Friday 23 August 2024: Late summer bank holiday already!

I can’t believe we’re at the late summer bank holiday weekend already! Where on earth did that year go? It’s shooting by in a blur.

By the end of the working day on Wednesday I felt calm, cool, chilled. The day ended like working days are supposed to end: with a feeling of accomplishment. I don’t know where that came from, but it was a nice feeling and I revelled in it for the rest of the evening.

Tea was a bit junky – shop-bought Quiche Lorraine, baked beans, hash browns (the hash browns were supposed to be oven chips until they fell out of the packet onto the baking tray…), followed by strawberries and ice cream. But it was nice.

Yesterday started in good time. I wasn’t late to my desk or anything, but I did go straight to the newsletter for September to see if I could work out how to present images in grids, or at least something different than one long column. I can! It was very fiddly and I spent hours on it, getting a nice image grid right where I wanted it. But I couldn’t add another one further down.

I spent yet more hours trying to sort it out and even changed browser, from Opera to Chrome, to see if that was it. It wasn’t. I had a break, went and fed the birds, came back to it and tried again. And it worked. First time. To make sure it wasn’t just a fluke, I tried it again, and again, and again. And it kept working. Fingers crossed I remember how to do it next time!

The newsletter is pretty much all ready to go. I have to add in notes and images from our Ireland trip (I have to get the photographs off the poet’s phone), and I just have to update my newsy stuff as it happens. But other than that, it’s good. I’ve even added the bonus short story.

That did take up most of the day and once I’d finished it I turned to those pesky photograph captions for the client edit pdf markups I sent back on Wednesday. The author had selected what pictures he wanted to use, but the captions were missing for 3 of them, and I thought 2 he discarded were quite nice.

So I packaged up the file, wrote up my report, and sent it all back to the client. This book is due out next month so we’re already right up against the wire.

The garden birds had a bit of a mad half hour. I found out we have a storm coming in overnight and thought that probably had a lot to do with it. One of the starlings came right onto the window feeder next to my desk and had a munch. Beautiful.

The poet was on his way home from his business trip but traffic was snarled up around London. So he asked if I could see a better route online. I could, which would save him around half an hour if it was correct, so he left the M25 and headed up the M40 instead.

When I used to drive to where he’s been, many, many moons ago, I didn’t even touch the M25. They were still building it then and the delays were dreadful. I suggested he find a route that doesn’t use the M25 in future, as it hasn’t always been there and we could get to the south-east long before it was built. Every time he gets delayed by hours, not minutes. It’s very bad.

I had some chill time after finishing the captions, then I raised an invoice and sent that off. (Yay!) And then I started today’s blog post, hoping I didn’t forget anything.

I still had some short story work to do, but without any client work I decided to save it all until today. Short stories currently in various stages of completion:

• THE CITY OF GLASGOW (proofread)
• THE EGG THIEF (revise)
• THE HORBY BELLS (revise & proofread)
• THE ACE OF SWORDS (write)
• 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS (brainstorm)

Those are all quite nice jobs, but the prompt we’ve been given for 12 STORIES is a bit of a sad one, in my opinion, especially when you consider the deadline (9/11). It’s had a lot of cogitation time and I think I know how to make it upbeat. I may also work on the stories over the weekend, although Monkey Dust do have a garden party to play at on Sunday.

Next week I start work on the bookazine but as it’s only a 4-day week, I’m saving the longer works for the week after.

Aside from the garden party on Sunday and shopping on Saturday, I don’t think we have anything else planned for the long weekend. We’ll just take it as it comes.

Have a good one, and enjoy the bank holiday if you’re having one.