Chapter 51: Tuesday 1 November
November already… This year has flown by.
Friday
On Friday morning we had the 3rd of our 4 appointments for last week. The poet’s car was due in for some urgent maintenance and update (it had 2 recalls in the time it took us to get someone to agree to see it), so I had to follow him there and bring him back in time for a Teams meeting. Had he not got this meeting booked in, he was going to have a go at being a bus wan… er… passenger.
The car was due in at 9am and we were back by 9:40am, so we were both at our desks in time for the 10am meeting. Jokingly I said, “I hope they don’t ring us 5 minutes before closing time to ask us to come and collect it…” Famous last words.
I wrote and scheduled yesterday’s publication day post (the last one for the publishing challenge) and I started this one.
He had another meeting while I rejigged the diary for the following few days, and then we discussed holidays β it looks like we have the best part of 3 weeks off for Christmas! Yay! π
Then the only job I did all day was editing. I had ghostwriting to do as well, but I was almost at the end of the hard-copy edit and I wanted to be able to email the author by the end of the day as I knew he was getting anxious. I fired off an email to both ghostwriting clients with an update, and cracked on with the editing.
I had to stop in the middle of it, though, because at precisely 3 minutes after closing time, the garage called us to say we could go and collect the car…
Fortunately, there was someone there who was willing to wait for us… although I don’t know why we were grateful. All they had to do was call us at around 3:30pm and say that the car would be ready at 4pm, instead of waiting until 4:03pm and laughing when the poet asked what time were they open to. It’s a car showroom too, so we thought it might be open a bit later than 4pm.
Off we pootled to get the car. When we got home I finished the editing job and sent the email. Then I signed off and we went to do the shopping.
We had tea at 9pm…
Saturday
I already knew I’d be working at the weekend, and so did both of the ghostwriting clients. The dog came and woke me up 3 times during the night, though, and I was tired in the morning. Too tired to start writing someone else’s work.
We had a late start and when I sat down at my desk, the poet started to hang mirrors and pictures on walls and I just had to keep going to have a gawp.
I didn’t have a full day at it on Saturday because the poet’s band was playing all the way over in Bradford. That’s an early start for us and a late finish. But I gave it a good go and had a fair amount of words down by the end of the afternoon.
Sunday
I carried on working on Sunday, until around midnight. While I worked, the poet took both cars to fill up with petrol, and while he was out filling mine up, he also had it washed. When he came back, he set to on the inside of my car, because ever since we moved house there’s been a really bad putrid smell that we haven’t been able to locate.
The cat came over to the new house with me in her carrier, and I’m sure she didn’t have any accidents in the carrier in transit. We did bring some garden pots over, and it’s possible a cat had used one for a toilet at some point and it spilled out into my car. Or, another cat could have climbed into the car while the doors were open and sprayed it.
When the poet came back I had to smell him to see if the smell had lingered, and it had. On his back. So I went and checked, and sure enough the smell was strongest on the back of the driver’s seat. Which means it’s more likely a cat got in and sprayed it.
It has to be mentioned here that the poet doesn’t have a sense of smell. He has chronic rhinitis and severe asthma (though not on an oxygen tank), and until recently he had some very large nasal polyps that were surgically removed. The only time he’s had his sense of smell in the last 10 years (more really, but I’ve only been privy to such information for 10 years) had been when he had badly infected sinuses and the doc gave him a powerful antibiotic/steroid combination that he can only take 4 times a year. After his op, he did have his sense of smell but it only lasted for a few weeks. So this is why I have to go around doing the smelling.
Anyway, he vacuumed the car, applied dry foam, vacuumed that off, applied deep-clean upholstery cleaner, and sponged that in. Now the inside of the car smells of detergent, but that’s better than putrid cat urine.
Monday
Monday was publication day for the final book in my publication challenge. So I took a break from the ghostwriting to do the publicity for that. I also did the usual admin and publicity work for Monkey Dust, but this time I boosted the posters for the public gigs to the end of the year in case any followers need to arrange transport.
For the rest of the day, though, I finished off the ghostwriting for GW1 client. I still owe him the bonus story, which I’ll do today. I finished work at around 11pm.
Today
Today is Day 1 of NaNoWriMo 2022, and I really wanted to clear my diary so I could allocate more time to that. Today, though, I have to finish the bonus short story for GW1 client and I have to crack on with the new story for GW3 client. (GW2 client was at the start of this year and was an individual, so I don’t expect any further repeat work from there.)
The Scrivener binder is ready, though, and I WILL also do some NaNo writing today.
Good luck to everyone else who is joining in with NaNoWriMo this year.
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Busy, busy, busy. I didn’t realize you were still in the process of moving. Hope you can get settled soon.
Oh, no – this is from the move back in September! I’ve not used my car since then, really, apart from twice when even Ian was hit with a putrid ‘something’ when the boot was opened.