As I believe I may have mentioned in passing (or possibly ad nauseam) Gretchen and I are working on funding applications. At least, I say “and I”, but up until today, my part in proceedings was limited to waiting to see how many “Absolutely, totally final, final, FINAL and please delete the others” versions of the application popped up in my email inbox.

It was three when I went home yesterday evening. It had become four by this morning.

Working on the (probably erroneous) assumption that:

(a) She was out shopping and therefore unable to amend anything else.

and

(b) She wouldn’t DARE anyway …

I started tidying the thing up, preparatory to sending it out to its lucky recipients.

That ‘tidying up’ process has taken me MOST OF THE BLOODY DAY - not through anything Gretchen did, but because in moving from her computer to mine, all the formatting was shot to hell and had apparently become indelibly attached to the document. I had to retype large chunks of it, because even copying and pasting just the words resulted in the mysterious transfer of the maverickformatting - specifically big thick horizontal lines that bore no relation to anything on the page, and refused point blank to be deleted.

Is it any wonder I like fountain pens?