Saturday, March 13, 2010

Red shirts, red toe and red with excitement

Yesterday the children and Husband worked from home (oh how the children cursed e-learning technology.) The city of Bangkok is eerily quiet and many activities have been postponed or cancelled. From yesterday the UDD, or red shirts, were accumulating in various points to march on Bangkok to try to persuade the prime minister to dissolve the government in favour of a truly democratic government.

After cutting her toe, Daughter and I had to go to the hospital yesterday afternoon for a tetanus shot. The streets were deserted and the hospital was like a ghost town. We got there and back inside an hour: unheard of.

***

So today, I have finished and sent off my last two travel articles; I have made some changes to the edited essay that my editor returned to me and sent that back too.

And.

Now.

After a three month break…

I am so excited.

I am printing off my novel.

And starting the first edit.

Oh yes.

13 comments:

Queenie said...

Oooh, JJ, go YOU!!!

DJ Kirkby said...

"Oh yes" indeed. So excited for you. xo

Carol said...

I've been keeping up with what's going on in Thailand...sounds like things are still very fragile!

Yay to finishing your articles and so exciting that your starting your first edit!!

C x

Deborah Carr (Debs) said...

Yay, good for you, JJ. Good luck with the articles and the editing.

I hope your daughter's toe is okay and glad it was a much quicker journey than it normally would have been.

Jenny Beattie said...

Queenie... oooooh, I'm so excited.

DJ, soooooo excited. Thank you.

Carol, oh you know what it's like - we've seen nothing yet. Banished to the apartment and local neighbourhood... We're hoping to catch them on Asok!

I know, YAY!

Debs, thank you. Daughter's toe was a very superficial wound but the last tetanus shot was a good few years ago...

Chris Stovell said...

Read this earlier and forgot to leave a comment. Doh! Well done on travel articles and good luck with edit - you did very well to leave your m/s for that long and you'll really be able to see it with fresh eyes now.

Marcie Steele said...

Ooh JJ, good luck chick. I hope you have a lovely editing pen, I always buy a new one, it's kind of a, erm, tradition. Weird, sad but needed.

Hope it goes well, I'm printing mine off next weekend...x

ORION said...

Thank you for selecting my novel for your book club!
Best of luck with your own novel. Let me know if your club wants to interact with the author of LOTTERY...
drop an email
patricia at patriciawoodauthor.com

Much aloha!
Patricia Wood

Flowerpot said...

Grrrrreat!

- Susan - said...

Hi congratulations first of all !

And then I would like to ask you a favour. Which international school can you recommend? I know that BKK Patana was closed on Friday. Are your kids there and are you happy?

We used to live in BKK (1998-2003) but without child. So now I need to get to know schools and do the house hunting aroudn the school.

We think of Patana and NIST (our son will be 7 in summer, year 3).

Would love to hear from you.
Thanks in advance !

Jenny Beattie said...

Chris, thanks lovely. Maybe it was laziness? No, it was the travel articles, honest.

Mel, a new pen? Oh, why didn't I think of that? I shall have to brave the streets and the red shirts to buy one! Thanks hon.

Patricia, hello. Thank you so much for dropping by. It was a personal read actually, not a book club. I loved Lottery; beautifully drawn characters that made me so sad to leave the story behind. I will tell my book club about Lottery because we read Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon last year and it put me a little in mind of that.

Flowerpot, eeek am very nervous.

Suzie, thanks for dropping by. Yes, mine are at Patana. Daughter started there in year 5, Son's always been in secondary. I am very happy with it. When we've had problems they've been responsive, supportive and helpful. I have lots of friends with kids in Patana but I also know people with kids at KIS, Shrewsbury, Harrow, NIST and ISB. We wanted to keep ours in the British system in case we weren't here for long. I don't know anyone who's horribly unhappy with their children's school; I think we're lucky here to have such a fab choice. If you want to email me to discuss any of this further (or anything else) I'm at 4pmteatime (at) gmail (dot) com. I can put you in touch with mums with kids at any of the schools above. Let me know if I can help in any other way. JJ

Roz Morris aka @Roz_Morris . Blog: Nail Your Novel said...

Fingers crossed you can settle to your edit with no more casualties! Thanks for saying hi on my blog, nice to meet you.

Angie said...

I hope you are all keeping safe. Sounds a bit unnerving.

Well done on all the article work, and best of luck with the editing! How exciting. :)