Not for the fainthearted

Today’s helping of culture came courtesy of the Ray Harryhausen exhibition at Modern Two. I was captivated by many of the models, which were often well below life size, but were rendered scary in the films where they were used by various cinematic techniques which were explained to us. In contrast, this bee is well above life size, and all the more scary for that.

After coffee and cake in the cafe with C and K (and some purchases in the Gallery shop including a new book about Joan Eardley, an Eardley notebook and a Harryhausen fridge magnet), we headed back here to be ready when Mr hazelh came round to help us with taking the off cuts and other remnants down in preparation for kerbside collection tomorrow. I need to remember to phone the people in the morning to make sure they realise where the kerbside collection will be. It was amazing (and gratifying) to see how things that were far too heavy for me and Mr A to manage were well within Mr hazelh’s compass!

Having not worked since Friday afternoon, I did pick up the reins again this evening, and spent around three hours re-editing my long article. It wasn’t just a matter of the overuse of em-dashes, but also issues about my own writing style. I recall that I rushed to get a version of the article ready for review, thinking that it was bound to come back with a request for revisions, which would then force me to address issues of style and communication. In fact, much to my amazement the journal accepted the article as it stood, and so I didn’t need to go through it again with a fine tooth comb until today. And when I did, all my overlong sentences revealed themselves to me in all their glory… So part of what I’ve done this evening has been unraveling problems caused by me as much as by the student editors employed to turn every parenthesis into an em-dash… And I’ve spent so long this evening reading American English that I’m no longer sure whether unravelling has one or two Lls. I’ve tried both in this paragraph as I cannot be certain….

Alongside getting the stuff down to the kerbside, progress on the wardrobe rebuild today has been confined to discovering that it might be hard to find a painter at short notice (having been let down by the person we expected to be doing it). I sent out a few emails today, and somewhat to my surprise a firm based further along Bonnington Road (i.e. very close by) has replied saying they may be able to do it towards the end of the coming week. That would be nice. I do look forward to moving back into my own bedroom!