(diaryland) November 08, 2004 - 11:42 a.m.

At the moment, my life is tremendously boring. I suppose anybody who stays at work until 8PM printing out a book and then going home and planting their arse firmly in front of the TV for the rest of the night won't have anything interesting in particular to say.

The only thing interesting at the moment is that my left boob fucking hurts.

I'm going disturbingly well at the national novel writing month thing, probably due to the fact that I can't think of anything else to do. I really do think it's dangerous to let a Clare out into the world without her having several assignments to do, so this is a good temporary university substitute. As of this morning, I am one word off 13,300. It's funny because the urge is to describe everything in excruciating detail just to get the word count up. So, yes. I'm writing a boring novel. Here's an extract.

Pam came back and arranged the parsely on the plate carefully. She shook her head as she fixed the coffee machine by thwacking it. Raisin toast as a bum�s first meal, she thought. It just didn�t seem right. There were two other bums who lived in the heart of the town, who ate the weird shit that fell out of people�s paper bags in the rubbish bin, and they�d been true bums right from the start. In fact, both those bums had been bums for decades before they drifted into the town. Apparently, one of them had been a bum ever since he was born, from an illustrious family of bums. And another thing � she thought � bums never came with names. The bum always gets his name from the townfolk. For example, Teddy. The mayor of Gisborne had named him that because he was unpredictable and had swiped a teddy bear off some kid who was part of a tourist family as they were walking down the Main Street one day. And of course, there was Fang, who was so named due to his severe lack of tooth-like implements. Ha ha, chuckled Pam to herself. The irony.

By this time, the raisin toast breakfast was ready. She dumped it down on Ken�s table, and Ken looked up through Pam�s disturbingly large unsupported breasts, which were in his face, and said, �Do you accept Diner�s Club?�

�Don�t be crazy,� said Pam. �You�re a bum. You get this meal free, but don�t abuse your bum privileges from here on in, mate.�

�OK, well, thanks so much for that,� said Ken. �I won�t.� He took a sip of the latte. It was scalding hot and tasted like dirt. Even though Ken had been used to one buck coffees at the university, and breakfast at the college, this tasted like absolute shit. Secretly, he wouldn�t have wanted to pay for it anyway.

After finishing his raisin toast and drinking as much of the latte as humanly possible, he left the coffee shop in order to stake out the countryside for his hobo home base.