I’ve done nothing, you say? Nothing at all? Tish and piffle. Here’s what I’ve done this week:
- Learnt the difference between a rook and a crow: “If it’s ‘crows’ it’s ‘rooks’. If it’s ‘rook’ it’s ‘crow.’” (The point being that rooks are social and crows solitary.)
- Continued my studies of comparative suburban architecture by dint of walking for tens of miles through various estates, trying to identify the basic ‘house’ beneath years of alterations
- Studied the interactions of homo sapiens sapiens in a variety of habitats: a greasy spoon in a middle-class town, for example, or the chitterings of parents in the back of a small car
- Learnt of the longevity of Fen-management techniques and of the benefits of flooding
- Critiqued a stranger’s décor
- Was judged on appearance and attitude by strangers
- Lay on the floor for a while and contemplated the futility of human existence
- Fought with the NHS switchboard and its plethora of Kate’s
- Led the expedition to conquer the many roundabouts of Milton Keynes
- Was deposed from leadership of expedition to conquer the many roundabouts of Milton Keynes
- Explored the origins and implications of the Tribal Hidage
- Dithered over the costs and benefits of childcare
- Studied mothers and children
- Pined for social media
- Ruminated on the nature and necessity of tact
A writer doing nothing? Impossible. What you may think is wool-gathering, or prevarication, or honest-to-goodness laziness is, in fact, method acting: assimilation of source material; an exploration of perspective. What might appear to be idleness is merely necessary research.
So be wary when contemplating the writer. It’s rare that the observer isn’t also the observed.