Postmanchester

Since our trip away, life's gone back to being very busy, as easily as if I'd never left Bristol. I've been training teachers at work -- if you see me offline, do feel free to ask me how much fun that was -- and doing post-submission work on the recent stories. This is rather more complicated than usual in the case of Collected Works, because of the need to keep straight my background material for the anthology as a whole. (Keen-eyed readers who are also familiar with the common themes in my work -- I'm looking at you, Stuart -- may be able to spot the elements I contributed in the blurb.)

Other than that, while B. was in London on Friday I spent a very hot evening in the pub with goddaughter E.'s parents R. and M. and brother L. (though not E. herself, as she was round at a friend's house), and discovered that in addition to Bath Ales, the Wellington fantastically now does heavenly Dark Budvar. Also a rather nice peppers-in-pastry thing, and chips. My post-Manchester diet didn't go so well that day.

Last night B. and I went round to said goddaughter's family and watched her doing her violin practice. This was lovely, touching and caused us both to swell with pride at her skill -- yet was also, oddly, as excruciating as listening to a five-year-old attempting to play the violin. Possibly a bit of cognitive dissonance going on there. We played a couple of rather interesting Italian games that R. and M. picked up in Verona, and investigated another -- Inkognito, about spies in Venice -- which looked terribly complicated.

Today I'm all sticky and sweaty, but not for any enjoyable reason. Never mind.