'Cracking mountains' Not

Here I am in Khorat, where I came for the mountains … and it’s a plateau. Brilliant: not a bloomin’ mountain in sight. It’s so flat it would give Bangkok a run for its money in the flat stakes. Oh well, at least I won’t spend hours gazing out the window.

And, you’ll never guess: there’s a school residential in MY hotel. No, it’s not one of our school residentials – but a primary school. I’m going to have to get up earlier tomorrow to beat those little critters to the omelette chef.

I had a little bit of a panic yesterday. A combination of ‘I am here to write: I must write’ terror and not being able to get onto the internet, meant that I couldn’t write a damn thing. I convinced myself that I needed the internet first… before I wrote and I couldn’t sort that out. I was waiting for help from reception. I telephone Husband and he is the kind of man who asks ‘have you plugged it in?’ so I pre-empted him and said ‘I’ve plugged it into the right hole’ which in reality turned out to mean: ‘I’ve plugged it into a hole it fits into.’ It was the wrong plug, obviously. When I eventually got onto the internet I was in a proper panic. Everything is crap, it reads like I’m in primary school, I can’t handle the story, blah blah blah.

Today I’ve woken up feeling less panicky. I will free write until I work out what comes next…

I had a look at the news, and I found this. Nick Park is one of my heroes. In an interview with the BBC, he says of his current project, A Matter of Loaf and Death, "You should do it for the fun or it, and not have any other ambitions in mind."

That, it reminds me, is what writing should be about.

Go and have a look at the BBC article: the film, due to air at Christmas, looks ‘cracking.’