After lunch today (outside: grey sky, gushing river, the peep of a wagtail flitting about):
PM: I'm going to work on my book now.
TM: Which book?
PM: Rome.
TM: It wasn't written in a day.
PM: [nothing]
TM: Why is no one willing to pay for this kind of genius?
Last week I was going to post something about the low weeks in a writer's life - the rejection, the de-commission, the falling-through, the indefinite postponement, the samples and proposals and exploratory conversations that lead nowhere in particular (or nowhere particularly lucrative) - because that's the kind of week I had, with all of the above featured. But why be glum? And why destroy our carefully contrived image as modern-day Brownings (as in EB and R), enjoying some endless glamorous exile in a foreign land, delighting in our mutual artistic-ness and the range of fruit and veg in the local markets?
Our glamorous exile is in Sheffield here at the chilly heart of Austerity Britain, but there's a very good market just five minutes walk away, where I managed to spend sixty-two pence on Lincolnshire sausages yesterday, and where the market traders say things like "that's two pounds in money" (as opposed to olden-days weight), and "that'll be ten shillings!" At the market I've also learned the local word for rolls ("breadcakes"). Exile is educational.
Now I must get back to work, because Rome wasn't ... etc.
I went in the new market the other day and one stall was selling, 'Frozen Food since 1961.' I didn't know you could freeze snap (Barnsley slang for food) that long...
Posted by: Karl Riordan | February 06, 2014 at 05:41 PM