13 March 2006

An evening off

For the last month, for reasons too complicated to go in here, I've been, Monday to Friday each week, a full-time father, getting frantically to work at about 8pm, and carrying on until very late, only to be woken shortly after dawn by an enthusiastic small boy wanting some attention. Weekends, when I've managed to get some relief, have been 16-hour days of solid work. I'm just about managing to keep up with the schedule required to get everything complete, but lack of sleep makes producing lively prose a real struggle.

Tonight I think I've finally run out of steam, and for a couple of hours before I fall asleep, instead of writing an account of visiting arts venues around central Shanghai, I'm going to have a change of pace. I should be writing to the PR agency employed by one tourist authority to prise out of its reluctant grasp some information I need--something that's astonishingly hard to do given than they are supposedly employed to give journalists what they need to publish stories. I should be writing to another to point out that it's weeks since I asked for some information, and that in less than two months I'll be in its territory so it's time to get things planned. I should be making further arrangements for that proposed six-week trip. I should be writing to yet another tourist authority with an enquiry to do with reviving a story that was postponed from last year due to lack of time. I have a mountain of personal correspondence to deal with (even I like to think I have some kind of a life outside child care and work). I should be tackling my tax affairs as I have a meeting with my accountant on Friday. I should be pitching more stories to editors--some pitches are long overdue. I should call an editor in Hong Kong.

Actually, I'm going to do that.

But after that I'm just going to sit and read for a while. My brain has truly come to a halt.

Not just any old thing of course, but either an account of the life of Feng Yuxiang, the so-called Christian General, or an account by a missionary of the Boxer Rebellion and Siege of the Legations, or an account of travelling up the Yangzi in the 1880s, all of which are relevant to future projects.

For more than six years now I've been dreaming of two weeks on the couch with no deadlines.

And my editor in London, if you're reading this, please forgive me. I'll be back in the saddle tomorrow night, I promise.
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