IT'S ABOUT TIME by VALERIE LAWS

Slippery stuff, Time. 


Aarrgghh it’s my time of the month again! No not that one, shame really as I rather like waterskiiing, being towed on skates by dogs, parachuting and all the other pastimes enabled by the purchase of a box of Tampax. I mean my monthly Authors Electric blog post day, viz and to whit, today. It’s frankly terrifying how quickly that day comes around, and it’s speeding up all the time.

Tampax are wonderful - you can do stuff like this!


Time is funny stuff, infinitely flexible – unlike most things, it speeds up as we age. On Christmas night, as a child, it seems like a lifetime until Christmas day will come again, but now, it hardly seems worth putting the decos back in the attic before they’ll have to be lugged down again. Weeks fly by. It always seems to be Thursday. Time sprints when we have a lot to do and a tight deadline, or something fabulous happening, but then it drags, such as when you are waiting in Accident and Emergency.

Note to self: install fainting couch in bathroom.

Speaking of which, in my last post I wrote of the old New Year’s Eve custom of first-footing, in which a tall dark man crosses the threshold first after midnight, to ensure a lucky and prosperous year ahead. That was only a couple of weeks ago, and last week, I fainted in the bathroom and came round with a broken nose. If only I’d thought to give my boyfriend some smelling salts to bring in with the salt, matches, bread and booze, or perhaps a plastic surgeon. As it is, I have a lovely new colour-schemed face, yellowy green with purple highlights, and when I venture out I’m greeted with Looks which suggest I’m being judged as a hapless drunk. I prefer to think it's fear instilled by my resemblance to a prizefighter. Still, I have the nose-straightening appointment to look forward to at the end of this week. (It was vasovagal syncope wot did it.)

What happens if you DON'T put a fainting couch in the bathroom.

Normally dates and deadlines are my friends, I work well under that kind of pressure, but more and more, I’m finding they come round so fast it’s harder to beat them (which suggests I beat my friends, but only those who ask really nicely).

I’m ashamed to admit that several Things To Do which I planned have not yet been done. I took my Kindle books off Amazon Select with a view to formatting them for other ebooks. This still hasn’t happened. I haven’t yet got round to sorting out the new horrible EU VAT regs for my ebooks either, despite the kind efforts of my lovely AE colleague Chris Longmuir who covers it here.

Apparently there is a deadline for this too after which Amazon expel you from KDP paradise. Eeek! April is galloping ever closer like the cruelest month it is (T S Eliot was right, despite having a name which is an anagram of toilets) after which we self-employed sole traders have to gather up every few squid earned and spent during the tax year with a view to giving the lads and lasses of the Revenue a hearty laugh. The deadlines keep on coming and we have to run faster and faster, with wearier and wearier legs, to keep up. Still, exercise is good for you and the best defence against Alzheimer’s.

'Tax return,gasp, ebook formatting, wheeze, web updating, pant... oh & new writing!'

I’ve started a new medical poetry project, at least, in between feeling woozy and admiring my new face, and have sets to plan for readings coming up very soon. And looking on the bright side, I could have fainted onto something much deadlier and nastier than the good old friendly floor (or possibly bathroom unit door handle on the way down) which was considerate enough to break my fall. Already some grim possibilities are cooking in my bemused brain for future crime plots – for a writer, everything is material! From the floor, the only way is up (unless you’re in a nuclear power plant). It's about time this nose healed and I got on with my life...

Available in paperback from me or Red Squirrel Press

Available on Kindle or paperback from Red Squirrel Press

Visit my website: http://www.valerielaws.com for info on my 13 books, my plays, installations and performances
Follow me on Twitter: @ValerieLaws
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valaws


Comments

julia jones said…
Hope the op went well dear Valerie. WE have also just spent most of the last 24 hours in A & E crisis. Time works differently in there as you say. Then you come home and there's a great hole where all your plans an dprojects used to be. Today is a new day, first of the month. Onwards and upwards to us all!
julia jones said…
"May you be like a dolphin, sleeping / With half of your mind, the right side / Which zigzags with electric storms / May the left side of your brain explode / with dreams like freed pigeons ...." Just sayin'
julia jones said…
There's this rather good poet called Valerie Laws who has published a vol called Facebook of the Dead which often seems to have the right words for these situations. That one is called 'To a Friend Undergoing ECT' Recommended, though iI'll skip the ECT, thanks
Jan Needle said…
as julia seems to have developed a severe case of logorhythms (or something)i'd better get in with my comment before the algorithms close us down. thanks for the laugh, valerie (with you, not at you, natch!) and i hope your faceache is soon a thing of the past, altho time can slow down as well, sadly, we've all been there (A and E as well). God, I'm wittering! happy birthday, world. i think i'll go back to bed. it's nine o'clock. ps - particularly impressed by the effect of the capital L on Looks. i'll nick that, one day. xxxx
Jan Needle said…
oh, by the way - White Rabbits. i've just noticed the date
Mari Biella said…
Hope you feel better soon, Valerie. Time does indeed seem to be speeding up - some days it seems I've barely got out of bed before it's time to go back there. I sometimes think I must be trapped in some Dr Who-style plot, with an evil genius experimenting on the time-space continuum...
Bill Kirton said…
Thanks for the laughs, Valerie. You're so right about the acceleration effect of time. I'm much further along/up/into/down that vortex (I'm not sure which preposition fits a vortex) than you are and, for me, last Xmas will seem to be followed by Xmas 2016 - and that'll probably be next Thursday. Hope the straightening goes/went well.
Ann Turnbull said…
Oh that's all so true - especially about it always being Thursday! Hope all goes well with your treatment and the bruises soon fade.
Kathleen Jones said…
Get well soon Valerie! Hope that the poetry reading went well also the re-arrangement of the nose!
Susan Price said…
Ooh, I bet that nose/door-handle interface hurt! [Winces.] Hope it's all soon healed.
The line about it always being Thursday made me laugh too - it's true! Whenever I come to, it seems to be Thursday.
Chris Longmuir said…
Sorry for laughing, Valerie, it was the bathroom door handle that got me, and I'm sure it must have been painful. And you are so right about time. I don't know where it goes! I'm having a lazy day today. It was my family after Christmas dinner yesterday and I think I've spent the last month doing horrible domestic stuff, like cleaning! My son's mother-in-law, a widow like me, is always invited and she's a clean freak (touch of the OCDs), so I've spent the last month eying up mucky things I normally never see. Culmination of course, was the meal. And if you want to see how that affects me, check my December post, which is also included in our anthology. However, I was really envious of that fainting couch, it would do me nicely today. Anyway, get well soon, although I do think the yellow shaded eyes suit you, quite attractive really! :)
Lydia Bennet said…
Chris really, you missed one helluva trick there! you've got an ocd clean freak relative, you should have left the place mucky and she'd have cleaned it for you on arrival! Thank you all for the best wishes, it's a minor injury compared with my others :) but not nice. neither was a burly young doc trying to straighten it with his thumbs and all his strength. however all the staff both times were very nice, hooray for what's left of the NHS! I've had a lot of computer bother so it's lovely to come late to my blog post and see such kind comments. I had to go an perform as headline act at a literary salon after the nose-straightening session so I did my broken bones poem amid the funny filth!
Lydia Bennet said…
Julia, thank you for quoting my poetry and for the kind words about my poems. I hope your trip to A&E wasn't for anything too nasty.

I"m glad several of you accept my new law of physics, about the continual presence of Thursday - of course, when i was a little lass madly in love with Ilya Kuriakin, Thursday took months to arrive each week.

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