HOT!

That’s the weather. We’re here in the middle of a heatwave, which is suiting a lot of people. It doesn’t suit me, but I don’t mind it.

We have all of the windows open and two fans on the go. The washing is baking on the line. The milk had to come in off the step before it fried. It’s too hot to work outside. But I don’t mind.

I’m a snow baby, and I love the rain. And I’m okay with a mild British summer, as I can work outside then, even if it is under a parasol. But I’m a burner and that’s why the hot sun doesn’t suit me.

I wouldn’t mind if I tanned, but I burn, go bright red, peel, and then go dark white, so it’s really not worth risking getting skin cancer – not that it would be worth risking getting skin cancer, of course. But you know what I mean.

The office would be stifling without the fans, and I am a bit ensconced still at the moment. I’m proofreading a novel for the Greek client and it really is a good story. Once I’ve finished the hard-copy work, I need to be at the screen doing the electronic changes.

Hard-copy work is quite portable. I have a bag ready to go for when the poet decides to go fishing. If it’s a bit cool, I can work in the car. If it’s a bit warm, I can work under the fishing brolly.

When we went fishing on Monday, I took a different novel with me to work on – this one from the British private client. But as the Greek one needs to be back by tomorrow, I’ve shifted to that one until it’s done.

I’ve discovered that the new tablet the poet bought me for Christmas will connect to the internet using my mobile phone as a hot spot. So that means, on an overcast day, I can take online work with me – that’s work I do via the internet, not screen edits.

I have very little online work to do at the moment, though. I think COVID-19 has had a knock-on affect on the production line for that job as the volume of work has gone down a lot since mid-March.

I do have an old laptop and a not-so-old notebook/switch. Both of those have Scrivener on if ever I’m working on a book or novel and I can work on them offline, so long as I have my memory stick with me. I don’t keep Word on the notebook/switch as it’s too memory hungry, and I have an old version of Word on the old laptop.

I used to save all of my critical data to my desktop computer and then back it up to a portable hard drive once a week. My last computer kept on resetting itself, though, and I was losing some of that critical data and all of the download installation files for various softwares.

I don’t trust any of the clouds with my critical data, so using a memory stick now instead of the desktop hard drive means I can always take work with me if necessary.

For three days I’ll have been working on the hard-copy proofread. Tomorrow, I’ll do the screen changes.

Back to the page.

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