ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG

Has anyone attempted to send something to my post office via UPS in the last couple of months? I got a notification in the mail today saying they couldn’t deliver, and after phone calls we establish that  they now wouldn’t deliver the package because it’d been over a week since they dropped off the notification and it’s gone into some kind of lost property dead zone. “Please get the original sender to contact us with your correct address,” they said. Right. I have no fucking idea who the original sender is, or what they’re trying to send me. The only clue they can give me is the initials MPS. This doesn’t clear things up any. Putting this on the blog because, quite honestly, the mystery is driving me crazy and the alternative is finding my local UPS office and punching someone in the nose.

I have nothing to say this morning, and yet I feel like talking. It’s early. Early-ish. For certain values of early that mean my flatmate is actually surprised to see me up and about before midday on a midday morning. I’m kicking it in my study, just killing time before some writer-peeps hit Skype for a conference call, and there’s natural sunlight spilling in through the gauzy white curtain on the window and it’s the kind of day that feels very fresh and new and yet, somehow, slightly lived in and comfortable, like the day is just a pair of jeans that have long been broken in. I’m compiling a to-do list for my weekend. There’s going to be some writing. Occasionally I whistle a few bars of the songs that run through my head. For some reason, right now, I’m fixated on the Misfit’s Astro Zombies, which is far more cheerful than any song about zombie exterminating the human race ever should be. When I finish this blog post I’ll chat with some writer-peeps. When I’m finished with my writer-peeps I’ll edit and proof an article that needs to be sent off today. When I’m done with the article, there will be a modicum of writing and some grocery shopping and then a trip out to a local wrestling show. Tomorrow I’ll write and move a washing machine and catch up with some gamer-peeps via the magic of the internet, and all will be right in my corner of the world. There are

One of the interesting things about moving house is the ability to discover things you thought you’d loss. Which is not, in fact, a sneaky way of announcing that I’m moving again – twice in a six-months span is quite enough for me, thanks – but among the various errands that have been run over the last couple of weeks is the clearing out of stuff left behind in my flatmate’s old place, on account of the fact that he’s finally sold it. Over the years I’ve come to accept that I’m quite terrible at moving house. I’ve done it quite a bit, and somehow I always manage to stop about 90% of the way through when the energy peters out just shy of unpacking the last few boxes. There’s always a handful of things that I basically move by taking empty boxes and throwing in a random assortment of stuff, and those boxes get moved from house to house without ever being unpacked. Which is why, when I started moving stuff out from underneath the old place, I find a rather sizable box full of books that I’d packed for the move last December and somehow managed to forget about. The weird part is that many of these books were ones that I tend to use quite often, and not being able to find them was driving me crazy for the last seven or eight months. I mean, it included the vast majority of the really good books on writing,

Of course, by technical difficulties, we mean “Peter discovered his flatmate’s cache of Eureka DVDs and started playing Masters of Orion 2 again.” In the meantime, I’ll give you my mother’s response to my post about what I looked like when I was 5. Sadly, I think that’s the neatest my hair has ever been.

This scene is fiction. Probably. A little fiction never hurt anyone. You know that. There are two of them seated at the table, and he’s having a better time than his date. That shouldn’t really surprise you. Most times when you see a couple, you know one of them is fighting above their weight class. There’s no way it’s going to end well for those people; they’re the ones who are going to spend the night pounded into the mat. But for a while there they’re can dream. For a while they get to be a contender. “This feels weird,” he says. “Does this feel weird to you? It feels weird.” He’s sweating. Fidgeting. They haven’t even got around to entrees yet, but you want to applaud him for getting through ordering without fucking up. “I just don’t ordinarily do this,” he says. “Going out, I mean. Dating. It’s one of those things you see on the telly. A little bit American and all that. Never really occurred to me that it was a thing people actually did.” He frowns and takes a nervous sip of water. “God, that makes me sound like a bit of a loser, doesn’t it?” “No,” she says, “I understand what you mean.” “I don’t think I’ve ever really been on a date before,” he says. “It just seems a bit forward, you know? Very upfront. No pretending that I’m not interested in you.” She doesn’t have anything to say to that. She lifts her

So it turns out I’m in the throes of a throat infection. The good news is that it’s unlikely to get worse – I had my tonsils out when I was way younger, and the doctor seemed to think this was a remarkable stroke of good fortune rather than, you know, one of those things that just happens somewhere along the way when you grow up. The bad news is that it’s viral in nature, so all I can really do is suck it up, sleep, and wait until my hacking cough goes away and I stop feeling like arse. In theory that was meant to be yesterday. In practice, I was relatively glad today was my regularly scheduled day off work and I got to spend eighteen of the past twenty-four hours asleep. And since I’ve now written far more about being sick than I originally intended, I distract you with some slight of hand and a youtube clip: See you all Friday.