The human brain uses up about 20% of the calories we eat. Some kids of Functional neuroimaging scans light up areas of the brain with a higher metabolic rate, which shows which parts of the brain are currently in use. This translating and poof-reading makes me tired, and I’m sure thelanguage areas are lighting up like Christmas trees, and metabolising like mad. So translating twisted Spanish burns calories. Therefore I…
It’s getting mad around here again. There I was, doing yoga every morning, critiquing my friend’s novel, writing fiction, and doing a bit of translating, a bit of housework and so on, feeling I was getting on with stuff rather well. Then the deadline for the translation job moved forward from September to June 8th. Oops! So now it’s full steam ahead on the translation, but it’s a particularly tiring…
Yesterday I saw a notice, announcing that parts of the village would have a power cut this morning, but I couldn’t make out whether it included our house or not. So this morning I made sure to have the computer turned off and the kettle boiled by half past eight. And the power stayed on. So now I’m really enjoying living in a house with electricity.
Lately I’ve been writing slowly, but almost every day. Although it would help if the fiction writing was all on the same story. Sometimes I work on the second episode of Agent Hammer, sometimes I do a bit of a new story about El Hierro, and today I worked on the rewrite of “Hell Raiser”. It went down pretty well at the critique group. Even better the critiques largely agree,…
My friends in Garafía saw a notice saying the Town Hall were accepting applications for grants to improve rural houses. Boy were they interested! I phoned up for them, and it sounded like they might well qualify, so I asked for, and got, a list of documents they’d need. Then on Thursday I set off with Helen to the Town Hall. It looks like they’ll be eligible, so they have…
I had a row with friends (with faults on both sides, of course) and somehow I managed to give the impression that I was annoyed with them in general, rather than annoyed about one thing. So they came to my house with the nearest they could get to an olive branch. Yup, that’s a tin of olives on the end. Even if I’d been really mad, that was irrisistable. So…