I'm being haunted by it, its, it's and possibly even itses. After explaining in Sydney that 'its' can be a word altogether entire and may not need any apostrophe at all and, in fact, is a lovely recollection that English was once a very different language, I found myself explaining the identical thing in Tuggeranong. Twice today, though, despite all this enthusiastic education of writers I have seen apostrophes where they ought not be, written by those who really do know better, if they stop to think. Since I am in a tender and sensitive mood, I want a tender and sensitive t-shirt that says, "It's true, 'it's method of operation' is quite wrong."
I also want energy to participate in the very interesting discussion over at Aliette de Bodard's blog. It's not that I don't care or that I haven't got lots to say, it's just that it's draining and I am a bit short on batteries.
The good news is that I'm all caught up on my Aurealis reading and only 14 books behind in review reading. Also, I've sorted out 2/5 of my notes from Europe, which means that Ch. 5 of my dissertation is underway and my novel is about to make much more sense.
This is not new work, but it's important work. I took my notes by hand specifically so that I would reach this stage. The idea (and it works!) is that I reprocess things and advance the argument as I write it all up, and that I'm not embedded in the thoughts and narratives of the places I was at, but am writing them from the base of the place those ideas will end up (museums, parks, cemeteries, hotel rooms). This is my way of tricking my brain into thinking and recontextualising. I used to do it a lot and very effectively, but I've grown lazy in recent years.
It was really fun to carry my notebook around and scribble everything into it and now it's even more fun working out where what I wrote can lead.
One particular thing I wrote leads straight to this blog. I add to this list whenever I travel, but I only sometimes write it down. Just this once, i wrote a section of the English list down and you (poor suffering souls that you are) must now perforce share it with me (be grateful you didn't get the 'things I love about Sydney' list from last weekend):
Things I love about England
1. There's always someone who who can hear the difference between a Melbourne and a Sydney accent.
2. Aussie bar staff jokes (mostly in London).
3. In any group, someone has a relative in Australia.
4. In any group, someone has been to Australia and someone else is planning a trip.
5. My old jokes are all new in England (zombie ancestors! particularly handy in pubs with Medievalists).
6. I get to feel gaudy.
7. Serious conversations about hot chips are almost always in order.
8. English doves can sometimes sound as if they're expressing disgust at life in more colurful fashions than are strictly decorous. I named one outside my room Marvin the Constipated. And this last is more than you needed to know, so I'll stop this list right here.
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