Hermitage

Saturday, 20 September 2003

There is, as always, a lot going on in the life of the Radzer. I wish I had more time to update here, because I have all sorts of things to tell you about our lunch party last weekend, and the revving up of the choir season, and the glory that is my compost heap, and how my new writing resolution has been going.

I may yet get around to all these things. For today, though, the big news is that Melusina's home!!! She's been in Germany all summer with her young man, and she just got back this afternoon. We rejoice greatly, for she has been sorely missed. The house feels properly inhabited again.

We were talking, she and I, about the shape of the coming months. Autumn is always a time when the buzz of activity intensifies, and what with Melusina having a PhD chapter to draft and a conference paper to write, and Paradise being involved with a new startup company that looks as if it may actually go somewhere, and me with my novel to finish on top of the job and the garden and the house and the choirs, it seems that we're going to be a very busy household between now and the end of the year.

At dinner I announced that I was going to be a hermit until my draft is done. I'm in a strong curling-inwards mood, where social interaction of any kind seems like fierce hard work. I need time to myself.

Of course, this would be a Radegund-style hermitage, involving at least two choir events per week, family meals probably every other weekend, weekly Babylon 5 evenings (yes, it's my first time seeing it; yes, I'm extremely impressed), and a monthly gaming session. And I would like to get to some of the Dublin Theatre Festival. And go to the cinema once in a while.

But apart from that. Hermit. Oh yes.

For someone with as broad a loner streak as mine, I have an inordinately lively social life.

The point is, I want a calm, regular life for the next while, a life where I write for large chunks of each week, where I go to bed early and maintain my new morning schedule, where I progress on my various projects and do not feel as if it is all slipping away from me in a chaotic whirl. The December madness will be upon us soon enough, and I want to use the intervening time well.

The summer is over; the cold, dark air has arrived to clean out the haze of indolence. Hard work beckons.

Well, we'll see how it goes.

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