Almost managed a complete day off today and fitted in another early afternoon cinema trip to see
An Education which was OK. I identified most with the original schoolboy "boyfriend" of the main character who was awkward and out of his depth and doomed to failure. Not that I am like that now... well not entirely... but I was then, so well done to (I think) Matthew Beard for that excellent portrayal. It's charming and entertaining enough and there was no one clambering around the auditorium with their shirt off, so that was good. Although someone sounded like they were noisily reading a newspaper for the first fifteen minutes - I think they were just eating sweets out of a paper bag, but I have rarely heard it done so noisily. But it's probably that I am just getting old and my peripheral hearing is for some reason getting sharper so this kind of thing becomes annoying. I was ready to go down and punch them. Or at least take off my shirt and hug their seat from behind - maybe this is the answer to all social problems - but then I tuned into the film or they stopped scrunching up paper, one of the two.
I headed home to do the final, final proof read on
How Not To Grow Up (and it still seems strange that the book is up for sale before it even really exists). It's all laid out like it will actually look now, printed on both sides of loose leafs of paper. I managed to find a couple more printing errors, plus a dozen or so more bits of sloppy writing, where the same word is repeated in consecutive sentences or whatever. Doubtless some sloppy writing will get through. I have used the phrase "sloppy writing" to give you an example of what I am talking about - it's turned up three times now, though three times looks deliberate, whilst two is just sloppy writing. Four times starts to make it funny through repetition - it's a complicated business.
It's hard to read a book you've written yourself too many times and really concentrate on the minutiae. But I think it's a pretty good read. Alas it takes til May for it to be available for you to read, though I could just lend out the loose leaf copy and you could pass it around between you. I've managed to fit quite a lot into this year and keep forgetting that I've written a book, despite all this reading and re-reading of it. And as Warming Up approaches its 7th birthday, it's good to recall how helpful it was in the construction of this tome. Don't worry there's plenty of extra stuff in there for people who've read the blog. Probably in a bit too much detail for some of you. Though not quite enough detail for the real perverts. At the moment I can afford to feel that slight tinge of excitement, wondering how it will go down. It feels like it could be some kind of breakthrough piece for me, but then I felt that about the "Talking Cock" book and the Fist of Fun book, both of which pretty much turned to road filler within three weeks of publication.
But if everyone who followed me on Twitter were to buy it - or indeed everyone who downloaded my podcasts - then it would be considered a hit. So if you have any desire to pay me back for all this free content, then you know what to do. It's already been reduced to £8.99 on Amazon. But hold your horses as I might be some sort of offer in the new year - much as I'd love to be at the top of the Amazon charts for a book that doesn't yet exist, except on a computer and a big pile of paper by my bed.
