I only managed 4 pages, which is odd as it felt like I did more today, but there was some editing to be done and so some of the previous work did disppear. Still not very close to the 40 pages I was hoping for, though I am very close to the half way mark, once I have completed the scene I am working on on the moment. And I can see a way through to the end, so maybe at the other side of the weekend I will have something. God dammit. Something to occupy me on the plane flights I guess.
I went out and about to work, in my usual coffee shop haunts and in Starbucks there was a businessman of about 50 years old or more sitting working his way through a sheet, making calls on his mobile phone. Now maybe I am just getting more irritable in my old age, as my
recent tetchiness on the way to Belfast demonstrates, but I found his phone intensely annoying. Every time he pressed a key to dial (and he was manually inputting all the numbers from the sheet, so it was several presses each time) the phone made a quiet, yet distinct squelching sound, sort of like a drop of water bouncing off a viscous swamp or a frog plopping from one lilly to the next. It was perhaps most like that sound some people can do when they tap their finger against their cheek and make a sound like a dripping tap with their mouths. Not like a dripping tap. Like someone making a sound like a dripping tap.
I was trying to concentrate on my writing and it was really annoying. Maybe I shouldn't have been working in a coffee shop if I wanted peace and quiet, but then this man was treating the place like an office, so why shouldn't I?
But what possessed a man of his age to have his phone make such a stupid sound when he was dialling. I was about to claim that my phone made no sound at all when I put in a number, but on checking just now I realise it does make a little beep, but then I suppose I very rarely dial anyone using their full number any more. And it doesn't make a sound when I get the names from the address book. But at least my sound isn't childish and comical and doesn't pierce through everyone's ear drum discretely, but definitely, when they're just trying to get on with their lives.
I managed to restrain myself, though again did attempt to give the man the hard stare that had totally failed to silence the whistling man at the airport. But I couldn't believe that this irritating little phone quirk had never got this small and elderly man into any kind of trouble. Surely a less patient, more stressed and irritated man than me would one day punch him in the face for his squelching, dripping phone key pad.
Once you've noticed something like this it is incredibly hard to ignore and the man's phone calls were short and plentiful.
Suffice to say that it is him I blame for the fact that I only did a tenth of the work that I was hoping to do today.
At least mobiles are banned on planes, but I am sure someone will come up with some new way to torture me tomorrow and prevent another work of genius reaching the comedy hungry public.
