Imagine I've put something witty here

Is five thirty too early to go to bed? Too late for a nap? I don't know. I think coffee will have to do. Black, at that, because I don't want to go out to buy milk in the pouring rain. It rains a lot more Oop North that it does in Oxford. I'm not sure if I like it or not.

Anyway. I am sleepy because I keep going to bed late, because I'm still on holiday this week, but getting up early because I'm going to work. Work is becoming something of a French farce, it must be said. I called up last week, Tony was delighted to hear from me, said can you work Monday and Friday, I agreed with pleasure. I worked on Monday. On Tuesday I went to the village to buy a Mothers' Day card, and popped my head in to see who was working. Tony, bless him, was busy with a rep in the back room and wanted to know if I could stay five minutes to keep Deb company. I agreed. This was at two o'clock. I got home at six with seventeen unexpected pounds jingling in my pocket. On Wednesday and Thursday... well. I do not learn. So I am now about eighty pounds richer, surprisingly, and I wouldn't have minded anyway because, as I have said many times before, I love my job. The reason I am doing so much of my job, though, is the bit that's farcical. It seems that Mike, as well as being almost on his deathbed himself (he sounds an awful lot like he's ready to expel his lungs through his ears), is busy looking after (read waiting hand and foot) on his other half, who went to Estonia and broke his arm. I asked how, exactly, he went to Estonia and broke his arm there; Mike said he slipped and fell over whilst escaping from an icicle about to fall on him. More suitably surreal details are not forthcoming.

However, we have an advantage in working in a shop that is twelve foot square - you can carry on a conversation from any point in it. So I sat on a shelf and dotted books, Mike manned the till, and we argued vociferously about Pratchett whilst Tony occasionally puts an oar in from the back room. It has been thoroughly enjoyable. Mike is very grateful to me for making him watch Firefly - he's a big Mal fan - and wanted to know if I'd seen Life On Mars and spotted the fact it's a ripoff of Night Watch. We agreed on that, and then spent some further time arguing about whether or not Night Watch is any good. More of this next week. The only jarring notes so far have been an inept sixth form Media Studies film crew, and a wannabe SAS recruit who fancies me and makes no secret of it. We shall see.

Yesterday, I made it home from work in time to swallow some coffee and run out again, for I have decided to be proactive and Do Something about my future, and with this in mind, I rang up my MP's office and demanded to see her. Well, it wasn't so much demanded as asked nicely, and I got a next-day appointment, which impressed me. So off I went, and it was one of oddest things that's ever happened to me. To start with, I was pretty sure I'd have to go in there and start explaining things from scratch, but she - that is, Claire Curtis-Thomas - gave me a chair and a cup of tea and asked, conversationally, "So how long is it since I saw you last?"

It took her forty-five minutes to tell me about it - she talks a lot, and is rather brusque and motherly, telling me to sit up and stop chewing my hair - but what she's going to try and do, in essence, is get me a parliamentary pass for the summer and put me to work in her Westminster office. Quite apart from the thrill of that by itself - working in the House of Commons for a month! me! - it's not an envelope-licking job. Rather, it's going to involve running a proper project, with proper politicians involved, although she was understandably vague about the details. I'm not letting myself get properly excited about it yet, because it's nowhere near certain, but if it does work out... squeeee. A summer internship in Parliament! Eeeee. I'll know for sure on Monday.

So, basically, life is good on the work front. It is not so good on the academic front, because while I have done my data analysis project, I have done nothing else. From about Tuesday, I'm going to have to really work. I really am. I've been being much too lazy lately. It's quite, quite ridiculous. But the strange thing is, I actually feel like something has come unglued inside my head. After four months of writers' block, in the last two weeks I've written eleven thousand words, and there's more still spilling out over the floor, and it feels good. I don't think I'm ever really calm unless I'm writing. There's such serenity about it. And the other benefit, of course, is the writing itself. There's been lots of Life On Mars fic - I already posted Running From Themselves, but there's another piece that may be worth posting, and then there was my remix, which I did the day of the deadline, and the latest crackfic, and now... well, I shouldn't admit it. It's far too shameful.

Um. Yes. Three thousand words of Remus/Tonks. I'm losing my mind. I think it might be something to do with the fact I've spent the last few days re-reading Half-Blood Prince, and have reached the not-unexpected conclusion that it is a very good book. From my non-biased, non-fannish, critical perspective, it's still a very good book. It's much tighter than the previous one, much better, and well-paced with very consistent characterisation. It's got flaws, of course - it could be tighter still, and the prose occasionally has a tendency towards the workmanlike - but basically, it's wonderful. Above all, it's such a good story that you see beyond any technical faults. And, most tellingly of all, there is a bit of it I haven't read. It's the two or three pages following the bit where Dumbledore ( spoiler )

The first time I read it, I reached that point just as the plane landed; it seemed advisable to stow the book before Customs. But when I reached Darwin and carried on reading, I quite deliberately picked up again three pages later. And this time round, I had another go, and I skimmed it, sort of, but I just can't read that part. It's too intense, too painful, and I just can't. The other bit I think is almost too painful to read is the bit where Remus ( spoiler )

That's dark for a kids' book, but then, it isn't a kids' book.

So I am writing Remus/Tonks, and falling for Remus all over again. I was telling tau_sigma the other night that he's my most longstanding fictional crush - surely I'm not the only person who gets these? - as I have been in love with Remus Lupin since the age of twelve. (Since I was twelve, I mean.) I've given up trying to put my finger on why. It's something that just is.

And that is everything in the life of me, I think. The next post I make will probably be a recs post.

Edited to add: more spoilers in the comments, but really, you should have read it by now.