Seven Hundred And Ninety Eight

We're only two steps away from the Quirky Muffin's eight hundredth post, and there are absolutely no plans whatsoever for that momentous landmark. Nothing. We will just have to make do with the standard summary and plan for the next hundred posts, unless some miracle progress occurs in the next few days. It would have been nice to get that joined-up version of 'Oneiromancy' sorted out, but it will come soon enough. Maybe Christmas will be the time to get it done, with the slackening in teaching that ensues.

It's December, and it seems like the whole world is going Christmas crazy. Songs are blaring out of the shops, trees are up in students' houses, and the world --

No, it's just not working. The writing power isn't on tap, replaced instead by a big ball of majestic galactic knitting wool. Seeing and helping so many people in a week can be very draining, and three hours in one day is almost crippling. It's amazing that any words are making it into this text coherently at all. It might as well as be in badly translated Greek. An episode of 'The Mentalist' is playing to one side, rather brilliantly, and thoughts are scattered everywhere, like socks from a young child's drawer thrown in anger.

It is possible to write in a state of disarray, though, if you lean into the curve. For example, you could start whittering on about the perils of too much sleep, or the things you're currently reading. Oooh, there's something! Robert E Howard's Conan stories are rather amazing. Delving into 'The Conan Chronicles', you clearly detect something entirely original, both then and now. These are prototypal tales, and you can tell. It's a sensation that you get when you read the 'Sherlock Holmes' stories, or Dashiell Hammett, or even Jules Verne and the short prose of Woody Allen. More on this later.

Now, the work is done. Seven hundred and ninety eight posts... What a bizarre occurrence...

O.