Really, I ought to be grateful for the past 36 hours of rain as it has made it almost impossible for the snow to lie. Last week I inadvertently watched the movie The Day After Tomorrow and am now terrified when I see large blocks of cloud forming. Living in the UK it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between large blocks of cloud heralding catastrophic shifts in weather conditions and a new ice age, and plain old large blocks of cloud.

Although I am leaving it until tomorrow to be unspeakably fatal, I achieved a few things today which, really required achieving. There is such enormous satisfaction in ticking something off a list. Even a mental list. I have a nasty habit of wasting too much time getting ready to get ready, so often have to bludgeon myself into action before analysis-paralysis sets in and I stop moving completely.

One of the things I have been doing today is researching for my final assignment for the Theory and Authorship module which is due in three weeks. I have a lot of things I want to talk about and have been working on fleshing out my central theme. I wrote some notes, at one point concluding that authors are puppet masters to their characters. I scored this out immediately as I find all types of puppets, marionettes and dolls in general rather horrible and very scary. I don’t want to create a writer’s block out of actual terror. Why when puppets are possessed, are they always possessed by evil? Why doesn’t good ever want to do a bit of possessing? I still have nightmares about a possessed ventriloquist doll from a dreadful B-movie I inadvertently saw when I was a child. I should explain that most movies I see are inadvertently. I was so scared I had to watch it to the end so I could have closure.

But I digress. When I picked up A.S Byatt’s book this evening, I noticed part of a review printed on the front cover that says ‘Byatt is a magic-working puppeteer’,  Independent.  I love having my own thoughts corroborated. Even the scary thoughts.