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Plymouth, Devon, United Kingdom
West Country author, winner of Piatkus Entice award for historical fiction 2012.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Kettles, Cats and Maryland Cookies

Why is it, just when I know exactly what I'm doing with the piece of writing I'm working on, I immediately feel the need to celebrate with a cup of coffee? This inevitably takes me away from my computer and out into the kitchen, where I'll be distracted further by next door's cat sniffing at my rubbish (Thursday writing day is also Thursday bin day, and living on the nipple of the city apparently we're too awkward to warrant the supply of wheelie bins) and if I've been stupid enough to leave a bit of chicken in the rubbish, the feckin' animals will stop at nothing in their quest to strew my path with crap all the way to the end.

So I spend the next ten minutes - firstly squirting the cats with Dominic's mega-super-duper-hotshot- pump- action-hyper-hydro-blaster - (that's a water pistol to you and me) and then picking up half chewed chicken and soggy crisp packets full of snails.
By the time I get back to the kettle the water's gone cool again, and if you boil the same stuff again it starts tasting metallic and shite. So I empty the kettle, re-fill it with fresh water and switch it on, trying not to look out of the window in case the cats have got over their fear of aforementioned Sherman tank-esque squirter, and then the biscuit tin strays into view.

Well come on, what's a girl to do? Maryland Chocolate Chip cookies are about the only kind of chocolate I'm biologically programmed to require on a daily basis, and it's impossible to take one, they're just too small and look terribly lonely sitting on my hand. Still, it's a well known fact that if you eat something really quickly you don't have time to gain calories from it; your brain hasn't worked out the correct quantities of hydrogenated fats it's having to distribute around your arteries and your arse, so it gives up and pretends it never happened.

So by the time I've got over the guilt and made the coffee, the original problem solving brainwave has faded into a murky kind of shadowy thing at the back of my mind, and the only way to put cats, soggy chicken and chocolate biscuits out of my head is to read back over what I've just written and hope the spark comes back.
It didn't.
That's why I'm blogging instead.
One day, when I'm rich and famous, I'll look back and laugh.
Ha, bloody ha ha.

9 comments:

baggiebird said...

Terri have you tried breaking the buscuits, as everyone knows all the fat and calories leak out of broken buscuits, and therefore you can eat them without the fear of anoth inch being added to the width of your arse!

Terri Nixon said...

Ah yes, calorie leakage is always good! And also if you have a diet drink that cancels out any bad stuff too. So that's: One packet of broken Maryland Cookies and a 3 litre bottle of diet Fanta to go, please!

baggiebird said...

That sounds like my ideal diet. I think I would have much prefered that to my the tuna salad I had for my lunch

Heather said...

Ah, cats will do that. My moggie always heads straight for the bag with cold meat in it when I get in from shopping, it's a matter of getting it in the fridge before she cat get her paws on it.

Hope you get your spark back soon.

patroclus said...

I'm exactly the same. As soon as I'm on a roll with writing something I think "oo, I'll just make a cup of tea/smoke a fag*/have a look at everyone's blogs", and then I lose my train of thought completely. So you're not alone Terri! I prefer Bahlsen plain chocolate Choco Leibniz myself, but otherwise, same problem.

* Except I've given up again now.

Melissa said...

I also have a super-duper-cat-blaster-2000 water gun, to get rid of some of the thousands of cats using our lawn as a litter tray. Some get stress balls, others spray cats with water...

Anonymous said...

The leaky calories idea sounds fantastic. It's like the whole 'there's less calories in a pie that is cut into 6 pieces than there is in the pie if it is intact'.

Hopefully that made some kind of sense.

Nice blog Terri! :)

random.thoughts said...

Metallic tasting water is not good enough for a decent cup of tea so never wander far from the kettle when boiling - you'll end up having to boil it again.

Unknown said...

Maryland Cookies are a brand name of biscuit produced by Burton's Foods in the United Kingdom. The recipe for Maryland Cookies was brought to the UK from the USA in 1956. It is now considered the UK's best selling cookie. The cookies are packaged in a cellophane wrapper. Maryland Cookies are not actually sold in the State of Maryland, or in any part of the USA.
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