Procrastination

From the Latin pro cras: literally leaving stuff "to tomorrow". In case you didn't know.

My school was a comprehensive, but when I first went it had only just changed: all the exercise books still said "Toynbee Secondary Modern" on them. Which, again for those of you who don't know, meant that it had been a working class school occupied by the children who failed their Eleven Plus exam upon leaving primary. This system was basically a social tool for making sure everyone got the right education for their expected role in society, although set up with a slight chance for people to move in order to defuse enough of the resentment. Keeping the masses in their place, in other words.

Anyway, we had a very good headmaster who was looking to cast off the "school for drongos" reputation. (Yeah, class oppression really does promote such thinking, at least here in England.) He was skilled at motivating the existing teachers and at hiring decent new ones, and also came up with some wacky ideas. One of which was to encourage pupils who showed an interest in something.

I'm not just talking about praise and gold stars. No, there were four of us who were interested in learning Latin - not enough to make it worthwhile including in the curriculum - so what he did was to hire a part-time Latin teacher to come in before school started and teach us then. I got my 'O' level Latin, and as a result can spot where quite a few words come from and figure out more spelling than I would have been able to otherwise.

Which reminds me of my daughter, currently at Comicon in London, dressed as Neil Gaiman's Death (one of the Endless). So far she's met William Russell, Bernard Cribbins and Paul McGann, plus Summer Glau (briefly). I'm jealous, but the reason I'm reminded is that tomorrow she will hopefully be meeting that wonderful logophile, Colin Baker.

So. Procrastination, then.

Um.

Back in February, before I went on holiday, the Final Iananbarbara Post (FIP) was half-complete. I've written a lot since then - mostly not for this blog, but even here the published wordcount is over 6,500, none of it intended for publication before the FIP. I came to a firm decision a month or so ago to stop and draw a line under this era.

Since then, the FIP has crept up to maybe three-quarters written. It's pathetic, and I know that this is happening (or rather, not happening) because I am so desperately resisting moving on.

I will be 50 on Thursday, and I have decided to make a public statement. If I have not finished the FIP by then, I will post it as-is. Even if there are still sentences that finish in the middle.

There, Maybe my pride will push me to actually complete it. See you Thursday!