6,102 words

I'm sitting at the desk.  Bernard is asleep on the bed - we both collapsed there exhausted at quarter to six.  I tried to get us away from Hanoi for the weekend, but sadly failed.  By the time I got to the bus station this morning, it was nine a/m and the bus journey would have taken six hours.  Looking at the bumpy battered blue bus, I realised I could not subject the little baby to this, so took a rain check on our trip to Mai Chau.  We went instead to the Silk Village, a little adventure involving a friendly noodle shop in the back streets of Van Phuc.  It was sufficiently countryish there (in mentality as well as quietness) to make me feel we'd got at least a little bit away from the routine.  However, the big mistake was not to bring the buggy, because an eight (?) kilo baby and two bags was exhausting to carry and walking around the village took a lot of effort.  I never ever regret taking the buggy places!

I haven't been blogging - I'm writing a novel, or at least taking part in NanoWrimo if that is slightly different.  I have decided to cheat on November and start a little early with a view to trying to complete a 50.000 word draft by the end of November.  Ambitious? Nahh.   I'm handwriting this year because the Internet is too much of a distraction;  the novel will be born in  a small brown Paperblanks notebook decorated with curlicued gold: perfect for a weird Murakami-inspired alphabetised fantasy set in ... well, I'm not sure where it's set.   6,000 words down already but it's slow work: especially when I have to write some of it with my left hand...  the plan is to write 2,000 words inspired by a different genre for each letter of the alphabet, hopefully adding up to 52,000 by the end, though the letter "I" is a problem because the only thing I could think of was Indian History, which might make it a bit of a strange chapter.  On the other hand, all the first three chapters are strange already.  

Anyway, if you see less of the blog you'll just get a warm feeling knowing that I'm skribbling away and hopefully by the end of November, the Paperblanks notebook will be full.