It has taken 10 days for a very large molehill to return after liberal applications of garlic. More garlic, more swearing and shouting, more threats from better half to use traps (empty these threats, he's too kind). The most pungent garlic I've ever found is from a local grocers; it's amazing anything coming near the raw crushed stuff would be able to breathe, let alone find worms to eat. Perhaps I can play at being scientific and say that the garlic has a half-life of 10 days, then I could time things properly. So far the most recent dousing with it has kept the piles of earth away for 2 days. 8 days to go then. Tomorrow I shall abandon any pretence at science and try an old wives' remedy: mothballs. (Why are there no old husbands' remedies or tales? No old husbands or no husbands with stories or cures?)

It has also taken 10 days for my e mail to be fixed. And 3 days for the computer to be away to be checked out. And no, it wasn't my computer. I'd hate for my little white box to be slandered.

Without e mail a sort of peace reigns. No distractions. No replies to be made before writing anything. Much less opportunity for procrastination.

Without a computer ...

A fountain pen and a block of paper served me very well. A tip I was given ages ago (thank you Andy) was, in fact, to write long hand to stop endless redrafting on the screen which just held me up. I found lots of ideas at the end of a pen. Although a very useful tip would be not to write long hand after a certain amount of wine: all those wonderful sentences and all that exquisite prose will be completely illegible the following morning.

Perhaps one should measure how much alcohol it takes (for each individual) to create unreadable writing. A half life then. Something like two glasses and one loses sense of punctuation. The rest of the bottle and you couldn't read anything at all the morning after.

Maybe inhaling moth balls might clear the head.

That's it. Cats are having their morning nap.

Varifocals has returned after a long gap. It's not a consistent blog, just an every now and then one to boost my enthusiasm for writing. How I envy consistency!

The last Wrekin Writers' Group carried a stern warning on using cliches. Before that I had a wonderful holiday, when we chilled out completely. After that I was snowed under with work and couldn't think straight for ages. I buried myself in work, putting my nose to the grind stone. Now I have some time to spare.

No more cliches (if I can help it). Rural France was inspiring. I developed the practice of procrastination to an even greater art form but eventually I did indeed get The Novel out and began work again. The sun and peace and - probably - good wine all helped but the most important thing was the lack of work pressure. Now I am back to writing in short bursts and will have to learn to continue in little bits of time.

The ABI (appropriate blog idea) of the day is the continuing saga of the moles. Garlic didn't work and the lawn boasted several more great mounds of earth on our return from France. I looked at mole traps but neither I nor the better half can bear to use them. Ugly devices of stainless steel designed to kill in a pinching action. There are also smoking things - find the tunnel, light a fuse on what looks like a candle and shove the spluttering fizzing device down the tunnel, stamping earth on top of it. They are supposed to encourage the moles to move out, not kill them. The effect lasts about two days. I'm developing a affection for such energetic mammals that keep going whatever the odds.

Ah! An Idea! Writers must be like moles - keeping going whatever the odds and whatever nature or man (which I don't consider natural any more) can throw at them or shove down their burrows. Writers must carry on burrowing away, avoiding traps, poisons, rejections, depressions, interruptions. The garlic might be good though.

However, Varifocals has brought back a huge supply of Clairefontaine notebooks and must begin to fill them. I really couldn't bear to use Moleskin notebooks now.

That's it. Time to feed the cats (who can't catch moles either).