Well, here we are, suffering from sleep-deprivation, random illnesses and minor amounts of stress. Yup, it's wedding minus two days. Still, all is going fairly well, in a kind of "we won't worry about that" way. We're now operating on the assumption that everything will turn out all right on the day. And if it doesn't, well, we figure it won't be a disaster.

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It's been a distinctly no-writing week. That wasn't the intention. We had intended to vigorously enforce our writing schedule, but the abovementioned sleep deprivation put an easy end to that. We'll have to make up for it on the honeymoon.

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The honeymoon is going to be an email/internet free zone. Not that we could conceivably enforce that by will power alone, simply that we're going somewhere where there is no phone line. A week will be the longest internet-free time either of us have had for years. Which is a bit frightening.

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Today is also my last day of work until 23 August. When I get back, I have four days of work, then a five day weekend, courtesy of university working practices. (One day for the university centenary, two days for bank holiday after the weekend). There's a lot to be said for working for a university.

Of course, that means I will have to cram about 3 weeks of work into 4 days, but that can't be so hard.

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I've received back a marked-up copy of my story "The Green Pit" which is going to be published in Usborne Fantasy Stories. This is cool, and I'm looking forward to seeing it. Only the editor has asked me to explain why something happens in the story. Which is a little difficult. See, I wrote this story a year ago, and while I know I had a good reason for the thing that happens to happen at the time, I didn't include it because I wanted to avoid info-dumping, and now I can't for the life of me remember what the reason was. So I'm going to have to make up a less-convincing reason, I think, and hope the editor is happy.

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A survey out today--like so many equally pointless surveys before it--supposedly shows how bad young people in Britain are at history. Significant numbers do not remember the names of battles in history, nor the generals/kings who "led" them. This, we are told by red-faced conservative historians, proves how bad education is today.

Nonsense, says I. I find the whole thing immensely reassuring. It means that today children are no longer taught that history is just about dates, names of generals, battles won and lost, and other nonsense. History lessons today focus far more on much more relevant history, and I for one am glad of it. I would far rather our children were taught, for example, the effect that the invention of the spinning jenny had on the economy and employment than the date of the Battle of Trafalgar and who "won" it.