics: round 42

More photos of the upper regions of Cadair Idris this week. Our hike only led us to the basin of Llyn Cau, since a cold front came in from the south and the weather turned foul. We found out that the Cwm Nant Cadair acted as a gigantic wind tunnel, making the murderously steep summit traverse too dangerous to attempt. Gusts of Force 5 were present in the Cwm Nant Cadair. We were reluctantly forced to turn back as the sky greyed over.

Llyn Cau was a worthy objective in itself, however, and boasts the best scenery I've seen outside the Lake District. This frame was taken from halfway around the edge of the lake. Although it's too small to be visible in this version, a small green blob to the left, on the shores of the lake, is a tiny one-man tent. Just imagine waking up halfway up Cadair Idris in the morning! (That'll be me next year, by the way, when I camp beside Sprinkling Tarn--which is actually quite a bit higher than Llyn Cau.)



This is the summit of Mynydd Pencoed (the second highest of the Cadair Idris mountains) from Llyn Cau. The ridge route east, to the right of the photo, leads to Penygadair itself. We were planning to ascend the pass which cuts up the side of the lake to the hause between the two mountains.



Photos (C) James Roddie 2004

I owe you guys

I've just realised something very important. In the old days, before I had any contact with other writers, a situation like the one I'm in now (ie. temporarily unable to progress with a book) would have played havoc with my writing for a prolonged period of time. Not only would I be convinced that the book itself was doomed and should be put down, I would also be under the impression that I was useless as a writer and should therefore give up for good. I once entered a hiatus that lasted nearly an entire year ... simply because of a story which had lost its way.

Now I know one or two of my posts last week sounded somewhat depressed (okay, very depressed), but because I can communicate with other writers out there, the impact is softened. I may have said words to the effect of "the book is doomed, my writing is doomed, I'll go eat worms", but we all go through phases like that. The difference is that I'm already bouncing back. In the old days, I would still be on the decline at this point--in a big way.

But your encouraging comments have helped tremendously. I know I'm not alone in this. Writing in this blog, and communicating with the people who read it, pays for the time it takes a hundred fold. I originally started it off as an experiment. Would it make a difference? Would it provide an effective outlet for ideas and emotions that I had no other way of expressing?

It's worked. ETF may be temporarily on hold, but I have picked up Project Cold Witness from where I left off and am starting to prepare it for submission. This weblog, as a channel of communication with other writers, has lifted me out of writer's block faster than I would have thought possible.

So: Thank you. Keep up the good work, and keep writing! You're an inspiration!

(Speaking of inspiration, I just found the latest live update on the Great Gable webcam, taken thirty seconds ago. I'm heartened to see that, although the weather here is fine and dry, the mountains of Lakeland are still shrouded in cloud and rain, as they are most of the year.)

Added some more sidebar links

The "Hiking & Outdoors" section was in most need of updating, so I have added five new links:

+ Cotswold Outdoor. This is the best supplier of hiking and mountaineering equipment that I've been able to find. The website is simple and logical, unlike many online ordering sites, and they stock anything you could possibly want or need. I buy most of my equipment from here.

+ WasdaleWeb. This is the "official" site for Wasdale: the centre of English mountaineering. Great Gable, Lingmell, Kirk Fell and the Scafells are all within reach of Wasdale Head, and the valley boasts some of the finest scenery in Britain. WasdaleWeb itself is an extraordinarily useful website for the aspiring Scafell summiteer.

+ Great Gable webcam (WasdaleWeb). This is a great source of inspiration! This webcam, updated every hour in daylight, shows the most recent view of Great Gable (2949 feet) from Wasdale Head. The last one I looked at was of stunning sunset light breaking over a snow-clad Gable. Definitely to be recommended!

+ Scafell Pike webcam (WasdaleWeb). Similar to the above, but instead showing a scene of Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England (3210 feet). Unfortuntely, the Pike's webcam is currently undergoing maintenance, so this link is temporarily unavailable.

+ Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel, Great Langdale. If Wasdale is the centre of English mountaineering, Dungeon Ghyll is the centre of English fellwalking. From this base in Great Langdale, almost all of the Southern fells can be reached on foot within a few hours. Situated at the foot of the famous Langdale Pikes, Dungeon Ghyll offers footpaths to Stickle Tarn, Bowfell, Pike o' Blisco, Rosset Pike and the Scafells. I will be staying at the campsite here for five days in my expedition next May.

