Wednesday 20 May 2026: Wet dog

Yesterday was a good day. I’d submitted yesterday’s job the day before, and had the day before’s job to do yesterday. Which took the heat off a bit.

I had my cup of tea while I started to read a book I’ve had for ages on yoga for healing back pain. The book is full of 10-minute exercises that will help strengthen the back. I used to do one of the sequences before, but without a yogi there to tell me if I’m doing it right or not, and with no mirror for me to check on myself, I wasn’t sure how much use it was.

When we move to the new house, we may install a wall of mirror tiles in the office so I can watch videos on the computer and make sure I’m in the right position in the mirror. It’s a way off yet, though, as we have to build the poet a studio first to free up some space in the office. But forewarned is forearmed and all that, and I wanted to see if I could give over one day’s exercise slot to yoga.

I cancelled the LazyFit subscription as doing the same exercises day in, day out bores me rigid. I’d sooner do, say, 15 minutes of tai chi one day, aerobics another day, yoga another day, pilates another day and maybe indoor walking another. This on top of the 15 minutes of leg and core strength work I’m already doing and the daily dog walk, which is around a mile on weekdays and now up to 2 miles at the weekend.

There is a proper pilates studio not far from the new house, maybe a 10 or 15 minute drive. And they do various keep fit or Zumba or dance fit in the two village halls. My introduction to Hatha yoga was in a village hall led by a properly qualified yogi, and I did 2 nights of aerobics in 2 other village halls at the same time. But that was a long time ago, not long after I moved to Yorkshire in the first place.

The yoga book has been looking at me for months. So I finally picked it up and started to browse.

I went to empty the dishwasher, but it hadn’t been turned on the night before. Or it had and it hadn’t worked. This has happened a few times where both of us have turned it on at night but the programme hasn’t run for some reason. It’s probably on its way out, but it won’t be our problem for much longer. We have a much better dishwasher sitting in the garage, but we may not be able to incorporate it into the new kitchen as we’re going integral with the appliances to save space.

I turned the dishwasher on and checked a few times that it had (a) started, and (b) kept going. The dishwasher tablet was still in the compartment after all, so the intention was there. It was peeing down with rain and I didn’t fancy putting any washing through then having it hanging around the house. So I did a quick garden patrol and fed the birds and went into my exercise session early.

I couldn’t go out anywhere again because my new passport was apparently arriving, some time between 11:05am and 2:10pm. So instead of taking the dog out, I went and sat in the living room at 11am with my tablet to do some work while I kept an eye out for the postman, settling in for a couple of hours.

The postman arrived at about 11:15am, and he didn’t even ring the door bell or knock the door. He just took a picture of it going into the letterbox and pushed it through. I got to it before the dog did, fortunately, and spent the next few minutes admiring it as it’s completely different to my old EU passport that had gone off to have its corner cut off.

Once he’d been I came into the office and finalised and posted yesterday’s blog post. Then, after breakfast, I settled down to watch this week’s video for the WMG workshop on making a living with novels. When that had finished, I started to get ready to take the dog out. We’d had showers all morning and it looked like there was a bit of a break. So I got us both ready but put a woolly hat on because it looked a bit windy.

As I opened the front door, the heavens opened and the rain came down in horizontal sheets. That proper stuff that just falls out of the sky and lands on the ground making a giant puddle. For the first time ever, the dog slammed his brakes on and pulled back into the shelter of the porch, looking up at the rain in absolute disgust. And then fear as it got heavier and harder. He hid behind me for a bit, then tried to get back into the house. But he got really brave during a bit of a lull and went for it, cautiously pulling me out into the shower.

About a third of the way round he slammed his anchors on again, dug his heels in and refused to budge. So I had to drag him for a few yards. Again, this is the first time he’s ever done that and he never minds going in the garden in the rain. It was actually quite amusing to watch him try and process what was happening, and he was very relieved to get back home. I put 2 towels on the floor so he could dry himself and he went nuts, having proper zoomies in between rolling around on the towels.

So funny, bless him.

We dried off, I got changed into fresh clothes, and went back to my desk, where I started today’s blog post as well as the plan for the rest of the month.

I was able to tick off the project I’d delivered Monday night and mark it as complete, which is just as satisfying as finishing and submitting the job in the first place. I hadn’t heard from the proofreading/rewriting client, so I emailed him again reminding him to fund the job so I could be paid for what I’d done. If he ghosts me, I’ll take the hit, as it was a silly mistake of my own to start the work before the money was in the holding account.

The client whose job I sent back Monday wrote back thanking me. The author had also approved the pdfs, so that means it could still be published in May, which is what we were aiming at. 

And then I settled back down to that planning work for the rest of the month. The next proofreading job is due to be published in July, so we still have time for that one. The next one is September, but I haven’t had the proofs back for that one yet. The only other one is one that’s already so late the client would rather I concentrate on those we could still get out on time. So I’ll do the July one this week, and that one next week if the September one still isn’t back.

The republishing work has been pushed back as well. I’ll get back to that next Tuesday, as next Monday is our late spring bank holiday (previously Whit Monday). So far I’ve republished Wordsworth Shorts 1 – 6, all of which are now published. I’ll get back to it next week from WS 07 onwards.

This work is tentatively continuing throughout June, along with the last of the WMG workshop videos and the client edit that doesn’t yet have a publication date. But otherwise, I’m taking June off.

With the planning work complete and today’s blog finished, I closed everything down and took a notebook into the living room for a couple of hours while the poet was at band practice.