Wednesday 15 April 2026: Surprise visit

After I finished for the day on Monday, and after tea, we changed the bed. The reason this is even being noted is because we swapped out the brushed cotton winter bedding for the cool cotton summer bedding. For most of the country, it’s a huge sigh of relief that summer is on the way. For me it’s just cooler nights. I actually prefer the winter months. When it gets too warm then the winter quilt (duvet) will be changed for the summer one. But for a few weeks we have the summer bedding on the winter quilt.

We struggled again getting up on Tuesday and we don’t know why. The puppy is sleeping through longer and more often, and when he does wake us we hardly open our eyes, doing everything required on auto-pilot. My skin is so much better, so it’s not itching. We’re going to bed at a decent time, so it isn’t that. It has been a bit warm and it could just be age. But on Tuesday morning I think I traced it back to the clocks going forward.

When the poet has to be at a place by a certain time, he has no problem getting up. He’s out and off moments after the alarm. Sometimes I get up with him, sometimes I go back to sleep. Often, if I go back to sleep I end up waking late. But sometimes I wake up with my own alarm. On Tuesday morning my brainwave was just to move my entire schedule along by one hour.

As I started finishing my day at 6pm instead of 7pm a few months ago, I won’t really be losing out. I’ll just be finishing at 7pm instead of 6pm and I won’t be beating myself up all day for running late. It means my entire morning is personal or household stuff, but it does include a reading half hour still and my daily words.

So over my dirty cuppa I pulled TickTick up on my phone and moved everything along. I was so much less stressed as a result and I think I got more done. I managed to read a few chapters of the current book, which was nice. I’d already fed the dog. I took him for a walk and when we got back I fed the birds.

Saying that, the first thing I did when I hit my desk was yesterday’s blog post, which I hadn’t got around to finishing on Monday. It was mostly written, and it was very short. All I had to do was top and tail it, choose a picture, and post it. And as I’d done it on the day itself, I was able to do the sharing to Medium and to Instagram at the same time.

The book I was reading that I personally thought was complete tosh was finished on Saturday. I couldn’t bring myself to write a formal review, though, as beyond ‘well done finishing a book’, there wasn’t really much else that was positive I could say about it. As I didn’t want to be the cause of someone’s depression and the reason for them troughing through litres of ice cream and packets of biscuits following a poor review, or worse, I just gave it 2 anonymous stars and moved on.

I could have gone into detail as to how the author had not just walked to the story but walked all the way through the entire book. I could have pointed out that the body usually drops before Chapter 7 in a short cosy mystery. I could have joined others in pointing out that every single character was a stereotype. I could have wondered if the story was one the author had had lying around in a drawer for 15 years and it was the only thing they could send to the publisher when asked for another book. And I could have suggested how it occurred to me that it may have been written by AI – horror of horrors.

But this author has entire other series (plural) in a different pen name. The author is very, very successful already. And, as already alluded to, everyone else has pretty much said most of what I would have said.

So that is why we had a shorter than usual blog post on Monday and not a book review, again. Fortunately, it’s one NetGalley somehow forgot they’d sent me so it won’t count as a did/will-not-review. But I was annoyed that the one book I’d bought and paid for (due to NG forgetting they’d sent it to me), and one I was excited about reading, was the one book I absolutely hated.

The book I started reading right after was more like it, and one that made me feel like cosying down and reading it with the curtains closed and a hot drink at my side. Much better.

I updated the reading spreadsheet and added the latest read, created the currently reading graphic in PhotoPea (haven’t worked out how to do it properly in Affinity), and posted it everywhere.

Then it was back to the editing for a few hours. I’m still losing light at the moment, though, so I had to carry it over to the end of this week and moved this week’s job to next week and next week’s job to the week after. I’ll let both clients know. There’s no deadline as such, I just like to keep them in the loop.

Son #1 dropped in for a flying visit, bringing his partner and their dog with him. Alfie and Poppy had lots of fun taking it in turns to chase each other around the garden. Poppy got a bit cross with him a couple of times, but he’s a puppy and he didn’t care, and she didn’t hurt him in any case. That was a nice surprise.

I dropped by here to finish today’s blog post and to actually schedule it. I did my daily words. And I called it a day.

Today I will be kinder to myself as I’ve already moved everything down an hour.

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