A Good Hour

On Friday I sat in front of the computer for nine hours, planning this, juggling that, tidying up loose ends and creating more loose ends, tippity tap on the keyboard, eyes drooping, feet icy even though it was warm outside.....
Today I got to do one of my fave lectures, about voices in songwriting. I love talking about things I feel enthusiastic about. In songwriting workshops you do this in the vernacular but at a University it has to be academic but that's just as much fun. Finding the right scholars to articulate an idea that originated on the street, or something that everyone knows but nobody says: it's like being a detective. And next week I get to play them The Cocteau Twins, and some Kurt Weill, and maybe even Marlene Dietrich. And the Maddox Brothers and Rose, X Ray Spex, Cher and Space Lady.
Shall we have a disco afterwards and dance to Northern Soul, or shall we watch a film? Les Parapluies de Cherbourg?
My living room is wall to wall books and you can't sit on the kitchen chair because there's a pile there too. Post-it notes sprout out of them at regular intervals and there is a pile of frail newspaper cuttings on the floor that rises and falls with a gentle sigh every time I walk past it and disturb the air, settling back down on the rug in a slightly more disordered fashion every time.
Books, music, art... And a slice of chocolate cake, please, with the top icing taken off and thrown in the bin (too sticky).
One good hour's lecture, and I sit in the evening with a Cheshire Cat's grin on my face.