Cake and Writing

I was deep in academic writing land, having found a rich source of energy after slipping a rather snotty Nile Rodgers comment into my work (from Daryl Easlea's book on disco, Everybody Dance: Chic and the Politics of Disco). Suddenly, it stopped feeling like an upward slog and became an exciting ride. And I've just watched the film Twenty Feet from Stardom, which also was full of interesting observations. It's still going to take until at least Christmas before the article is finished, but at 15,000 words its getting ever stronger. I've learned to self-edit, slashing and burning and restructuring: but it's still to huge to read in one sitting. It doesn't move along quickly enough and I need to work on that.
Anyway, jolted from the academic reverie by a knock at the door I realised that time had flown and there was Offsprog One at the door. To celebrate, I made a blueberry cake with fresh blueberries which must have come to the boil in the oven, because half the cake started to burn and the other half was so liquid it ran out of the tin on to the bottom of the oven and from there on to the kitchen floor. I was too laid back to panic even though the kitchen had filled with smoke, and I just swore mildly before rescuing the sticky mess and turning it out on to a plate.
Miraculously, the smell of burning was fake and so was the smoke, and the stickiness solidified.
We had eaten half of the cake before it had even cooled down.
Now, back to writing for a while because I will be spending a ten hour day at the University clearing desk tomorrow. Last year, that's when I left my lyrics book on the train. Although I managed to salvage all of my songs (I hope) from iPhone recordings, and made them into the Anarchy Skiffle album, and also had to get my finger out and do the Bande Dessinee story which was languishing in rough format between the pages of the book, it was a miserable few weeks of constantly going to the Lost Property office at Baker Street and trying to remember what was actually in the bloody book.
That was a nine hour day and tomorrow has an extra hour attached. I don't dare try to do anything important so I'm hoping it's going to be busy. The upside is that it happens in the library, so I've prepared a small and perfectly formed list of books to stick my nose into when I get there.
All this writing: you don't tend to get paid for academic writing and often end up having to apply for funding to pay for illustrations, photographs and indexing.
I have resolved to write a best-selling detective novel next year, once I have decided which of two ideas is the best!