And there we have it. The first full week of 2025 is done. It’s frightening, but a reminder that time waits for no man, so it certainly won’t wait for me to get my finger out.
Yesterday was a busy day. I had a hospital appointment but there were weather and traffic warnings that the roads in Doncaster were icy and grid-locked. So we set off early in order to be at my appointment in good time. Well, the roads were empty and there was no ice. So we got there raving early.
There was still nowhere to park when we got there. Doncaster Hospital is notorious for parking. There are something like 900 spaces for something like 3,000 staff members and up to 3,000 patient visitors every day. The maths isn’t hard.
Local residents are complaining because staff and visitors are parking across their drives and on the central reservations in the roads immediately surrounding the hospital. But the same local residents have objected against a new multi-storey car park being built on adjacent derelict land. The hospital is a multi-storey building, so I don’t understand why they’re objecting to another one if it will ease the surrounding roads.
The poet dropped me off and started to drive around until a space came available, but he dropped lucky and caught someone pulling out of a space. I waited in one waiting area seat for about a second before I was called into another waiting area, where we sat for an hour. Yes, we were early, but they finally called me in 35 minutes after my appointment time, by which time the poet had to go and move the car as there’s only one-hour parking where he parked and they had 2 stewards checking the car parks and taking pictures.
After I was called in, I waited another 10 minutes for the consultant to come and see me. I told him I’d had 2 attacks since my last appointment, and if he still wanted my gall bladder he could have it, but would he mind taking it at Bassetlaw Hospital, where the parking is still much better, but who knows how long that will be the case? He agreed, I signed the form, he gave me a strict diet sheet and another sheet explaining the operation. And I left the building, just as the poet was finishing his 2nd circuit.
I really don’t mind about the wait at all in the hospital. Our hospitals are full to bursting at the moment with flu and norovirus sufferers, with some patients waiting 16 hours outside in ambulances. And then they have another wait once they’re taken into A&E. So I think I did really well to be in and out within 90 minutes.
On our way home we stopped off to replenish the garden bird food. They’ve been very ‘eat’ since the snow came, and it’s lying in our village still, and freezing, because we’re so high up. Everywhere else we went the snow had long gone. I gave the birds their second feed of the day and we had a late dinner.
The afternoon was then spent collating all of the stories I’ve written for 12 Stories in 12 Months since January 2023. I have 16 complete stories plus 3 partial stories that have gone on to be part of something longer. Six stories are from 2023, when I abandoned the course in Month 8. Two stories were merged together to make one longer story. I also made a note of the prompts, the target word-counts, the deadlines and the titles of the stories I wrote. I’m going to put them together in a collection.
Most of the stories I was able to copy and paste from the website, but I had to check the word-count to fill in that section. There were about 4 that had been sent to market and, hence, removed from the website, even though it’s password protected. I had to go and find the files for those, and ended up using the final versions. So the initial target word-count might differ.
I added a list to my Trello Power Board so that these stories could go into the production machine. I want them to go in the Bookazine first, then I’ll publish the collection (of 12 stories plus 4 bonus stories), then I’ll publish them as standalones. And then they’ll go off to feature in other themed collections in the future.
Those stories under 1,200 words (up to 1,199 words) will be released as Wordsworth Flash Fiction stories, and then in the next flash fiction anthology that’s ready; those over 1,200 words will be released as Wordsworth Shorts, and then they’ll go into the whichever collection of 10 Wordsworth Shorts they’ll fit in.
When I have 50 individual Wordsworth Shorts available, and 5 collections of 10 Wordsworth Shorts, I’ll release another anthology for Wordsworth Shorts 1 to 50.
All of that took me to tea time, although I worked over because Monkey Dust had their first rehearsal in a while, mostly to see how the poet’s voice is. The poet left the house at 5pm and I carried on working for a while. The length of time he was gone would be a hint at how it went…and I’ll include it in Monday’s blog post for today.
Grand-doggy #1 is coming to stay for the weekend, and I have to decide whether or not to attempt the first assignment for the space opera workshop that starts on Monday. (Deadline midnight Sunday.) The poet thinks I should at least give it a go. I think it’s so far out of my ken that I might just attend the workshops. I really don’t know the first thing about space opera, I have yet to watch the Star Wars films, and my Trekkie days were back with the original Captain James T. Kirk.
Have a great weekend.
