Gainful employment

The payment is coming through for the article I did for Tapestry to illustrate stylistic registers, and it is enough to buy several things at H&M, or innumerable cups of even quite expensive coffee. I'm being Paid for Writing! It's exciting. So exciting in fact that I agreed to write a short story for them, mostly because I'm sure there's at least one short story in the telephone campaign.

Though I'll have to tread quite carefully in order not to make it sound critical of the campaign, because I'm not, really. It genuinely is for a good cause, and people generally seem happy to talk to us, and one guy I spoke to was at Clare when John Northam, the Ibsen critic, was teaching there, and told me about how he used to walk around in sandals. The tiring part is getting your facts straight on whoever you're calling, thinking of things you have in common, events you want to invite them to, etc, and then getting an answerphone and having to start all over again. This happens surprisingly often - it's estimated that we make a hundred calls a night, but only a fraction of those actually end with talking to someone. I was very hyper afterwards, but I expect by the end of the week I'll be drained and will probably get lots of pledges based on sympathy.