Author diaries

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6 December 2003 Entry: "Novel writing and furious disputes with gas companies..."

hello there! part of the reason for writing this is to knock my previous entry off the screen.
It contains swear words and spelling errors and consequently will be offensive to some readers;
those who regard with great repect the old fashioned skills of good spelling and grammar and those who do not wish their ears to be assailed with bad words beginning with 'b' Also I was delerious when I wrote it and should know better... Anyway to move on...my novel is shaping up slowly. I'm rewriting chunks that are already roughly written in pencil in my GREEN notebooks. I have a set of these and keep getting them mixed up but I have a new system...I've graduated to a striped notebook to contain anything I write from now on...Clever or what? I'm thoroughly enjoying myself I must say and am well on the way to making a fortune as I'm onto Chapter 3 already...
About the gas problem... The men have been outside for two weeks now drilling and digging and making a helluva mess in the road. The other night someone knocked on the door to see my meter and wanted access to the house to do something with pipes and metering...It would only take two hours he said and hopefully they wouldn't need to dig up the front of the house. Anyone who's read or seen Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy will know what I mean when I say I felt like Arthur Dent threatened by the road digger at the beginning of the story. I endeavoured to find out what was going on- who were these people and what were they doing? They tried to explain to me but talked in a foreign langauage so t cut a very long boring story short, it took two days of liasing with Transco, EnergyWatch, Enterprise plc, the police incident room in Chigwell, ( honest) to find out what kind of work they'd be doing and why they needed access to the house in the middle of the day. As you can imagine Chapter 3 got waylaid by all the excitement but at least I'm satisfied that they are not going to knock our house down. The noise and disruption has been pretty horrendous though and as I work in the front bedroom i could hear the pneumatic drills all through the day. One wed it got so bad i caught the bus into town to go to the Lit and Phil library but a bloke sitting opposite me was coughing his insides out most unpleasantly. Chapter 3 will never get finished at this rate.
Wish I could say I've won some awards/had something published/been to some exciting places since the last entry but...while Transco is renewing the gas pipe I haven't got a hope. See ya. Mary.