Siege Diary - Day 11

The cracks are starting to show—and I don't mean the ones in the house, which are rapidly disappearing. I'm dead beat and the strain is starting to tell. Hence no posts for the past couple of days, although I've tried to keep up with the 'Rolling News', which you'll find over there on the right at the bottom of the links and whatnots.

My sleep pattern is completely screwed and we've another week of this to go. And after that, more chaos as the porch is pulled down and rebuilt, which will take about a month, although part of that time will be to allow the new foundations to dry—I'm hopeful that I'll have a week or so where I can get back to my normal, regular schedule for a bit. Maybe even get out of the house. Apart from B&Q on Sunday, I think I've only left the house twice in a fortnight: shopping last Saturday and a party Saturday night which I left disappointingly sober. And I spent half an hour of potential partying time digging through a friend's book collection to see if he had anything that I needed for the Sci-Fi Art book. (Hold your finger and thumb up to the screen and measure the width of this and you'll get an idea of how close I am to finishing.)

I'm amazed at how little I've missed watching the TV. There was a bit of a panic attack when we were told that the house was to be partially emptied on the day of the Doctor Who finale but I managed to keep hold of a TV for that. Not so lucky with the new series Bonekickers, although it has had mixed reviews and is bound to turn up again. I tried watching it on the BBC's iPlayer but it stopped every 10 seconds to download the next 10 seconds-worth of show so I gave up. We all squeezed around Mel's little TV to watch Mock the Week, which, frankly, is the only programme on tele at the moment we were determined not to miss.

I'm actually reading books again at a reasonable rate... currently reading Red Thunder by John Varley, one of my favourite SF writers. Why it took so long to get around to reading it I've no idea. I'll put together a Varley gallery at some point (once all my books are back from storage) and recommend some of his stories that you should read. This particular book is a Heinleinesque romp as a group of (college age) youngsters build a rocket so that Americans can beat the Chinese in a race to set foot on Mars. It builds slowly... towards what I'm not sure because I'm only 150 pages in but it has a likable cast of characters, some improbable inventions, bags of humour and carries you gently along for the ride. In my mind's eye, I picture Varley, rocking gently in a chair on his stoop, slowly telling the story, pausing occasionally to take a draw on his pipe and then continuing. In my mind's eye (again), as the tale ends and our narrator knocks out his pipe, we'll pan back and discover that the stoop and the house it's attached to is surrounded by red sand, Phobos and Deimos are visible through the thin atmosphere and we're actually on Mars. OK, I have no idea if Varley smokes a pipe, rocks in a chair or has ever been to Mars—but that's the way I picture it. Maybe it's the lack of sleep...

I've a couple of interesting items that I'm hoping to write up over the next day or two once I fire up the scanner and things should get back onto a more even footing once I can catch up with some sleep. I'm off to write some more captions now.