The End of the World is Nigh...

Clearly everyone will be asking Did the earth move for you so? I thought I'd avoid any reference to such a predicatble quip.

I woke to rattling. Pipes under the floorboards...radiators...windows. I was fully awake and terrified in seconds. The wardrobe doors juddered and the pictures wobbled. Not knowing when it was going to stop, or if it was going to stop, was the worst. Youngest She-Devil screamed out. Who's moving the house? She slept with us the rest of the night and I lay awake, waiting for it to happen again, waiting for the end of the world; watching through the window as mixed-up birds flapped through the night, twittering, thinking it was some kind of odd dawn. My first short story ever to be read out at school was about something similar - post-earthquake...empty dustbins rolling about deserted streets...tumbleweed...black sky during the day.

It was the sort of night when you felt like getting to know the neighbours, asking them in for a cup of tea at one in the morning. The sort of night when you consider - amongst all the mess that is our lives in 2008 - just how powerful nature really is. How temporary and fragile we are. How silly everything is.

Going through editorial notes on a five hundred page manuscript whilst propping open the eyelids is a challenge. Oh no, not because my latest novel isn't fantastically riveting - of course it is :-) Rather, I only dropped off to sleep again at four o'clock this morning and I'm rather buggered. Still, even through tired eyes, I can see that I'm so lucky to have the best editor in the entire world.

Right, back to it.
Sam xx