Midnight Oil

Having waited for several months - my MS came back from the editor on Friday, with a charming request from my publisher to let her have my changes asap "Yesterday would be good" ( I quote.) Of course yours truly burnt the midnight oil and complied.* My publisher remains (apart from my family, naturally) my favourite person on the entire planet. What am I talking about? the solar system, the universe and beyond. (Although, I must point out, this accolade is subject to a severe review if, for any reason, my book isn't published.) More soon - too tired to type any more!!!

*That is, I completed the changes over a weekend, not by "yesterday"! If I could time travel, I'd be a lot younger than I am right now, and busy telling everyone how to live their lives. In fact, I probably wouldn't survive. Someone would bump me off for being a bossy know it all.

I've been very remiss, haven't posted for quite a while. When I returned, I couldn't log on! Major panic, but I finally worked out (techological genius at work) that I was using the wrong email address, having changed my log on details on a random whim. It made me think about how often our lives can be affected by the whims of others. We talk about the cross roads in our lives, "the road not taken" the regrets and triumphs that make up our lives as a result of our casual choices. "If only I'd caught that train" or "if only I'd thought before sending that email" - even "if only I hadn't overslept" - I could go on endlessly. Poems, films, novels, plays, real lives played out along a certain track because of one chance choice.

But what about the random whims of others that so often dictate the direction of our lives? Someone likes the look of you and you're offered a job - or the converse.

Some complete stranger at the other end of a letter likes what you've written and offers to publish . . .

If you take into account other people's whims and chance choices about you, as well as your own, the chances of being who you are, where you are in life become almost impossibly random.

Does anything make any sense? (I'm not just referring to my ramblings here - this is a wider philosophical question!)