Anyway, that problem is going to have to wait until either the minor corrections (if I’m lucky) or the book I may be able to make myself write at some point in the next decade.

For now, it’s back to sorting out all my half-arsed footnotes so they can be full-arsed and maybe acceptable

But unsurprisingly, she wasn’t able to figure out Marcia Kupfer’s “the one with the backwards things” 😹

It’s actually called “Art and Optics on the Hereford Map”, fair play she didn’t have a fucking chance with that one!

Anyway, back to the Introduction rewrites…

Someone suggested I change my thesis font to Times New Roman, I tried on one paragraph and it also made me feel a bit ick! Changed it straight back, absolutely not…

By the way, the whole Puppet Band thing isn’t completely random. I have a friend who is an Award Winning Puppeteer™️, and I really like the idea of collaborating as a solo artist with other artists — musicians, visual artists, puppeteers — so this is a genuine thing that I want to do. Just not now…

(If anyone has a suggestions of how to shut up the part of my brain which is planning, in great detail, a puppet band performance, probably at Boomtown, instead of working on finishing my thesis, I would be very grateful for any help. It. Won’t. Stop. Puppet. Band. Planning!)

Me: please, shut the fuck up and do some work

My brain: okay

Me: so let’s focus on the maps chapter today, we can…

My brain: we could argue with the puppets onstage.

Me: what

My brain: we could have speech bubbles printed out. The puppets could slag me off behind my back.

Me: no see I really need to focus on the thesis. Can we make some edits to the big map chapter today?

My brain: the puppets could be cats though

Me:

My brain: painted in hi-vis or UV, so the puppeteers can wear black and hide on a dark stage, and the puppets would glow and stand out better

I thought I recognised the name when I read it the other day!

I know it means I am very close to the end, one way or another! But I have so much work to do to bring the whole rewrite together, and my brain is just straight-up refusing to engage. Hopefully it’s temporary, and I will catch a second wind next month for the final stretch.

Thanks, I’m surprised it took so long to reach this point! But yeh, right now I really want to walk away. I’ll get my final shit chapter draft done this week, take a few days off and pray I can get my head back together next week ready for the final push…

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll hit my self-imposed deadline of this Thursday for the final chapter draft, and then I’ll just have to fix ALL THE REST OF IT in November, and bring it all together, and correct all my new (and old) mistakes, and sort the bibliography, and make my points more clearly and and and