Actually, I like to consider myself an advanced procrastinator. Some tasks, of course, demand to be procrastinated. This does mean that any one time, there’s a long list of The Procrastinated. Some are minor, like everything fell out of the bathroom cupboard on my foot earlier (any cupboard in this house is Jenga-ed to the max, owing to my wife’s issue with oversupply; she’s pretty much an ill-directed survivalist when it comes to shopping). Anyway, it’s piled up on the floor like Mount Guilt. I might put it back before my wife returns from rehearsal. It’s under consideration. She has eight tubes of toothpaste in there and enough sanitary towels that she could staunch the gunshot wounds of South Chicago for several months. With the latter, not the former. The only alternate uses I have found for toothpaste are getting recalcitrant stains off stainless steel pans and, as a teenager, hiding the fact I’d drunk a lot of cider. By eating a tube and foaming at the mouth. Mostly I looked less like I was drunk and more like I was in the later stages of rabies.
I have a self-referral form for physio that resides half complete on my computer desktop. I think that’s incomplete as it’s a medical ‘go away’ and basically, if I’m not dead, I don’t need it, and if I am dead, it’s too late. Besides, I now go and hang from a pull-up bar outside, stretching my back, and feeling one step from crucifixion (sorely underrated for back trouble). My insurance will cover osteopathy and chiropractic, which I am pretty sure are made-up things. I suspect maybe just better to accept that I’m getting older.
Adopting a cat, which I’ve been doing for a while (one of ours died a while back, sadly, the other is – I don’t know – bereft or really happy, it’s hard to tell, but we figure she needs company, she might think we should have asked her opinion). Adopting a cat is a challenge. Expect to be judged. These people want to look under your bed, investigate your internet history, measure your brain waves, make sure you have several acres of garden, live several miles from the nearest road and, in fact, from civilisation, have no criminal record and be certified clear of the faintest stain of moral turpitude. At this point, they may admit that they have a cat they’re willing to contemplate letting you look at. I get the concern, the world is full of nutters, and well, they’re eating the cats and they’re eating the dogs. It’s that kind of world. Of course, if I complete the form, then the current cat might kill me. Whatever happens, it’ll be Battle Royale for several weeks. I will put that off till I’ve been on holiday.
Finishing a novel, I think I imparted the core of that. I think less procrastination, more that I’ve got to knit many strands together in a neat knot, which is stretching my brain like pizza dough. The actual Finestre is about to get hers though. I am good at beginnings and endings. It's the middle that is difficult.
(I see you have captured an actual novelist, so I – as an unactual novelist – am in a mild state of awe.)
