We had a relatively still night. When the wind drops, it’s actually fairly mild – currently around 11 degrees Centigrade, but with plenty of sunshine during the day.
However, at around 7am, the wind started to pick up again, and we can expect winds of up to 51 miles per hour by mid-morning. So I went and moved the chickens from their coop to the outhouse again.
At just gone 10am this morning, I went to see if they wanted to come out. Blondie stuck her beak out, but refused point blank to leave the safety of the outside toilet. Baldy went for a short walk around the garden, but at the first gust, she dashed back to the outhouse too.
So, if that’s where they’d rather be … I’ll check again at midday when the winds are supposed to drop.
We were so worried about the greenhouse blowing away that we didn’t think to check anything else. Before the poet came home from work yesterday, I did a quick circuit of the house. There had been rather a lot of banging, and I wanted to make sure nothing serious had happened while it was still light enough to do something about it.
All was well, apart from the shed. A window* had blown out and a strip of roofing felt that went down both sides of the apex roof was on the floor. Another strip of roofing felt was trapped between the shed and the garage.
As the poet was just pulling onto the drive, he decided to do a quick repair on the shed before coming into the house. He nailed down what was left of the roofing felt and refitted the window*. The loose felt came indoors to be re-fixed or replaced at a later, less windy date.
(* I use the term “window” loosely. It’s actually a square of clear Perspex.)
Because the internet is still blowing out at regular intervals, I’m still composing today’s blog on the notebook/switch in OpenOffice. I must say, it seems to be working and I’m not feeling cheated out of doing something for myself while I work on a heavy edit.
I spent all of yesterday working on the hard-copy client edit that came in Monday evening. Meanwhile, another message came in from the same client saying that he had at least a book a week for me for the next few weeks at least.
This is very good news on the editing front, particularly as he’s a new client I initially did some proofreading for. But it means the writing is still relegated to evening work.
Yesterday evening, while the poet had a bath and then made tea (crustless quiche), I managed to write another 793 words for Catch the Rainbow. All longhand.
I’ve always been very happy with the prologue, and while I’ve ummed and ahhed about making it chapter 1 instead, I think I still like it being a prologue.
At the moment I have no chapter headings and no scene numbers. Just dates of when the action in that part of the story happened. At the moment I’m still on the second scene (if you include the prologue as a scene), still in 1998. The prologue happens in 1964.
I’m still awaiting the contract for the new non-fiction book, but I was assured on Tuesday that it would be with me within the next few days. Until it gets here, though, I’ll keep going on Catch the Rainbow.
