A Skinny Fairtrade Latte in the Food Court of Life

Building work is now underway next door.  And it is going well - currently about 2 weeks ahead of schedule so they tell me.  Footings are in for seven of the nine houses and drainage ready to connect on five of those.  Not sure how they'll go about the last two as the portacabins are mighty close to where they need to dig...  Anyway, daily Monday to Friday from 7:30 to 5:00, with about an hour off midday, they graft in the hot sun; except now it is too hot, so they've moved the start time forward to 7:00 and they knock off around 4:30.

All of which means that any hope this minister might have a of a lie in on her day off is scuppered.  The sound of heavy diesel engines, ladders being moved and morning banter make a mighty fine alarm clock.  All of which must mean I was a very wicked child I guess... ;-)

PS I just spotted that this blog is still operating on GMT not BST - I wasn't typing at 6:25 am!

So, this morning as I waited for the vicar, I was wandering around the graveyard of Our Lady of the Beehive in the Fields.  Among the stones whose should I spot but... Grace Poole (think Jane Eyre) and Thomas Hardy... this place is well weird!

Driving back I spotted a cortege coming the other way along the road, so pulled over to allow it to pass unobstructed, well trained minister person that I am.  The drive behind me saw this as their excuse to race past, squeezing between the hearse and parked vehicles.  No manners, no time to live... and I really don't need the work that much!

I hate word limits.  I understand and appreciate why universities use them but they drive me nuts.

I hate absolute word limits absolutely, to plagiarise a well known phrase or saying.

So, I am about to start the third radical edit of a paper with a 6k word absolute limit that is currently still 300 words over.  My mother's (non-serious) suggestion was to delete every 20th word.  As it is I will remove a few not absolutely essential sentences, adopt a different 'grammatical' voice in a few places (not sure what it's called though - the 'radical edit voice' sounds about right) and hope to goodness this does the trick.  And in these days of electronic submission you can't even fiddle the declared word count... not that I would of course!

Ah well, back to the swingeing electronic razor blade!