Have you noticed that when you've been spending a long time at the computer, whether working or playing (I outlawed solitaire games several years ago but you go ahead), or doing research or browsing or writing letters, that you are reluctant to leave? It's so easy, so beguiling, just to sit there and dabble. Advertisers count on this.

Have you noticed that they (you know who I mean) have devised sneaky ways of finding you? No matter what obscure thing, item or person you are looking up, a sidebar will blind-side you with a notice about whatever you've been buying lately, about a new product or a special offer or just a reminder. Oh, they are so devious.

I saved my blog to the end of my working day, to ease me out of my departure from the magic keyboard. Yesterday I re-read my first draft of my age book and aside from the fact that I should tear it up and start again, I've done a lot of work on it today, work that involved looking up dates and quotations and confirmations and - you know, all that tedious stuff that goes with writing a book without a secretary or a clone. Now I'm going to start playing cards.

The story goes that George Kaufman, the playwright, who was a zealous card player, used to write the scenes for a new play in progress onto scene cards. When he saw the narrative wasn't working, he shuffled the cards. Expertly, of course.

That's what I'm going to do. Although I know the method works with novels, I have't tried it on non-fiction before. However, I have written a new outline and the chapters of the old draft don't quite fit. So I'll put them onto cards (recipe file cards work perfectly) and shuffle them, see where they go, and then fill in the blanks. Does that sound simple? It's not.

Bye for now.

A few more items of language have arisen again and I must deal with them. My friend at the lake, though in total angst about his wife, still took advantage of having a writer in residence, and asked me was he correct in choosing amount to indicate quantity, a sum total, as opposed to number, also a quantity or amount, but countable, numerical. So you have a large amount of food, even money, but a number of people, or dollars. I agreed with him and added a corollary: few as opposed to less. One can have a few dollars, but less money.

I know: I'm unbearable. I dated for a short time a divorcé, who prided himself on his linguistic skills. Once, for a long date (a drive to Stratford to see a play and back the same day - I said dated), as I say a long time, he brought along a short edition of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary), a short version of Fowler's Modern English Usage, and a lexicon. He needed them for our arguments. He was one of the few people I felt free to correct or question, in the full understanding that he would fight back.

So I'm back to normal, I guess.

Note to Pat, to whom I cannot reply: thank you for your touching and welcome comments.