I have also removed the placeholder for last year's NaNo winner's badge, as the image is no longer working. I'll replace it with the NaNo 2004 participant badge when I get the chance.

Winter is here

The deep cold of winter has returned. Even the ambient air temperature is conspiring to keep my writing from moving forward. As I've mentioned before, I do all my writing in a small "summerhouse" at the bottom of the garden. The furnishing is spartan: a desk and chair; a table lamp; a fan for hot weather; a security light attached to the outside wall; and a low-wattage electrical heater. At this time of year, the heater is the only thing which prevents me from dying of hypothermia. As things stand, it only just takes enough of the edge off the cold to prevent my fingers from freezing ... mostly. I recall an occasion, last February, when it was so cold that I was physically incapable of typing. My fingers just went numb and quit working.

The temperature's about -5 degrees Celsius outside right now. Frost is sparkling on the lawn, and icebergs are forming on the pond like regiments of glaciers poised and ready for the next Ice Age. If it were to rain, the precipitation would come down as fine, dusty snow (all too rare in the climate of coastal Suffolk). This weather might not sound too extreme to you, but consider that, where I live, frosts are rare and summers are long, hot and dry. I haven't seen much evidence of global warming here lately. In fact, the weather seems to be getting colder each winter.

Which is odd, because the winters are growing shorter and the summers longer. Wordsworth's daffodils in Borrowdale (Lake District) are blossoming weeks earlier than they used to. Many trees retain their green foliage well into October.

Does that make sense to you?

Writing

Writing is still going very badly. No update on my NaNo count. No progress whatsoever on ETF. However, I have saved myself from a potentially embarrassing mistake in Cold Witness. Apparently, Jodrell Bank is a radio telescope array ... not a radar set. Therefore Col. Foyle couldn't possibly be receiving reports from Jodrell Bank of incoming unknown craft crossing the polar ice cap at 25x the speed of sound. *smacks self on head* Duh! Will have to find a way of weaving RAF Fylingdales in there somewhere.

I'm currently reading The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy. To Kate and Justin: It is "Russkies", not "Ruskies". I was right all along!

Work

Work is starting to get hectic. Although Jenni and Chris were both in today, they were engaged elsewhere in the store, leaving Chloe and I to mind the tills alone for most of the day. That wouldn't be so bad if things weren't busy, but they were. To make matters worse, Frances is not going to be in tomorrow (something about a predicted mother of all hangovers from a party tonight), which means that--you've guessed it--Chloe and I will have to mind the tills all day tomorrow as well.

Weekly pics: round 41

More photos from Cadair Idris this week. Although only a relatively leisurely 2930 feet above sea level, Cadair Idris is one of the most important mountains in Wales because of its geographical isolation. In many ways, it is similar to the Coniston Massif in Lakeland: a range of mountains, bounded by deep valleys and hills on all sides, cut off from the main Snowdonian massif. And like the Scafells in Lakeland, it is climbed many thousands of times each year by backpackers, hikers and mountaineers (some of the rock architecture in the Cwm Nant Cadair is extraordinary). We woke up at four thirty in the morning to get an early start, and by nine o'clock the trail was swarming with tourists--including babies in pushchairs, elderly people in wheelchairs, and idiots wearing flip-flops. This is on a mountain which necessitates ice-axes and crampons in winter. We saw people like this at Scafell Pike last year, too. *sigh* Clueless weirdos seem to be attracted to fellwalking, for some reason.

This is a photo of Cadair Idris from the valley below Corris Uchaf (the mountain is still several miles away at this point). I believe the peak in view is, in fact, Mynydd Moel: the third highest peak. Penygadair, the 2930' elevation, is out of view behind the buttress of Craig Lwyd.



And this is the Minffordd trail: a steep, rocky traverse that picks its way up the Cwm Nant Cadair towards the basin valley of Llyn Cau, the glacial mountain tarn. This view of the easy section was taken from the top of a splendid flat-topped boulder, shaped like a double-decker bus, which shows signs of extensive rock climbing, ie. petons stuck in the surface, well-worn handholds, and initials carved in the stonework at the top. There was an easy way to ascend the boulder from the western side, of course (the coward's route, which we took), but rock climbers don't do things the easy way.



