A post of two halves

Thursday was Summer Phantoms night, and it really worked. We had a hundred-plus people booked for the event, though only about eighty actually turned up; this is commonplace for free gigs (and very annoying, when space is limited; at previous gigs we've turned bookings away because all tickets were gone, and then had empty seats on the night, snarl...). However, it didn't matter on Thursday, except insofar as some people who had presumably wanted to be there missed a good gig. We foregathered at the Lit & Phil for a drink and a mingle, then processed (following Hazel, one of the library's staff, all dressed up in full black Victoriana like a Lady Without a Lamp) through a not-very-secret passage into the Miners' Institute next door: through their library and so down into the panelled and tiered lecture theatre, which has not only Atmosphere but also Acoustics. Sean, Gail-Nina and I all read new stories, and it was hugely fun.

Also, at the event I collected m'friend Ruth, whom I have known since she was a foetus. She is now twenty-three, and kind of awesome: passing through Newcastle on her way from Spain (where she has lived most of her life) to Germany (where she will be studying for her doctorate). If anyone wants a trilingual biologist in four years' time, speak now; she'll be in demand, I fancy.

Meantime, though, I have her for a couple of days; and yesterday she came over all strict & determined, to the point where I am now sitting in a room of two halves. If I twizzle my chair around and sit with my back to the desk, I find myself looking at a very sane, rational, ordered office, where everything is in boxes and on shelves; it's clean, it's neat, it's hoovered. There's a comfy chair with nothing on it, waiting for a person to go sit.

On the other hand, if I do that, if I go sit in that chair and look in this direction - well, we didn't get this far. One corner at a time, we thought. So in this half everything is still randomised chaos (and no, that's not a tautology: first I had the chaos, which I had generated myself, and then I introduced two cats to it).

The only trouble with this 'one corner at a time' policy is that she's moving on today, so how am I ever going to tackle my other corners? On my own, I'm defeated before I begin...