30 lengths, 2,855 words, 10 stone, and Sharia Law?!

I swam 30 lengths yesterday (it's a 25 m pool). I did them very slowly and with every stroke I repeated my little mantra of, "hour by hour and day by day, my cancer is shrinking and shrinking away." Then I did the hardest of bit of all - my 25 minutes in the Jacuzzi (I'm in training you see). Anyway - feeling as though I'm doing something to make up for next week's post-chemo inactivity.

And how am I 10 stone again? It simply isn't fair.

Went shopping with the youngest today. I fear I have trained her too well, because when I tried to buy a cooked chicken, she wanted to know if it was free-range. And when the bemused woman in Tesco (other stores are available) said,"No," little one said I couldn't buy it. But I don't want to cook an entire meal from scratch tonight because my arm is hurting. (Poor little me, boo hoo - you buying this yet?) I had to sneak back for the chicken. Oh the guilt. The shame. But well done little one. I'll have to fib and say they had free-range ones in when I went back. I promise I won't do it again. She also made me put the Lilies back because I also bought a Peace Lily in a pot, and was "spending too much money." I said, "It's my money," and she said, "No, mum, it's the family's money." Consider myself told. She definitely takes after her father.

My short story now stands at 2,855. It's supposed to be 2,000, so rather than trying to increase my word count, I am trying to decrease it. Decreasing a word count is much harder I've decided, and I look forward to tomorrow when I can crack on with the novel again.

What else? Oh yes -someone (Chilli) invited me to play Scrabulous on Facebook, and that was a very naughty thing to do. I ignored her request, but then she sent me another one. And then Jenny from work joined in the asking. Am now in the middle of two games, losing very badly, and wasting lots of valuable writing and editing time trying to think words up for scrabble. Shame on you both. When I fail to produce my novel at the end of this year, it isn't the cancer I shall blame, but you two.

Just had to say something about the Sharia Law thing... (can't stop myself I'm afraid)

I was wondering if my hearing was playing up the other day when I heard on the news that Sharia Law might be a good thing in the UK, for Muslims. What on earth is going on? I wonder if we could have UK Law for those Brits living in the Middle East then? No? Thought not.

It really winds me up, this business about religious laws. If people want to live under religious law then they should bloomin' well bugger off and live in a country that already runs under religious ruling. What happened to, "When in Rome?" (Although to be fair Rome did kind of spread, and dictate so perhaps a poor example, but you get my drift, I'm sure.) Bloody nuisance if you ask me, all this religious law stuff and nonsense. We have a law, a perfectly adequate secular law, and as a woman, I for one, am absolutely horrified at the thought of the UK adopting Sharia Law. And never mind if it only applies to Muslim women. What about their right to live under the law (and protection) of the UK?

Right - just climbing down off soap box.

Have just bought some software called New Novelist, so will let you know if it's any good. Apparently it has a 'resource centre' - and besides, it was buy one get one free with GCSE Spanish (for teenager).

Oh oh... I knew there was something else...

Firefox is so wonderful. Ever since IE started telling me I have blocked cookies (when I have not) and haven't allowed Java (I bloody well have), and not letting me log into Blogger, I've been getting a tad stressed out. Posting an entry that should take a few minutes was taking hours of faffing around with settings/privacy/security and goodness knows what else. So Firefox has fixed it all - plus it has this pic viewer add-on that I am in love with, AND it has like, really cool colourful skins and stuff! Oh I am soooo excited. Should have done it years ago.