I had a good and steady day on Friday, gradually plodding through each of my chores and tasks, ticking them off as I went. But once all the housework stuff was done, the only work-work I did was the proofreading job. Or the rewriting job, actually.
By the end of the day I was delighted to have the client job in a state to send back to the client, and the week finished about half an hour earlier than scheduled. Of course, I could have written and scheduled today’s blog post in that 30 minutes, but my brain was tired and I just wanted to go and sit in a comfy chair and chill.
We had a gammon steak with pineapple slices on for tea, with a jacket potato and baked beans. I didn’t have a pudding prepared, so we had tinned apricots with home made ice cream, juice, flakes, wafers and coloured bits – just like a sundae with apricots at the bottom. And we binge-watched the first few episodes of Monsieur Spade.
On Saturday we both went to the butcher, then I went to the supermarket to do our weekly shop and the poet cut the back lawn again. After we’d eaten, we went to have a look at the new house and we took the dog for a walk. Or we started to. We weren’t bothered that it was raining, but the poet had been emptying more stuff from the garage, and he’d started on the shed, but at some point he pulled his back and he could hardly walk.
We did take a walking stick with us to see if that helped, but his back was hurting more and more the farther we walked, so we turned around and went back. On the way home we dropped in at the mother-in-law’s, taking her some pork dripping we’d bought for her from the butcher.
We had the poet’s favourite for tea – and it really is his favourite: hot dogs with mustard for him and ketchup for me. We call Saturday ‘starvation day’ because we get to eat something that isn’t too challenging but that still fills us up satisfactorily. For pudding we had fresh strawberries with Greek yoghurt and honey. And on Saturday night we finished binge-watching Monsieur Spade.
I found out that a former friend had died before Christmas. I say ‘former’ for lots of reasons, and I’m certainly not going to go into detail here. I was shocked, but aside from her leaving two young women without their mother and a very nice man without his wife, there are no tears shed on my part.
On Sunday the poet’s back was reacting well to painkillers and in the morning he took another load to the tip. He and the manager there are almost on first name terms now, as the chap has been relieving the poet of all his spare fishing gear and some other things as well.
Right after breakfast we headed off to Hatfield Moor, one of our old stomping grounds when we lived over that way before. Hatfield Moor will likely be our dog-walk local after we move house. We took the campervan, to give it a run, and we had a picnic in the van at the end of our walk. Alfie thought it was ace, but he thinks everywhere we go is ace.
He’s settling in the back of the campervan now, resting his elbows on a strategically-placed cushion so he can sit between us without quite getting into the front, looking out of all these wonderful windows. Sometimes he gets to stick his head out of the driver’s window too. Best thing ever! He is strapped in, by the way, so no danger of him falling out of the window or distracting the poet too much while he’s driving.
When we got home there was an email waiting for me from the proofreading client, saying he won’t be able to look at the first 2 books until much later in the year as he wants to finish the entire series first. That’s perfectly understandable, especially if he’s on a roll as well. But I made a right rookie error.
He hadn’t funded the job before I did it…
Which doesn’t give me a leg to stand on if he decides not to pay.
I don’t believe for one minute that he will take that route. He’s a good client on that platform with a good track record and good reviews, and I’ve worked with him before. But I really should know better, and I did know better when I was working on there every day. I sent him a quick reply asking him to fund the job so I can request payment for work already done. In future, I’m going to start asking for 50% up front, not just from him but from anyone else I decide to work for.
For tea we had a roast beef dinner with Jersey royal potatoes, green beans and broccoli, and we watched Saturday’s Britain’s Got Talent followed by the Jodie Foster 2007 film The Brave One.
Yes, regular payment for work done matters!
Hope the poet’s back is much better, and it sounds like you had a good weekend, with yummy food.
Yes, it’s getting better slowly, thank you. But he’s still guarding it, in case he moves to quick and sets it back again.