Thursday 29 May 2008

An Horrific Headline

After a pleasant lunch, I headed into the office from way out west, Ealing. I couldn't quite focus on my book so I spent the journey looking over other peoples' shoulders, reading their (mostly free) newspapers but I think I'll completely skip over today's news and current events.

As many may know by now, I'm not averse to the occasional late night but usually it's fairly mindless and relaxing. Last night was a slightly different story, I sat down, basking in the glow of my laptop (honestly, this isn't a monitor tan I have, I am Asian). I started a task that should not have taken more then two hours, this would have been just before eleven in the evening. Two hours passed and a number of hiccups (maybe a few distractions) later, I was still no closer to the end.

Part of the problem was the fact I was working from my sofa, it's the sort of sofa that I sink into in the morning then try and get up from in the evening, not really noticing the passage of time in between, also, it's near impossible to sit on it without putting your feet up so as you can imagine, it's not really conducive to working. Then there are the pop tarts, nothing is more distracting then the iced, jammy goodness that's ready in seconds!

Approaching two AM, I was all but ready to stop and sleep but I thought why not tap away (on the keyboard, that is) for a few more hours. By the time I had finished the job, I could see daylight outside, I don't mean the blue/grey twilight before sunrise, I mean full on daylight! Now would be a good time to stop and hit the proverbial hay, I thought, but that just wasn't to be. It was almost exactly at that time, my morning alarm chose to spring into life.

I'm now at the point where I can barely keep my eyes open but it's too late in the day to sleep. Having said that, it's not all bad as my ramblings are more aimless in a sleep deprived state (bearing in mind this is a relative quantity).

6 comments:

Ariane said...

"I couldn't quite focus on my book"

Ha ha! I bet you're still going to be reading that novel in 2013...

Josh said...

You're probably right but I'm hoping that, by that time, I would have figured out who did it.

anonemouse said...

you're not reading this:

http://marienbadmylove.com/default.aspx

are you josh?

if not, once you resolved your current literary mystery, you might like to download a copy for free and rather than merely wondering whodonut, try and work out whydonit...
and, nota bene, he also apparently pushed the record for the longest sentence a cool ten-thousand words over the half mil' mark, making my oh-so-humble efforts all the oh-so-humbler...
as for your punishing sleep-deprivation-and-pop-tart regime, it certainly has paid of in the rambling stakes, but, for the life of me, i can't work out what, or why, or how, or when, or where, or which, or eh? the title of this post is all about alfie...
would you care to let me in on the secret (as long as it doesn't involve ingesting pop tarts)?

Josh said...

No secret just grammatical ignorance on my part. One of the headlines I read over someone's shoulder was something like “a horrific increase in knife crime” now I always thought “an horrific” was the more grammatically correct way but the two writers I met up with on Friday told me 'a' was correct.

As it happens, both are correct, it depends on the amount of plosive you put on the 'h', over the years people have been putting more on the 'h' and the 'an' naturally turned into 'a'. Live and learn.

I'll have a look at Marienbad My Love but I can almost guarantee I wont read it, I'm currently on 'an instance of the fingerpost' by Ian Pears.

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