If you could be...

...a different writer, who would you be?

I think I'd be Lucy Mangan, who writes a column in the Guardian Weekend Magazine on Saturdays. I don't want to live with Toryboy. Well, it's not like he's offered. Or like I know who he is. And, come to that, I'm not keen on the idea of a dad who doesn't know my name. But I'd love to be able to effortlessly put together long, clever sentences and display all my weirdnesses in a funny way instead of a way that just makes people think I'm...well, weird.

Who'd you choose?

Being writerly, in a disparate kind of way

That's what I'm doing tonight - probably as a result of crummy Saturday night TV and trawling through, for the first time, the new Writers' News. First trawl: I mark stuff and fold corners down. Second trawl: I deal with whatever it was I was intending to look into further. Second trawl takes forever and sometimes never gets done or at least not till the comps are out of date etc. But that's not going to happen this time. Oh no, sirree.

Where was I? Oh, yes, writerly stuff. Okay...

1. Does anyone know what happened to Shortalk? I uploaded some stories for consideration, never heard a sausage and now, while the website's still up, the latest blog entry dates from about a year ago, I think. I'm sure some people said they'd had official acceptances...anyone in the know??

And...

2. Does everyone subscribe to Marian Keyes' mad newsletter updates? You probably do already, I'm sure. She's wonderfully bonkers but so entertaining and lovely. If perchance you haven't subscribed so far...well, get along to mariankeyes.com and just do it. It's like having your mad sister write you a lovely, long, chatty letter. If you haven't got a chatty, letter-writing sister, it's doubly great.

A small, sad yippee...

...goes to the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman who, according to the Daily Mail (I know, the Daily Mail! I'm sorry...) is going to deliver a 'withering verdict' in her report, supporting Mencap in their concerns about the treatment of learning disabled people in hopsital.

The 'yippee' is, sadly, inappropriate because, in the lead-up to the ombudsman's input, so many learning disabled people have died unsupported and ignored in NHS hospitals. Mencap's own report, Death by Indifference, had me in tears when I originally read it.

See here for more info.

Best not hold our breath waiting for things to change tho'.

Happy New Year

And it's back to the daily grind of trying to come across as a normal person...Ever feel like that? No? Oh, it's just me then...

Over Christmas I was introduced to a gentleman whose name denoted a kind of fabric - not Serge; think Velvet, Tweed, Hessian, something that was a bit unusual. My brain, like the robot in Lost in Space, was totally unable to process this: Does Not Compute. I stared at him in confusion for what seemed like several minutes, till he said kindly: You can call me Peter, if it's easier.

So, what has the new year in store for you? Personally I'm considering happy pills and/or HRT. I need my bloom back. And my memory. And my decision-making processes. Where have they all gone? Same place as all the flowers? Who knows?