Tuesday 28 January 2025: Good weekend

Image by Arthur Halucha from Pixabay

I didn’t do any work at the weekend. That’s one reason it was a good one. It meant I wasn’t so behind on anything that I felt the need to work, although there were a few things I could have quite happily been getting on with. And, quite possibly, should have been getting on with…

We had a very late start on Saturday, probably in subconscious preparation for the night ahead. We went to the butcher and to the supermarket and didn’t feel like much tea ahead of Saturday night’s gig because we’d eaten breakfast and dinner so late. 

We arrived at the venue just as the rest of the band finished unloading the van! Ha ha ha, they say he does it every time. Everything went well. There was a good turn out. And the poet’s voice held up throughout, which was brilliant. He could just feel his throat start to go as they started the last song. And they went down a bomb as usual.

Sunday, we had another lazy day. We went to the van to check it over, and found that the battery was completely flat, so the alarm kept squeaking. We’ll have to go back with the jump leads to get it all going again, and then take it out on a couple of good day trips so the battery has chance to charge up again. We think last week’s gales must have set the alarm off until the battery ran out.

We went to measure the furniture as we’re replacing the seat/bed foam and we want to try something that works a bit better for us. But as we have to go back now, we’ll do that next time. Once we’ve replaced the foam and we know it fits, I’ll make some covers for it (or we’ll get it covered). 

We had pie and mash for tea and I made a black(berry) and blue(berry) crumble. As I use oats in the crumble mixture, it was like hot overnight oats!

Monday dawned bright and early, and yes, I was up 2 minutes before my alarm went off. The poet had already crossed the Pennines after a 90-minute drive or so. 

I didn’t have to feed the birds because the bad weather had kept them away and there was still plenty left. It’s rare they don’t pick the feeders bare, so I try not to worry too much about food left overnight growing bio-germs or anything. At the weekend I’d also caught the tail end of a sparrowhawk giving the birds a bit of a buzz, so I think that probably kept them away too. 

It was publication day yesterday, so I did the publicity rounds for that and I shared yesterday’s blog post, after finishing it first. I had a paragraph left to add, so I added that and then posted it. Then I worked on the diary for the next 2 months. (Um…perhaps I should reword that?)

Because I’m in hospital in March and taking the full 2 weeks recovery, I’ve had to jiggle a few things around. I try to limit myself to just 7 things to do each day, regardless of how quick they might be because sometimes I like to spend a few hours on one job, while I’m in the swing, and sometimes I can do 2 or 3 little or easy jobs in one 25-minute time slot (half a Pomodoro for me). 

Part of this future scheduling includes updating the books I published in 2021/2022. Most of them are fine and just need the interiors and the prices updating. Some need new cover images. And I’m toying with bringing the Horvale/Stevie Beck short stories into the Wordsworth Shorts brand, like I do with the Marcie Craig stories. 

I’ve been playing with short story covers that match the novella/novelette covers, but I think think all of the short stories might be better in the short story format, the flash fiction format, or the novelette format, although I’ve been using an original novella format for the 15,000-word Horvale stories.

It looks like I’m now full until 1 April, which is useful going forward when people/clients ask if I can edit or proofread something for them.

I finally got around to this week’s diary. And then I fell down a covers rabbit hole, spending far too much time choosing new images for some of the covers when I’m not even supposed to be working on that at the moment. 

I know what it is. It’s displacement activity. Because I still have a 1,200-word story to write by tomorrow and a 15,000-word story to write by the end of Friday. Perhaps I should have used some of the weekend to start one of those…

Eventually, I dragged myself away to do more brainstorming, and I even took my work into the living room, away from all distraction, while the poet started to make a risotto for our tea. 

Today will be better organised…

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