I mean, how is it already the 7th of October? It’s blummin ridiculous.
Friday
So, what happened on Friday? Well, I had some regular weekly tasks, which I did: Weekly finances, whereby I update my books each week now, rather than save it up for a day when my tax return is almost due. And Weekly backup, whereby I back up my working directory to a portable hard drive each week.
I also had a housework half-hour and a garden half-hour. And I worked through the editing job, slowly and carefully transferring hard copy edits to the screen. Grand-doggy #1 had come to stay overnight, and he went home again. And I revived the competitions half hour, but I had a few weeks to catch up on.
I’d already scheduled a Fiction Friday short story on Patreon on Thursday night, after remembering it, and that auto-posted well enough.
Saturday
I won 2 tickets to attend the Grand Designs live show at the NEC in Solihull, and Saturday was the day we chose to go. We were up early enough to get there just in time for our midday breakfast. I’d already pre-booked and paid for parking, but gosh, was the food expensive. We had 2 inferior sandwiches, a hot drink, a cold drink, and 2 lemon drizzle cakes, and it came to more than £30 (apx. $40). And we decided we’d get our next meal on the way home.
We did spy Kevin McCloud (the Grand Designs presenter) a couple of times as he made his way between live platforms, but our biggest takeaway was the garden rooms and how much value for money they seem to be.
After 2 hours of walking round in circles, we decided to head back home, and on the way we stopped off at the supermarket to do a weekly shop on the hop, aka sans list. We bought a whole chicken too and had time to roast that in time to have some of it for tea.
Sunday
On Sunday, I caught up on editing. We were up early because a gardener was coming to look at the work we have for him. This time I’m determined to have it tidied enough for me to keep on top of at least the little jobs in the week. Bigger jobs will be saved for weekends.
While I worked, the poet went out and picked up a few things from the shops. And we had the rest of the chicken for dinner.
I had quite a few tech issues, which slowed me right down. First of all LibreOffice didn’t want to do anything I wanted it to do, so I updated that, and wished I’d gone for an earlier version instead as the latest version is bound to still have bugs. Then the Mac wasn’t behaving, so I had to update that. And then I tried to change the colours on the screen because I was getting eye strain, and nothing wanted to be the colour I wanted it to be.
Monday
We struggled to get up on Monday, but we made it. Sadly, the housework and garden half-hours went out the window, but everything else was done. I forgot to post yesterday’s publication on Instagram. The poet headed off on *another* overnight trip, this time in the midlands.
And I edited all day. LibreOffice Writer was annoying me with little formatting tags attached to the cursor, which reminded me that when I went in at the top and changed everything to British English and everything to the same font, I should have just ‘accepted’ those changes before actually doing anything more.
So a big bulk of the day was taken up with me accepting the formatting changes without accepting editing changes already made. I have to keep a relatively accurate tracked changes document as well as the clean one, but I shall certainly remember this for the next job.
I put a jacket potato in the oven and had that with butter and grated cheese for my tea, followed by strawberries on a meringue nest with toffee yoghurt. Nom. I turned the computer off at 7pm and called it a day because my eyes and my bones were tired.
Today
I have a physio appointment today, to try and sort out my spondylosis/spondylitis in my back. I think I need to strengthen my core for that, but I also need to strengthen my ankles and thighs so I can keep moving. I don’t think my weight is helping anything, but if I can’t move then, beyond starving myself, there’s nothing I can do about it.
Call me a bluff old cynic, but I refuse to be pumped full of a drug that is only now showing its side effects. Test it properly first, people.
Good luck on your appointments. Tech issues are so annoying.
It never ceases to amaze me how bad and overpriced food at garden shows is. Here they have the opportunity to bring in people who use vegetables, herbs, edible flowers and make something both beautiful and tasty. Instead, they bring in the low end of street fair vendors with icky food. Urgh.
When a group of us went up to Boston for the show from Cape, we would duck out and go to a local pub for meals. Cheaper and better!
This was a so-called ‘artisan’ café, but the only thing artisan about it was the price. Every sandwich had something smeared on it, and the best Ian could find for both of us had a vile tomato relish all over it. I ended up giving him my half of the sandwich with the relish on and him giving me his half of the sandwich without the relish. He’s not such a finick as me, but it was repeating on both of us for the rest of the day, and I hadn’t even had any! Unfortunately, there’s nothing else for miles around the NEC. We should have taken a picnic.