Thirdly, a panoramic view looking back down the valley, from halfway up the Cwm Nant Cadair. This photo shows one of the glacial debris boulders which litter the valley. Some of them are textbooks examples of glacial moraines: huge rocks perched on top of others at unlikely angles, embedded boulders deeply scarred by the passage of the glacier, and huge crags and entire hills formed completely from crushed rock deposited in ancient times. It's extraordinary to think that this entire landscape was created as recently as ten thousand years ago!



Photos (C) Alex and James Roddie 2004

Still blocked

I feel like I am being torn in three directions at once: tear out my soul in trying to continue ETF at this time; step aside and do some work on Cold Witness (which is never tedious); or simply give writing a couple of months of rest.

Either way, I've failed NaNo this year. Now I know you're going to tell me that it's the taking part that counts, and I know you're right on that score ... but what's so galling is that I was so certain I could do it. It was bloody easy last year! Why does writing new, first-draft material seem to get more and more difficult over time?

Perhaps things will seem a little brighter once this damned cold clears up.

{insert suitable expletives}

I am feeling like a total looser because of my continued inability to write. Writer's block--is it always like this? Perhaps this is the first time I've actually been afflicted by it. Maybe the other occasions were just minor glitches. This, though ... this is a deeper problem, more vital. Have I failed as a writer? Am I no longer physically capable of constructing my stories?

I try to think positive thoughts about writing. It works, but only to the extent that it makes me want to write. It doesn't solve my problem and actually give me the ability to do so.

Writing aside, things are going badly on all fronts. I picked up a cold yesterday, and a combination of sore throat, cough and constant sneezing has left me in a foul and rather fragile mood. Work today was a prolonged slog, and the news that I'm going to be working nine hours of overtime on Friday (they didn't ask me; they told me) has not been received well. Three days off per week aren't much to ask for a part-time worker, are they? I need those days off. The time-and-a-half overtime pay might be welcome, but too much till work is very stressful and wrecks what little of my writing ability apparently remains.

The silver lining

For the time being, I am distracting myself from the miseries of the world (insert plaintive violin overture) by planning out my next backpacking trip, to be conducted in May 2005. It may be a little early yet to start planning, but five months are bound to go by in no time at all ... and besides, I've been looking forward to this particular trip for nearly two years now. I'll be taking the train to Windermere in the Lake District, and then it's just me and the wilderness for two weeks. This will push my navigation and backpacking skills to the limit. Here is the list of the 21 mountains I intend to climb:

+ Brown Pike
+ Buck Pike
+ Dow Crag, arguably the second most impressive rock formation in England
+ Coniston Old Man, highest peak in the Coniston massif
+ Brim Fell
+ Swirl How
+ Harrison Stickle
+ Pike o' Stickle
+ Pike o' Blisco
+ Bowfell
+ Crinkle Crags, including Gunson Knott, Mickle Door and Great Knott
+ Cold Pike
+ Rosset Pike, situated above one of the most gruelling foot passes in Lakeland (Rosset Gill)
+ Allen Crags
+ Glaramara
+ Great Gable
+ Kirk Fell
+ Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England
+ Broad Crag, the second highest of the Scafell Pikes
+ Great End
+ Esk Pike

These peaks may be moderate by international standards (even Scafell Pike ranks at only 3210 feet), but they are rugged, bleak and inhospitable--some of the finest mountains in the land, a role-call of Lakeland royalty. Great Gable is the birthplace of modern rock climbing, and some of the mountains (eg. Bowfell, Scafell Pike, Great End) are proud horns of rock and crag thrust high above the valleys. I will have the priviledge of camping in some of the remotest places in England: Sty Head, Sprinkling Tarn and Esk Hause, high in the Scafell-Bowfell massif and miles away from any inhabited place.

England is an ancient country, but that also means that it is overcrowded. I'll be visiting some of the only places left that mankind has never settled. That's true freedom for you.

Disaster lurks

NaNo is not going at all well right now. You know that little problem I mentioned on Thursday? You know I said the answer would come to me if I gave it time? Well, it hasn't.

