Too many hours spent at the day job...

I dream of the day when, somewhere amongst the cabbages and turnips, a man by the name of Mr Pan-Macmillan, or Mr. Harper-Collins, approaches me in the supermarket, and whispers: "Psst! Hey lady!".

I, not being the kind of person who uses the supermarket as a pick-up joint, would ignore him at first. But the "hey, lady!"'s, and the insistent hissing grow ever louder, to the point where I have no option but to pay attention. And so I say, "What?!" testily, because I am always testy in the supermarket. If the fact I could be at home writing isn't enough to set me off, the people bovinely wandering across the aisles as though they've never used a shop before will.

And Mr Pan-Macmillan, (let's use just that name for the sake of brevity in this wishful anecdote), says, "I've got this advance burning a hole in my pocket, and I'm desperate for some writer to take it."

I say, "How do you know I'm a writer?" and he says, "because your basket is full of notebooks and pens".

In my dream, Mr Pan-Macmillan writes me a cheque there and then, and waves me off home to get on with writing my novel, unencumbered by the travails of having to hold down a day job. [Pedants, I know that no publisher operates in this ridiculous manner. Stay with me here]. He is such a thoughtful man, he even provides me with a long-suffering assistant, whose sole job is to do things that I hate, so that I'm free to write. Poor assistant. Fancy spending your whole day doing somebody else's housework and errands. Sorry, imaginary assistant, for making your life suck.

It's long days at work, and weekends full of commitment that bring me to this sweet day-dream again and again....