Weight: 85kg. Cigar­ettes: 0. Still no call from Mark Darcy.

Word­count = 86,928

One of my more punc­tili­ous cor­res­pond­ents has poin­ted out that an early sen­tence in yesterday’s post con­tained no verb, a dis­grace­ful and libel­lous slander which gains abso­lutely no cur­rency for being com­petely true. My legal rep­res­ent­at­ive is cur­rently invest­ig­at­ing the mat­ter and action will be forth­com­ing as soon as he is fin­ished in his litter-box.

For the unne­ces­sar­ily devoted, the fifth sen­tence in yesterday’s post should, of course, have read:

The con­tents of the white­board, which the attent­ive reader will remem­ber was filled on Monday with everything required to move my char­ac­ters, themes and plot into pos­i­tion for the big, spec­tac­u­lar finale,

have just reached geo­syn­chron­ous orbit and will soon begin relay­ing weather data to a mobile receiver loc­ated on top of a Shet­land pony in the Outer Hebrides.

The chal­lenge thus made, the fol­low­ing post will con­tain no trans­it­ive or intrans­it­ive verbs. Any resemb­lance to an extract from Brid­get Jones’ Diary is purely the res­ult of massive holes in Helen Fielding’s education.

Hol­i­day today. Far ahead of plan only ten days into four-month job, why not? But what plans for the morn­ing? Eureka — our cat’s exploded abcess! Vet very under­stand­ing, thor­ough. Pump­kin soup for lunch — home-made, smooth, creamy, but hardly appeal­ing after abcess exper­i­ence. Bread safer.

Long after­noon on the couch: day­dreams, gra­tu­it­ous glut­tony, sloth, wrath (damn Oprah), cov­et­ous­ness (shop­ping chan­nel). A bit bib­lical, really.

Intol­er­able at din­ner with friends. Full of unspent ideas, no white­board handy, couple of drinks, com­plete motor­mouth. Quite clever joke about the Span­ish Inquis­i­tion, prob­ably no good in writ­ing. A likely starter for the manu­script some­where. Lemon tart for dessert — thoughts of the abcess far behind. Outstanding.

Weight: 85kg. Cigar­ettes: 0. Still no call from Mark Darcy.