The maddening thing is that I can't even put my finger on what the problem is. I know what is supposed to come next, dammit. I have the remainder of the scene firmly in my mind! Why, then, can't I just sit down and write it? There's no physical reason. I have plenty of time, a room to myself (albeit a cold one in an outhouse), and a computer to write with. I have everything I need. But, try as I might, I can't ... write ... the ... damned scene!

Writer's block--that's an ugly pair of words, isn't it? I've been blocked before, many times, but always I've been able to identify a reason. Not so this time.

Perhaps it's because I'm not completely committed to the project. Let's be honest with myself here: all the while I'm working on ETF, my thoughts are wandering back to Project Cold Witness, which is a story I really care about. I like the idea of ETF, but does it really have enough of a hold on my mind? Have I become distracted by something? Is my commitment to this new project really that fragile? Will I ever finish the book? Is the entire venture doomed to abandonment, like Project White Light?

Major crisis. Do I try to finish NaNoWriMo, or do I say to hell with it and concentrate my efforts on getting PCW published? I am still under the spell of Cold Witness. Its pull has been powerful enough to last an entire year without waning in the slightest. I've had the energy to revise it again and again and again without losing the substance of the original vision. It's the best novel I have ever written. Evil's True Form, on the other hand, was not even a twinkle in my eye six months ago. I'm beginning to think that all my efforts at writing fantasy are doomed to inevitable failure. My family thinks I should stick with the PCW line of material. Perhaps they're right.

I will have to make a choice very soon. I can't go on like this for long. Even with losing only five days, my chances of completing NaNo have been severely diminished.

On a similar note, this stress seems to be creeping over into other areas of my life. At work on Saturday, a damned cardboard box kept falling off the shelf and getting under my feet. Eventually I picked it up and threw it (rather violently) into the bin with a disgusted look--and thus earned the nickname "Alex the Manic" from Chloe, who was hoovering close by at the time. The nickname seems to have stuck (I've been called worse things). Chloe herself is routinely addressed as "Dopey Chloe". The reason for this remains unclear.

Chloe is now working Sundays as well, which is great news--we now have enough people to man all the tills!

Weekly pics: round 40

These pictures are from our ascent of Cadair Idris, a Welsh 2930-foot mountain between Machynlleth and Dolgellau. As I want to get through the Welsh photos as quickly as possible (James has some new autumn ones he wants me to post), I'm putting up four pictures this week.

This is the start of the Cadair Idris trail. The first stage of the trek was through a steep wooded gill (that's English--Welsh is cwm). This region is so steep that a rough staircase has been cut into the rock.



The Nant Cwm Cadair flows through this rocky patch of ancient woodland, and is essentially one gigantic cascade down the entire gill. My brother took some stunning shots of the waterfalls on the way down. Here are three of the best.







Photos (C) Alex and James Roddie 2004

Don't have time for much today ...

... Save that I have reached my first NaNo mini-hiatus, and haven't written anything for a full day. It's one of those problems where you know broadly what has to happen next, but you can't quite work out how to finish a particular scene. I'm letting my subconscious chew on it. The solution will come to me eventually.

Everything is proceeding according to plan! *manic laughter*

My NaNo count is now over 14,000 words. I am perhaps not making such spectacular progress as last year, but the important thing is that I am keeping ahead. If I continue at the pace I'm currently following, I'll make 50K by the end of the month. Last year I did over 70K, but a lot of things have changed since then. 50K in one month will suit me fine.

I'm happy about the way the plot is coming along. Botulf has just died, Redstan is wallowing in grief, and Llewyn is about to find out that his seven month quest to find Botulf has all been for nothing--literally, he arrived at Ikanho a single hour before Botulf died. When he discovers this, he is going to go absolutely mental. Naturally, the brunt of this unholy wrath will fall on his son, Brynach, my secondary MC, and future saviour of Ikanho.

I'm also happy about the characters ... mostly. It's a shame that the best character in the book, Botulf, dies at the end of chapter two. Brynach is quite good, but in his two scenes up to this point he's mostly been locked in a single emotional state: anger. I have to break out of this stasis for his character to progress. Redstan, my "main" MC, doesn't feel finished enough to me. There's depth to his character, and I have his motivations pinned down, but his dialogue is difficult. I'm having problems finding Redstan's voice. I know it's still very early days for this book, but I don't want to finish with big problems left to sort out. I had enough of that with PCW!

