Gosh I Can Waffle On!

It used to be that every time we went away anywhere, whether on holiday, for a weekend or just for a walk, I would, if possible, send a detailed daily postcard to my gran.

The problem came on those walks or backpacking trips when we didn’t pass a shop or a post-box each day. So that my gran, sitting at home waiting for the tales that she now expected, wasn’t let down I started writing detailed accounts after each of our trips.

Word got around, the circulation of my whitterings grew slightly and the one thing that everyone kept telling me was that I should write a book about our adventures. Bless, eh! It’s like all those people on X Factor whose families tell them that they can sing, without taking the bias angle into account.

However, to keep these people happy, last year I collated all of my accounts for the previous 14 months and had them printed and bound into a hard-back volume, with a copy of each of them. Suddenly everyone was happy.

But, of course, I had then set a precedent. This year I have repeatedly cursed the fact that I ever started these write-ups as I’ve slaved away over the computer after each trip.

Then, about a month or maybe six weeks ago, I started the task of collating, editing and formatting this year’s collection (cursing Bill Gates as I went; why, oh why does deleting one tab in between two photos suddenly change the style of all of my headings?!).

Tonight I have finished and sent it off to the binders.

Having heaved a huge sigh of relief upon finishing, out of interest I looked at my final word count.

Now the more astute amongst you may have noticed that I have the ability to ramble on at some length (no, really!)…

On the subject of this year’s 31 outings I have written 165,000 words, spread over 218 A4 pages. Ouch!

Bearing in mind our plans for next year, I think that I need to go on a crash course in the art of being succinct.