Katyboo1’s Weblog

Another day rolls by.  It’s been one of those days where I’ve been very busy, but when I try to piece together what the hell I was doing it’s like trying to round up termites to make them participate in synchronised swimming.  I suppose I should be glad that I don’t have to put nose clips on them all, but however you slice it it’s just not working for me.  Maybe it’s true.  I shouldn’t try to work with children and animals.  As I have already opined in these pages, there is a very thin line between my children and animals, and depending on what kind of day we’re having I find it hard to say what category they fall into.  

Actually, when I bravely sit here and think about it, most of my day has been taken up hacking at the North face of the Eiger like edifice that I laughingly call my essay.  I have actually managed to reduce it to more of a glacier, but it’s not what I would call satisfactory in any way, shape or form.  I have also been disinterestedly taking notes on my editing style.  I think therein lies the problem.  I have now trained myself to work with an essay plan and notes etc.  This is what is known in the trade as a good thing.  What I haven’t trained myself to do yet is to take myself to task and strictly discipline my editing efforts.  I realise that I throw myself in at a random point of the essay and thrash about wildly, wielding my pen like some kind of blunt hatchet, chopping off limbs and pruning ferociously.  I was going to use the rapier simile, but it’s really not that elegant!  I then get bored of that, so I move to a different part of the essay entirely and start again.  Sometimes I work backwards, sometimes I go from side to side. Rarely do I edit through from start to finish in any kind of logical order.  Apparently that would be too easy, and I likes a challenge!

Every time I get bored I take a break, arse about and then do a word count.  If the word count is looking satisfactorily thinner, I then give myself a huge pat on the back, convince myself that my work here is done and move on, usually to the biscuit tin.  I then realise about an hour later, that it still looks like a sow’s ear (the essay, not the biscuit tin, that just looks progressively more empty), and is nowhere approaching the silk purse, and thus the whole tawdry process starts again.  It’s very wearing.

Because there is so much detail to put into this essay, and so few words I am also having the problem that I like to write sentences of roughly a paragraph’s length, and I can’t.  I have taken journalism as my model, and have spent many hours chopping my sentences down into the smallest possible word count.  This means that it reads for the most part, as my friend so kindly put it, ‘like a telegram’.  This is not what they call in the trade, a good thing.  Especially because the bits where I haven’t done this still read like the long winded drivellings of a woman with far too much time on her hands.  Taken all together this means that the essay looks like it has been written by someone with multiple personality disorder after several large gin and tonics.  Woe is me.  Alack the day.

I have however done my title, my bibliography and my references, all of which I hate doing, and which take endless amounts of time to get right.  I’ve even done a nice job with my headers and footers and my page numbering.  This means that on the surface it looks like a normal essay.  It’s only when you get up close to it that you want to run screaming for the hills.  Someone once told me that you ‘can’t polish a shite’.  I beg to differ.  I have the evidence in front of me.

Knowing my flaws, is this actually going to make me address the problem and take myself in hand, giving myself a stern talking to etc?  I doubt it to be honest.  My deadline to finish was today.  It isn’t going to happen.  I must however, finish by tomorrow.  It is possible.  More than that, it is necessary.  I must be brave.  Either that or I must join the Foreign Legion and learn how to forget…

In the spirit of ignoring the important things, Andrea and I went to the cinema this evening.  We went to the local arts cinema which is great because it only has about two hundred seats, all of which have reasonable leg room, and it shows films that three quarters of the population of Leicester would rather die than go and see, so there’s always plenty of room to spread out and enjoy yourself.  We went to see Julian Schnabel’s film; ‘The Diving Bell and The Butterfly’.  We took hankies.

I read the book years ago and found it quite challenging.  Basically, if you don’t know the story here it is.  Jean Dominique Bauby was the Editor of French Elle.  He was wildly successful, fairly unpleasant and tres chic.  In his mid forties he suffered a massive stroke for no apparent reason, i.e. he wasn’t the size of an elephant, he didn’t smoke, eat puffer fish or take part in base jumping.  The stroke didn’t kill him but it paralysed his entire body except for his left eye and left his brain perfectly intact.  He had what is called ‘locked in syndrome’.  His speech therapist taught him to communicate using eye blinks, and through this method he wrote a book: ‘The Diving Bell and The Butterfly’.  Ten days after it was published to massive critical acclaim, he died.

The problem I had with the book was that it wasn’t brilliantly written, but that you couldn’t help admiring him because of the way he had written it, and that always skews things.  It was also incredibly honest, which I thought was great.  He was the first person to admit that he hadn’t been a saint on earth, in fact he had been a total shit, particularly to his kids and their mother.  He also dealt very honestly with the anger and negative emotions he experienced and his frustration with his situation, which was fascinating.

The film is exceptional and well worth your time.  Schnabel films perfectly what must have been an incredibly difficult book to adapt.  Most of the time we see things from Jean Dominique’s viewpoint, actually through his eyes, and we hear the voice in his head narrating.  It means that we really come to understand what it means to be locked into a body which doesn’t work, and won’t do what you want it to, to be a prisoner.  It is an incredibly sad film, but also really beautiful.  I loved it.

And on that bombshell, me praising something instead of ranting and raving and tearing shreds out of it, I feel that it is a good time to depart.  Farewell…