(The second episode of my Back To School class on Anglo-Saxon Warfare was posted at Forward Motion last night. It's on the weapons and armour of the period, and can be found in the November 2004 folder of the Back To School forum at FM.)

Saturday ...

... Was a work day. As luck would have it, I was posted on the fireworks till (well away from the others), as I am the only Saturday till operator who is over eighteen and hence able to sell fireworks. This means that I am isolated right at the end of the checkout ... and have to bear the full brunt of the last-minute, post-Bonfire-Night shoppers. Jenny and I had a quick chat, but she procured a highly suspicious headache at lunch time and announced that she was ill--could she go home, thank you very much? The boss's answer was "take some paracetamol", but sadly that didn't help. Grinning, she said in melting tones over the phone to the boss: 'I still have a splitting headache and would very much like to go home--please sir, I beg you sir.' The boss couldn't help but yield to her charm (she has that effect on some of us) and gave in. She was all smiles as she left the building, the devious girl.

And Sunday

Chloe, Frances and I were keeping the hordes of customers at bay yesterday. Some of them were really nasty, for example:

A man gives a bulb planter to Frances, who is on the till next to me. The item has no barcode. As Frances has only worked at Wyevale for a couple of weeks, she turns and asks me what to do. I take the bulb planter, and say to the man: 'I need a code for this. Could you show me where you picked it up?' (A perfectly reasonable question, in my opinion.)

The man looks down his nose at me. 'I don't run errands for your staff.' He speaks with an exaggerated upper-class lisp.

I smile awkwardly. 'Okay, sorry, I'll just go and look for it.'

After five minutes of searching, I return with the code and battle my way through the enormous queue to the checkout. I give the code to Frances, who is looking uncomfortable as the man lectures her on the principle of The Customer Is Always Right.

Frances gives me a hopeless look. 'The gentleman says--' she begins, only to be cut off by a sniff from the customer.

'I demand,' declares the man, 'to see some management. Management! At once, do you hear?'

'I'm afraid this is the manager's day off,' I say, my heart sinking at the prospect of a complaint being aimed at Frances and myself.

'Then I wish to see the person who is in charge!' More pathetic snivelling, more looking down his nose. His eyes are, by this point, locked in a permanent squint.

Luckily, both of the floor managers are busy, and I tell him so. He glares at his watch, then glares at Frances, then glares at me--again, down his nose. 'You haven't heard the last of this. Outrageous service. Outrageous, I tell you! I will phone the manager first thing tomorrow morning and give him a piece of my mind!' With that cliched warning, he stalks (or rather waddles) out of the store, clutching his precious bulb-planter to his chest and proclaiming in a loud voice, to no-one in particular, that 'This establishment could do with some new staff!'

We talked about it later. It turns out that Chloe had to deal with someone who was tired of waiting in the queue for a whole minute. The woman in question barged her way to the front, threw her goods on the counter, and said 'It is disgraceful that I am being forced to wait! In future I will visit Notcutts instead!' (Notcutts is the other large garden centre in Woodbridge). Chloe usually works Saturdays only, and so doesn't have to deal with these kind of people very much. But I've seen it all before.

I think some people just like being nasty to shop workers--and I've noticed that the old-age penshioners are usually the worst. Sometimes it's hard not to just thump your fist down on the counter and yell at them to grow up.

Weekly pics: round 39

Some more photos of the Cwmrhwyddfor this week. After arriving at Dôl Einion in the heat of the day, we set up our tents and sheltered from the sun--then, that evening, we took a stroll down to the lake (Tal-y-llyn) further down the valley. The evening sunlight, streaming over the ridge of the Cadair Idris range, was stunning.

Firstly: Mynydd Rugog in evening light. This is the first, and lowest, of the long ridge of mountains that culmunate in the great Craig Goch, and forms the southern wall of the Cwmrhwyddfor valley.



