... and then you have to spend hours working out how to spell procrastination ...

It’s raining again; the sky is silvery-grey and the magnolia bush down the road has been attacked by frost. This time last week I was contemplating the start of the annual ‘which brand of expensive gravy browning should I start painting my legs with?’ search in readiness for the Grand Return of the Flowery Skirt. This afternoon, before I head off into town, I’ll be searching in the washing basket for the least grubby pair of woolen tights, which I’ll probably end up wearing under jeans. Ah well – at least my neck is almost better (either that, or I’ve merely learned to live with the pain; I’m still walking around like a badly-soldered glass giraffe) (wearing a Rod Stewart wig). Thursday’s sausage thingie went down a treat, the Kirkby house on ’60 Minute Makeover’ scrubbed up lovely and last night, I was officially allowed to binge out on ready meals (but only because I was reviewing a new, posh version of the genre for a supermarket chain). Tomorrow I’ll be roasting pork. This evening, I’ll most probably end up grabbing a buttie on the way to review something quirky at the Ustinov. So seeing as neither the weather, what to wear or food is capturing my imagination today, what is? Or rather: what should be?

When you’re a person who writes stuff (aargh, no, please don’t say ‘writer’ – makes my flesh creep), days like this – no fixed plans, no urgent, professional deadlines – tend to be weighed down with an ominous sense of responsibility. So many great ideas for novels are waiting to be succinctly reduced to synopsis form - the one about the 40-year-old woman who starts sending a year-long series of monthly letters to her niece on her 17^th birthday, for example. Each letter becomes a neat, self-contained little homily relating to a particular relationship pattern that the aunt hopes the niece will avoid, but knows she won’t be able to (so the letters, you see, form a kind of handbook … ooh, Oprah’s gonna love this!). Or, the one that starts with a woman searching for her lost son in a charity shop. Attentive Disco-ites will remember meeting this character here before, but a more detailed synopsis reveals hidden, complicated depths - for starters, mum didn’t even know she was preggers until she gave birth to son in a nightclub toilet; I sense an Orange nomination heading my way any decade now. But hang on; surely I should give that quirky little idea – the one with the working title ‘Medad: A User’s Manual’ - some attention? Thousands of people are slowly slipping into the role of carer – or at least guardian – of an aging parent; few are blessed/cursed/strange enough to have one as eccentric as mine to deal with. Oh, how we’ll laugh/cry/raise our eyebrows as we turn the pages! And guess what? There are even recipes included! Take note, Richard and Judy – Medad’s coming atcha!

Such are the stories bubbling away on the backburner in the kitchen at the Animal Disco. But here comes the shopping list of ingredients that distract me from giving those literary pots the full attention they deserve, giving me a multitude of ‘excuses’ for taking my eye off the boil: I need to go and buy the Saturday papers, but first I’ll make a cup of tea. The laundry needs doing. The kitchen needs cleaning. I wonder if the rain will stop this afternoon … ? My neck is hurting again. I really must do something about my hair …

butactually,likemostpeoplewho’writestuff’,I’mterrifiedofjustgoingaheadanddoingit.