Venison, Vampires, and Chocolate

Four years ago I was a vegetarian. Tonight I dithered between the venison or the lamb on the menu at our regular without skipping a beat. We have not been to our regular or any of our other haunts for many weeks. Morris and I have spent the last six days picking up the threads of our regular routine. It feels a bit like waking up from a nap or returning all the colour in a landscape that had gone sepia toned. I am glad to feel the colour and the shape of our life returning.

Conversation over the venison includes pieces of his trip to Helmsdale to see Alex Salmond dedicate a statue to emigrants, my day in town, and my current assignment from writing group: vampires. I did not read the Lestat series, but I was belatedly hooked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and my childhood knowledge includes all the Dracula films. Even so, I might have balked at the assignment if I had not been emboldened by a draft of a novel from my daughter. I enjoyed reading it immensely and allowed it to loosen the hinges of my writerly gates. I managed 1500 words in a single session this morning, but I knew that only chocolate could give me the energy to keep it going.

Red wine and chocolate sustained me for 6 weeks of writing a long, complex proposal for the money to keep open the doors of the high tech start up where I was working. I wonder briefly if I could keep that pace again? So much has changed since those days. But for tonight the chocolate needs only fuel my muse sufficiently to get Doris of the living dead on to her next adventure.