Drove to her place to make sure the miscreant/s weren’t cleaning it out. All clear, then did $220 shop for broke son and girlfriend. Checked daughter’s place before heading back to son’s with Macca’s breaky; phone call en route from Wakefield Street police informing me her bag had been handed in intact by a good Samaritan. Now hungover daughter ate a few mouth fulls and then sank into deep slumber.

Took other 2 hangers-on to city and Marion, before returning to son’s to collect daughter so she could liberate handbag from police custody, collect her car and go home. Both unable to sleep, so did the rounds of Freedom, Ikea and other retail therapy outlets before collecting the 2 spootwads from their designated hunting grounds. Slung out of son’s place so they could have a party in the room we’d been inhabiting, necessitating decamping to daughter’s place.

Arrived at daughter’s, went to OG pub for dinner, sans her. Returned with take-away from pub and collapsed onto couch for some well-earned zzzzs. Too tired to go to the footy, so missed Port beating Freo, which along with delivery of a surplus cupboard to daughter, was the prime reason for the trek to town.

Sunday, another feverish round of shopping without buying after the boys cantered back home with car laden with one chap’s crap, but succumbed to the lure of a new sofabed for daughter to replace heap of ancient back-breaking crap she currently possesses, while en route to shops for ingredients for dinner.

Stayed Monday with the teary one and lobbed back home last night with flat pack pantry to be assembled tomorrow with applied swearing.

Informed by husband that the mother of one of son’s school friends had died of a massive heart attack on the weekend. Fortunately, all of her children are grown, so although it’s awful, at least they have had their mum until adulthood. I feel sad that all she’s ever done is work at at least 2 crap jobs at a time to bring up her kids after she slung out her druggie husband. Some reward for being a very decent person!

Am hoping for a very uneventful existence for some time to come, vast Xlotto winnings excepted.

Me nerd flatmate made me watch Star Trek – the sixties version. Yer can get the worlds slowest drinkin’ game going if you take a drink ever time Kirky rips his shirt, makes a sleazy come on to some space chick or sez “but, my ship!!”. Fair dinkum they ran out of idears towards the end of the first season an’ when they think up a good ‘un, they waste it with farty special effects like that Lazarus dude fightin’ hisself fer eternity. Bit like old Fielding I suppose – ship him a couple er them dilithium crystals then lock him up somewhere.

Me nerd flatmate ain’t allowd to comment here no more cos his work sez it’s bad, but I’m sneakin’ on ever now and agin I reckon while the poo hits the fan over them carbon emissions. It oughta be a riot with them libertards going fer denialism (wot a surprize).

BTW: How are you coping with the date confusion of the UK & Colonies Julian Calendar to Gregorian Calendar change-over (Sept 1752) qv Wiki Gregorian calendar “Wednesday, 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday, 14 September 1752 to account for 29 February”; meaning that every date changed; every date in print; every date in one’s life, even one’s birthday, wedding anniversary (perfect excuse) In N American documents it’s made worse because Dutch provinces went Gregorian 1582/3 and some determinedly NA Dutch settlers had stuck with the Gregorian after the (still Julian) British take-over.

I found documentary confusion (and not only by contemporaries) pervasive until 14 July 1789 & later events burned new dates into even Old Gaffers’ minds. Pseudo historians of the type that find two documents and assume they’re experts (early Eng Industrial Rev history, esp in ceramics, is rife with them!) don’t know about it, are fond of pointing out that x can’t be right because, on that date, participants were doing different things in different places … Drives me to loud expletive-riddled slurs on their intelligence & “scholarly” ethics!

(Not nearly as bad, tho, as one head of a UK – now USA – museum dept who married off an indebted son of an impoverished potter to one of England’s richest heiresses (never mind his mother must have ben rolling); tho other evidence has them married in a church, with banns, bonds & all the typical C1775 Big Fashionable Wedding hooha (& no, she wasn’t pregnant)! Not even in Barbara Cartland, … [expletives deleted]. There’s a collection of Brit Lib staff essays on the Enlightenment as seen through BL collections (esp George III’s) celebrating the BL’s move to premises in the middle of the BM’s (former) central courtyard. Either many authors have no historical background in C18, or weren’t paying attention. Jaw-droppers of the WTFHFF!! type … A smart-a##ed caption under a pic of a C18 coal mine in a rural setting, indicating the author thinks the rural setting is odd artistic licence … Something like “Though George III was no scholar”, despite doing (from scratch) the astronomical & mathematical replications (under supervision) for John Harrison’s “marine timepieces” (for the Longitude Prize); and the “great urger” of the agrarian rev etc etc( tho he sure listened to the wrong adviser re N American colonies). IMO GIII was a much better scholar that the person who wrote that.

PS: I’m “stuck” over a 60+ page of essential info that needs to be 10p max; have been for months. Meanwhile, I’ve managed to edit another 20,000+ words out of a long Ms.

Give it the old “work backwards, one sentence at a time” (even phrase at a time), so you lose track of the ‘plot’/ ‘narrative’ and concentrate on the language. (One of those ‘best advice I ever had about ….’ tricks). 3,000w draft is a 2,000 worder in need of fine-tuning.

Give yourself an incentive – something you discipline yourself not to buy, watch, do, eat, drink etc. When it’s 2,000 words, without losing any content, just the way you expressed it, reward yourself.

Bonnie Prince Charlie, eh? And the Bonnie (idiot) Earl of Murray? And the “How to pi## off your English supporters by reminding the Old Guard what cost your grandfather the Battle of the Boyne” (aka The Derby Muster)?