Not a good day. A frustrating day, a malfunctioning day, an irritating day. Email problems – or perhaps correspondent problems. It can be so hard to tell. When someone ignores several emails, you may decide ‘well, I guess I can take a hint (however belatedly)’ and stop emailing, but then when the same person emails on unrelated subjects, you think ‘Hmm, did my emails not get through?’ so you ask – only to be ignored again. Then you scratch your head until the blood drips onto the floor and the cat squalls in alarm, wondering whether what we have here is an email problem or an irritating correspondent problem. This causes bad temper and a strong desire to be in Norway wandering among the fjords.

Actually I always have a strong desire to be in Norway wandering among the fjords, but it becomes stronger and sharper when I’m being frustrated and irritated by either 1) email or 2) paralyzed correspondents, or perhaps both. That’s when I start to think dreamily about dear little huts with one chair and one cup and one plate, 749 miles from the nearest neighbour. You didn’t know that about me, did you? You thought I was very gregarious and friendly and even-tempered – and so I am, most of the time, but I have this side, this element, this aspect that is all misanthropic and hostile. Normally, though, I’m very warm and mellow and approachable. Well okay not really warm and mellow and approachable, but frigidly civil, at least. Not savage. Not violent or explosive. Not the type to shout horrible names and fling dishes around the room. Tame, anyway. Sort of.

Other things are malfunctioning too, of course (well they always are, aren’t they). People asking me if I want to do huge time-consuming jobs for them, and when out of politeness (see? I’m lovely, really) I say okay, they drop the job in my lap with a great thud and say ‘no hurry’ as if the whole thing had been my idea. Very peculiar. People beseeching me to go to a (ohhhhhhhhhh) class reunion. People wearing those ridiculous woolly boots when it’s fifty degrees outside. (It’s worse in California. There they wear them when it’s seventy degrees. Why don’t their feet explode?) People building things and cutting things and polishing things and kind of shaking things up and down and bouncing them around, on all sides of me. Seriously – this neighbourhood is in a permanent state of construction and renovation. Wallop wallop wallop on this side, nerrrrr on that side, mutter mutter shout laugh mutter chat in front. I really ought to move my desk out onto the street, it would be quieter.

So that’s this day’s malfunctions. Therefore tomorrow will be much better – that’s a law of nature.