The machinations around refinancing continue and tomorrow I expect good news: a remortgage that pays off all current lending and provides an income for the next couple of years. The state of inertia that overcomes me when we hit a wall, which is every few months, will pass. I will be galvanised into playing the long game instead of looking constantly, and rarely with success, for short term commissions to shore things up. That's the plan anyway:-) In the middle of all the hand wringing, I went off to see Landscape with Weapon at the National. Within half an hour, I was searching for a weapon. To bludgeon the script. Though the writer had done a pretty good job of that on his own. What is it about modern dramatists, that they think vaguely intelligent dinner party conversations can be passed off as high art on a stage? Last week, at The Tricycle, Called to Account, the mock trial of Tony Blair, was similarly lacking in either insight or intellectual nouse. Perhaps it's that we're starved of example these days? Where are the great orators, the men and women who could savage a subject but still leave you on a high, because they finished by progressing an idea, ideal or ideology? These days, parroting has taken the place of debate, and nobody's willing to take an absolute position because, with certainty comes responsibility - you have to explain your position, and actually, most people can't. No wonder I stick to bog standard fiction. I sent my agent the first tranche yesterday. Watch this space:-o

It's been a quiet few weeks on the page. Including this one. I remarked on this at the Writer's Group meeting yesterday. We were moving from sobriety to squiffiness over a late morning snifter. "This whole month has been lost in an alcoholic blur," I said sadly into my paltry thousand words. It's because I'm on an entertaining jag. So much so, the progeny have complained. "We haven't had dinner on our own for a month," the eldest grumbled, midweek. "How am I supposed to get my revision done?" It's because I've got NBF - New Best Friend - itis. It happens every few years. I'll meet, in quick succession, a handful of women who are utterly irresistible, and initiate a courtship process with each and every one of them. This requires an awful lot of eating, drinking and being merry. This year's harvest started with professional networking. No work, but three new friends, one of whom is a social tour de force. Then I started writing again. And found two more new friends. Those with whom I got squiffy yesterday. And of course, friends spawn friends. Suddenly invitations are flying in all directions and every spare minute is filled:-o Each morning, I stagger into action, short of sleep, or in an alcohol induced haze. But now the courtships are over. The relationships established;-) After the Bank Holiday, some will go on to be longterm and nourishing. Others, quick fixes where each side found something in the other to temporarily lift the soul. Either way, it's a good feeling:-)