Friday 1 March 2024: The month ahead

Yesterday was not a good day and for much of the day I know I had a permanent scowl on my face.

It started badly after a bit of a rough night. I was woken first by heartburn. When that went, I was woken again by rain throwing itself at the window. I settled down to listen to it, and it lasted all of 5 seconds. Then the dog woke me up. Then the poet woke me up. I was shattered by the time I surfaced.

And it went downhill from there. Our Probate guy is ignoring my emails. And when he isn’t ignoring the emails, he’s ignoring my questions. So the day began with me sending two more emails to him that were very specifically about one thing each, with between 1 and 4 questions regarding that one thing. He ignored them both, as well as one I’d sent the night before.

I did some research to find out where the complaints procedure starts and the phone number on that page actually went through to a Probate service price quotation thing. The very nice chap there gave me the initial email to write to. I thanked him, and wrote the email. My sister texted to suggest I call them. I’d rather not call them as I prefer an audit trail. So she said she’d call them in the afternoon.

In between all of this, the internet was off and on and off and on and off and on and… you get the picture. I logged a call, she helped me reset the router but said to call again if it happened again. Within half an hour it happened again, and again, and again. So I put the call through – again – and an engineer is coming today. Apparently.

I am sick to death of things not working. I’m sick to death of paying for services we never receive. People we’re paying are ignoring emails and specific questions. A service we’re paying through the nose for isn’t working. Letters are taking months to be delivered and arriving way past any cut-off date for any action required. We’ve had to pay to see a private dentist because our NHS is broken.

It’s all gross incompetence. People just don’t seem to care any more, and it’s driving me nuts. I just feel like shutting everything down and hiding under a quilt, doing what the hell I like. Because that currently seems to be what everyone else we’re paying is doing. It’s not good for my blood pressure, and it’s not good for my wellbeing.

Needless to say, I didn’t get through very much work yesterday at all. I did transfer the finances across from savings to the two monthly accounts (the standing orders account and the shopping, etc, account). I also made the first 4-day week of April a holiday, as it’s Easter week.

In the end, though, I decided to turn to next month in the hope that things might start to improve.

Hello, March!

Here, then, is the plan for March:

• new month wordcount & progress spreadsheets for March
• THE SECRET OF WHITEHORSE FARM
• produce a newsletter
• (week) daily blog post
• weekly tech scan
• weekly backup
• weekly diary work
• proofread naval book
• consolidate proofreader’s, author’s and my amendments for naval book
• return naval book to client
• start editing new Afghanistan book
• Monkey Dust admin just once
• Diane’s gig list admin every Thursday
• write a short story for anthology closing 31 March
• write a short story for 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS
• finances for April
• take dog to vet
• monthly schedule planning for April
• start work on annual tax return
• go away for big birthday
• celebrate big birthday
• start Easter break

I’ve deliberately missed off WORDS WORTH READING ISSUE 1, but it’s still on TickTick, just in case…Oh, and we have SNOW forecast for today and Monday…I wonder if I can do a snow dance to make it snow on the following Saturday too…I ordered snow last year for my birthday and it arrived bang on time.

How’s your March looking?