Progress is being made. Of course, progress being what progress is, it could easily grind to a halt when I’m not looking but, for the moment, I’m easing myself through a section of the book that’s previously been causing me no end of trouble. Visualise it as me in a boat, using the oars to gently propel myself through tricky waters, and constantly being amazed that I don’t sink. There’s going to be a massive amount of rewriting necessary to properly stitch together what’s currently attached by duct tape and string. I am, however, quietly hopeful that even if I haven’t totally finished by the end of this sabattical in Cornwall, I will at least have gotten a shitload of work done. Three weeks today, I will be back in London. 21 days is a long time, but at the moment, I think I’m going to miss this place and all the quiet little rituals- watering the plants, feeding the fish, and the minature exercise regime which I think I’m going to have to try and find some way of continuing when I’m back in London. Returning to the big smoke after nearly four weeks of being in a quiet country house on my own is likely to be a bit of a shock.

I spent most of yesterday walking to Redruth and back on a shopping mission, which was a very eerie experience and involved me walking along a few routes that I haven’t been on for nearly eleven years, and lots of hazy memories that verged on deja-vu. I also ended up taking a wrong turn halfway through the journey there, resulting in lots of wandering, confused gazing at the map and cries of “What the hell is the dual carriageway doing over THERE?!?” I got myself sorted in the end, but it did add a certain edge to the journey that I didn’t quiet need. At the least, I did get enough food so I should be okay for quiet a while (barring the occasional trip into the village for supplies).

I feel like I should have more to report, but life is very, very quiet. About the most dramatic thing that hapenned is that Dad and Linda’s digital TV recorder has apparently gone mad for no discernable reason. It behaves perfectly normally- until it picks up a television signal, at which point it immediately shuts down, and restarts. I’m pretty sure it’s not meant to be doing that, so I may have to call the customer service line. I foolishly said to myself “Well, nothing major seems to have gone wrong for a while” this morning. That’ll learn me.

I’m having a televisual time at the moment. Battlestar Galactica (The remake, not the creaky original) Season One in the afternoons, and Deadwood Season One in the evening. Galactica is still top stuff, although they have an extreme problem with doing self-contained single episode stories- the ‘saga’ episodes are infinitely superior, the majority of standalones in season one are way too talky and not very exciting, and the only places where season two slipped up were in the self-contained single episodes (Plus, they seemed to forget the art of setting up storylines that they practiced so well in Season One- instead, there’s a whole host of plotlines in the second half of the second season that seem to come out of nowhere, including a relationship between two characters that had me saying “Um… excuse me, when the hell did that happen?” I am quietly hopeful that the killer set-up for Season 3 will keep these issues to a minimum.) Deadwood is standing up well to a second viewing- it’s incredibly brutal stuff, and I’d actually forgotten exactly how amazingly foul-mouthed and edgy it is, but the thing I find most fascinating about is the way that all the brutality and amorality in the story makes the small moments of morality and humanity all the more affecting. I’m thinking of lending it to my Dad when he gets back, and I’m hoping he can get past the admittedly gruesome violence and the sheer brutality of it all, as it’s a fascinating show, and hopefully I’ll be able to see Season Two sooner rather than later.

Now, to bed. There’s more writing to be done tomorrow.