Secondly, Craig Goch itself. This mountain reminds me very much of the Wastwater Screes in Wasdale, Cumbria--one of the locations of last year's summer holiday. In fact, the entire Cwmrhwyddfor can be compared to a smaller version of Wasdale, complete with high-altitude glacial lake, sheer mountains to one side, and a high range to the north. But Craig Goch is nowhere near as impressive as the famous Wastwater Screes, which were formed when half of the mountain fell into the lake sometime in the 19th century.



Next week: the first stage of the ascent of Cadair Idris.

Photos (C) James Roddie 2004

Quick update

I have now finished the first chapter and introduced all the main characters: Botulf, Redstan, Brynach and Eryl. I have also established the main two threads of the storyline, hinted at the overall conflict, shown what each character has to lose and what their motivations are, and provided a strong hook for reading forward ... at least, I hope that's what I've done. It feels right to me, though, and at the moment that's all that matters.

NaNoWriMo has begun!

Wrote 2,500 words of Evil's True Form yesterday. It felt wonderful to be writing new stuff again! I opened the book with about three paragraphs of background before *SLAM* the main character is plunged into the thick of it. I only dared to slow down after the end of the first scene, to let my MC (Botulf) come to terms with the fact that he only has two days to live.

Here's something, though. Traditionally, my brother has always read my books as I write them, every night. But last night he told me that the opening felt "strange". Although that's the kind of comment I would welcome in the rewrites, I don't need to hear it right now. The last thing you need during NaNo is criticism. It will squash your enthusiasm like a bug. Therefore, he's going to write his comments down in a computer file ... and I won't read them until I'm ready to.

NaNoWriMo isn't about creating something perfect straight off. It's about creating something fun, something spontaneous. If you like what you wrote afterwards, then you can work on it--but if not, what have you lost? A month of you time? Wrong: even if you don't develop the material, you have gained a month's worth of writing experience, and that is a precious thing.

So, my fellow Wrimos: don't let well-meaning friends or relatives tell you what to do at this point. Get stuck in and write stuff. Worry about details later.

(Endnote: My Back To School classes on Anglo-Saxon Warfare are now showing at Forward Motion. You can find them in the Back To School forum, under November 2004. The first class was posted last night.)

The Saturday situation at Wyevale

Worked some more overtime at Wyevale on Saturday. It turns out that Saturdays are rather frantic, not only for reasons which are obvious, but also because we are short on staff. The garden centre's current policy is to employ Sixth Formers and school leavers on Saturday, but there are not many of them--and hence there is an employee shortage.

I felt much more at home in the company of people more or less my age. Jenny you already know (if you read Friday's post). Chloe (who I met on Friday) goes to the same school as Jenny, but is in the Upper Sixth and is studying things like Biology ... people who can survive Biology for two years in the Sixth Form are the Iron Men (and Ladies) of the British educational world. Most people in my year gave up after year one. Chris, the other Sixth Former, is in the same year as Chloe. They all know each other very well, but I didn't feel like an outsider: they're likeable, friendly people, and soon absorbed me into their group.

As Jenny was leaving at 3:30, instead of at six, she only had half an hour of lunch ... but as I was organising the breaks and lunches today, I made sure our breaks overlapped. We had lunch together in the staff room. It turns out that she is just as suspicious of horoscopes as I am, and we both laughed when it was revealed that, on the 4th of November, I would "have to make a life-changing decision regarding love, money and politics. You should watch your funds: although you think you're financially secure, disaster lurks around the corner!" (Words to that effect, anyway). Am I to believe that everyone under the star sign Gemini will have their lives turned upside down on Thursday? Of course, this prophecy may yet come to pass ... but somehow I doubt it.

Jenny also borrowed £3.50 from her till in the morning, to pay for something or other in the café, promising herself that she'd put it back later. Naturally she forgot. Chloe and I remembered this at about half past five, and I was about to offer to subsidise her till (we get in trouble if the records are off-balance at the end of the day), but at that moment one of the supervisers appeared and started to empty the cash out of Jenny's terminal. Too late! She'll have to explain next week.

The manager has asked me to work every Saturday from now on. I may not have liked that idea a couple of weeks ago, but now that I know I'll be working with friends, it's seeming more attractive. After all, these people only work on Saturdays, and I'd hate never to see them again. So we'll see how it goes.