1. To free up John’s seized back, we walk over to the allotment at lunchtime – now I have a key we can have a proper explore. Amongst the weeds, we find more fruit bushes than I’d expected – ripe raspberries and heavily laden blackcurrant, a prickly one I presume to be gooseberry and one I can’t identify until I see little proto-blueberries. There are also lots of sectioned off beds ready to be reclaimed and I stumble (literally) upon a tiny pond in the middle. And the finds don’t end there – more water barrels, cloches and a storage box reveal themselves and inside the shed, there is a selection of wonderfully useful odds and sods. I really have been very lucky.
2. Even though the editing is painful at times, I’ve rediscovered my love for the story and its world. Its jokes make me laugh, I sit up with anticipation when certain characters re-appear, and it’s liberating to replace long-winded paragraphs with a single sentence. And as happened last week, I suddenly have a realisation about why something isn’t working. (I’d fixed it in itself but a part of a whole, it sticks out jarringly.) Now I know how to fix it. (I think.)
3. I realise that when I call John “Johnny John John” (as I often do), I put the emphasis on the “John” of “Johnny”, but when I call him the diminutive on its own, I put the emphasis on the last syllable instead: it’s JohnE (for his middle name), not just “Johnny”. Noting the difference makes me smile.
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