A poor exchange
Strolling the dachshund after lunch today, I had hoped that I might be able to use the windy solitude to try and hammer out a few small problems I'm having with this latest book I'm writing.
With Natural Causes, the walks were a handy time to mull over possibilities, discard useless ideas and generally think the whole thing through. I found it easy to hold everything in my head whilst I marched up to the top of the hill and back again. The Book of Souls is having a rather more painful birth, however, and strolls are more often than not good only for the stretching of legs both human and canine.
Today was a case in point. For some obscure reason, I had a tiny refrain from one of KT Tunstall's new songs looping around in my head. I can't even remember what the song is called, or indeed how the rest of it goes. Just this Tourettish couple of bars going round and round and round. Every time I tried to marshal my thoughts and concentrate on the current problem - i.e. how to extend the timescale without too many long periods of nothing much happening - the music would come bustling back, elbowing its way into my head like an unruly labrador puppy. And if you've ever seen a labrador puppy at play, you'll know that it's all elbows.
So, eventually, I turned to the only proven method of removing a tune from your head, which is to force it out with another tune. And the first one that sprang effectively to mind was The Proclaimers singing their world famous I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles). All together now:
And I would walk five hundred miles
And I would walk five hundred more
Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles
To fall down at your door.
All sung with a broad Fife accent. Ah yes, the classics.
And to be fair, it worked. KT has been banished, though her new album is really quite good. She's from Fife too, now I come to think of it.
But in her place I've got the somewhat less attractive Reid brothers stuck in my noggin, and I'm still no nearer to sorting out this book.
Bah.
With Natural Causes, the walks were a handy time to mull over possibilities, discard useless ideas and generally think the whole thing through. I found it easy to hold everything in my head whilst I marched up to the top of the hill and back again. The Book of Souls is having a rather more painful birth, however, and strolls are more often than not good only for the stretching of legs both human and canine.
Today was a case in point. For some obscure reason, I had a tiny refrain from one of KT Tunstall's new songs looping around in my head. I can't even remember what the song is called, or indeed how the rest of it goes. Just this Tourettish couple of bars going round and round and round. Every time I tried to marshal my thoughts and concentrate on the current problem - i.e. how to extend the timescale without too many long periods of nothing much happening - the music would come bustling back, elbowing its way into my head like an unruly labrador puppy. And if you've ever seen a labrador puppy at play, you'll know that it's all elbows.
So, eventually, I turned to the only proven method of removing a tune from your head, which is to force it out with another tune. And the first one that sprang effectively to mind was The Proclaimers singing their world famous I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles). All together now:
And I would walk five hundred miles
And I would walk five hundred more
Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles
To fall down at your door.
All sung with a broad Fife accent. Ah yes, the classics.
And to be fair, it worked. KT has been banished, though her new album is really quite good. She's from Fife too, now I come to think of it.
But in her place I've got the somewhat less attractive Reid brothers stuck in my noggin, and I'm still no nearer to sorting out this book.
Bah.
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