Friday 27 February 2026: Bye, bye, Hawley 💙

Gosh, yesterday was busy. I thought Tuesday and Wednesday had been busy, but along came Thursday, saying, ‘hold my coat!’

The day started with the poet opening his presents and cards. Then the rest of the entire morning was taken up getting the spaniel all packed up and ready to go back to his original human later today. 

The dog’s blankets were already washed and dried, so those went into his bag. His towels went through the washing machine and the tumble dryer, and those went into his bag. I had to get a search party out for his doggy clothes… (we don’t dress our dogs…) and put those in his bag. I had to go round and collect up all of his toys and put them in a new toy bag we’ve bought him as the puppy already wrecked his original one. Then there was all of his grooming equipment I had to locate and pack, plus his shampoos and his medicines…

I put a new liner in the wheelie bin, emptied all the bins, including the recycling bin, and put new liners in both office bins and in the dog poo bin. Emptying the bins is always a much bigger job than it sounds.

I stripped the bed, put more washing through the washing machine and the tumble dryer, and I hung up what couldn’t go in the dryer. 

We had a bit of packing of our own to do as the poet wants to go to Scarborough for the weekend for his birthday in the campervan. Not even the abysmal weather is going to put him off, apparently. So we had to organise the logistics of taking the spaniel back around getting to the site on time, which meant a few emails going back and forth and a couple crossing due to computer time lags.

The email I’ve kind of been expecting from our landlords offering us first refusal to buy our current bungalow came in, and after discussing that, we agreed we’d be interested to know what kind of price they’re looking at and if it’s worth us considering this one instead of the one we’ve seen elsewhere. I sent back the reply and we await their response. I’ve said before that everything happens for a reason, and this could be one of those times.

However, I’m glad I pre-empted the possibility they might be thinking of selling up this year, with the government bringing in new laws to protect private tenants, putting income tax on rental income, and increasing local taxes on rented accommodation too, etc. We’ve managed to emotionally detach ourselves from the house, which means we can consider all options with impartiality. We suspect they may want more than the house is worth as it’s on a sizeable chunk of land in a desirable, premium location. 

I hopped onto Medium to update it with the last 2 blog posts, but Medium didn’t want to play. It kept throwing me out and making me tick a box to prove I’m human before going to an error message screen. I switched from DuckDuckGo to Firefox and had absolutely no issues whatsoever. The issue must be between Medium and DuckDuckGo, which also means Medium doesn’t like not being able to track our online behaviour, which in turn is interesting to know. 

One of the poet’s birthday presents was a computer gadget thing off his mother for his studio and he wanted to get that all set up, so I had to brace myself for a bombardment of questions I couldn’t answer as it’s not something I’ve ever used. 

I did a bit of admin with the NetGalley books to review. I downloaded the latest books from there, converted them to epub files, uploaded them to Google Play Books, and side-loaded them to my Kobo. A different publisher sent me a book last week or the week before, and I couldn’t send it to my Kobo from my NetGalley shelf. So I was all prepared to tell them that unfortunately I wouldn’t be reviewing their book because I couldn’t read it on my Kobo. But it turned out to convert just fine. 

Finally I turned to the diary for the next couple of months. 

I’ve removed the dates from all of the stories apart from a novella length story I want to write for an open call for submissions. 

I removed the dates from the next project management book. 

I tried to get some idea of dates from the Upwork client, but as he’s not yet addressed that, I removed all the dates from his next book. I can’t keep weeks free for a book that isn’t ready yet. Especially when I have other things I could and should be doing.

The jobs are all still there, they just don’t have due dates on them.

The paid work still takes priority. Next priority is my study/personal development. The short story assignments give me more than enough fodder, and the stories are a healthy length too.

The next bookazine is in the diary for April publication because there’s the final part of Catch the Rainbow to go in there. Fortunately, everything is all written for that one. And then the bookazine will go on hold until possibly next January. 

The newsletter goes out next week. That too will be suspended after this next issue. I’ll say January, but if I get around to that sooner, then I will. 

I quickly rattled off the rest of today’s blog post but I had to stop work then because we had to get ready to go out. I didn’t have time to post it last night. It will be the first job today.

We say bye, bye to Hawley today. We’ve loved having him, but he’s going back to his mammy.

Have a great weekend!

This post appears on Words Worth Writing, Medium and Patreon.