Home Alone

Posted by Katy Regan at 14:38 on 9 Feb 2010

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Matt Black has defected to The Other Side. By that I mean he's gone and got himself a proper job, meaning he has to be in an office, at a certain time until a certain time, which is just selfish if you ask me. So, that's one freelancer friend I have lost in the day-time. No cheeky lunches, coffees, hangovers, wasting time with him anymore! What's a girl to do?  As much as I love my job when it's going well (which is mainly, never) the life of a writer is a very solitary one and I do worry that I spend an inordinate amount of time alone. I work alone (today in my dining room, although sometimes I branch out wildly and hit the library just so I can be amongst other people, even if they are the town's oddities who grunt, belch freely in public and laugh out loud at comedy programmes on i-player...) I live alone-with-child which except hours between 4-7 is basically alone.  Now that Egg has gone to Haiti and is not doing his share of Fergus care,  I guess I feel more alone than ever. Which is no bad thing. Since I have a novel to finish in...(.let's not even go there. It is the deadline that dare not speak its name. ) so really, I should be shutting myself away and turning hairy, not seeing anyone until it's bloody well finished! Which is convenient because now my trusted freelance friends (er..that'd be MB and Egg)  I have nobody to see anyway and am forced to do nothing in my life except write and look after Fergus, which isn't so bad of course - except now I seem to move perpetually between my desk and the oven to prepare yet another round of fish-fingers  (F's diet gone slightly out of the window since Egg went - eek! - Have decided not to tell him. Egg is a nutrition fascist who once said "this child eats too many carbs" - Nobody could say he doesn't care, that man...)

God, what happened to me? I'm sure I didn't used to talk about fish-fingers. I'm sure I used to be interesting. And cultural. Well, vaguely cultural anyway, i.e. having time to actually read the paper rather than buy it then use it to line the table so F can paint,  having a loose grip on what films are coming out,  what exhibitions are on, a mental list of books I want to read. Now I have mental list of physical complaints I need to attend to: back-ache (due to typing twenty-two hours a day), RSI (same), weight-gain (same)  I don't think five minutes goes by without me eating something. My current obsession is Saint Agur in spreadable form, which Matt Black says is disgusting and chavvy. How can a cheese be chavvy?

Anyway. It's all distractions of course, along with looking up Van Morrison tracks on You Tube and finding there's only some middle-aged pot-bellied group in tracksuit bottoms doing a cover of Queen of the Slipstream (my favourite track ever) rather than the man himself.

Maybe I'll look up ergonomic chairs...

My book's due in weeks, well days, and I'm so far off it's not funny. But it will all be ok, it will all be ok in the end. God, I need more Saint Agur...

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