7046/19566
My editor said it's fine to deliver on Monday morning. I have the weekend to finish this baby (well Sunday - we're doing family stuff tomorrow). It's pretty close - now at 74000 words - after a full day working on it. With The Problem With Men I experienced something almost unheard of in publishing - my editor said the first draft was great and aside from some typos and stuff there was nothing to change. I don't think that will be the case with this book. Even if I manage another strong day's work I think I will still want another sweep at this thing, but it will be good to have someone else's opinion about what needs to change. The Problem With Men was only 25000 words and short essay like chapters. 80000 is a lot of information and I want it to be presented at its absolute best.
It was Quiz Night at our kids' primary school tonight. Partly due to Covid and partly due to living in another village to most parents we haven't had much of a chance to socialise with the parents of the other kids in this school, but we formed a bit of a ragbag team of stragglers who hadn't yet formed a group. Impressively half of our team turned up at 7.30pm after getting pretty refreshed at the pub, to the point that they had little interest in answering general knowledge questions. I didn't mind. I know how rare it is to get a night off from parenting and they'd made the sensible decision to get fucking blasted in celebration. I am still off the booze so it's much more noticeable to me. I found it pretty glorious. I don't really mind being the only sober person - it's much more annoying that if I am in noisy and echoey room that I can't really hear anything anyone says. That's not to do with being sober, just with being older, though it was always the case to some extent. Being sober and partially deaf made it a bit hard to get too involved in the fun, but I enjoyed watching. One of the parents was lauding
Ernie for his impressive streak across the playground the other day, saying he was a hero in his house for his antics. He also said he was impressed that I let him get on with it (though I did get him dressed fairly quickly).
The number of people at our table got fewer and fewer, though it didn't really make much difference. The ones who had left kept giving rude answers to the questions and their main contribution was to spill red wine over one of the question sheets. But I channeled their spirit when asked a question about the whale with the biggest brain who could dive to the deepest depth (I think it was). I'd just been reading about the whale with the biggest testicles, but couldn't remember even what that was called (it's the right whale if you're interested) so I just said “sperm†for the lols. It was correct.
It was good to be swept up in the madness, even if I don't partake any more. I don't know if I will drink again, but watching others get pissed isn't the best advert for it, even though it's really funny if you're sober. After a poor start where we changed four right answers to wrong ones in the first round, we rallied a bit and managed to come sixth out of twelve teams. But we definitely won the prize for most alcohol consumed. I am organising a comedy night for the school in a couple of months. God help the comedians if the crowd are as drunk as this!
