Tuesday 30 June 2026: Back on it

Hot on the heels of the house move from hell – or should that be *in* hell? – the poet’s first day back at work was a looooong drive south for a three-day work thing. He was aching, he was bruised, and he was exhausted. So while the three days away might have given him some reprieve, the long drive didn’t. And all he wanted was to be at home doing things that needed doing here.

It won’t be for very much longer, though. Just as soon as we know how much the new house is going to cost us each month he’ll be checking out his pensions, the pensions he can claim earlier than the state pension if he wants to. At the outside it’s less than two years anyway, but there are things we want to do before he gets to that stage, and for that we need the money his wages bring in. His boss is trying to convince him to stay on, but the jury’s still out on that one.

We were all up relatively early and before he went he signed some paperwork for the internet company and emailed it back to them. They want to dig up the front lawn and two paving slabs in order to connect us to the underground network and we’re booked in for the end of July. If they can get it done sooner, though, they will. In the meantime, we’re relying on our phones and the mobile signal, which is better than anywhere else we’ve lived but still not brilliant. (I’m using mine now.)

Since he plumbed in the washing machine, I’ve been doing washing. We had two washing baskets at the old house. Here at Wordsworth Heights we only have room for one. That’s good, it means I’ll be keeping on top of the laundry. But we brought a lot with us that I didn’t have time to do before we left, and of course we’ve been wearing clothes since we got here and changing them every day in the intense heat.

So, once he went, the first thing I did was put on a new wash. It’s bedding so it went on a hot wash, and that meant a long wash. We were using the ‘daily quick’ wash for years, until we realised a proper full wash cleans everything so much better. And I finally went back to washing powder instead of environmentally unfriendly capsules. That also helps with the proper clean, I think, the washing doesn’t smell of perfume, and my skin is so much better. (I said it was the washing detergent all along, but the ‘experts’ wouldn’t have it…)

While that washed, I wrote up yesterday’s blog post. It was over 2,000 words and it took a long time to dredge everything up from memory. I was going to do it as we went along, but the office was the first thing to be ragged down and neither of us knew where our laptops were. Now I’m working on my laptop, camped out on the dining table in the living room. (It’s a lounge/diner.) (And it’s our old round kitchen table as it fits in the space better than the mahoosive expanding oblong table.)

On Sunday evening, we requested for our bond to be returned from the last house. First thing Monday morning, an email came in from the letting agents with our ‘checkout report’. It was a good report (of course it was, but we did expect some come back on the garden as we hadn’t had time to do what we wanted), and they’d be in touch as soon as they’d spoken with the owners.

I fired off a text message to the joiner who said he’d replace all of our internal doors, changing two of the regular doors to bifold doors. And I contacted a painter and decorator, asking him to come and quote for every room in the house but be prepared to do just one room at a time. He’ll be here right after work today.

An email came in from WMG Workshops with the details for a workshop I got with a Kickstarter last year. It goes live on 2 September and lasts for 9 weeks with 8 assignments. It’s the first one to come in after our move and it’s an indie promotion workshop. I went off and enrolled on that, using the coupon code they sent and had a quick look at the start of the archived workshop. I had to drag myself away, reminding myself I have a LOT to do.

While we were off, a new job came in from the editing client, plus two existing jobs that need proofreading and consolidating. I’d sooner do those on the desktop computer than the laptop, but I needed to grab and save the new job. I’d already responded to the client, who had just come back from her own holiday. Yesterday I wanted to grab the files and let her know if I needed the link for the illustrations again.

The file download worked fine, but the file transfer had expired. I made a mental note to let her know just as soon as I’d done everything else I wanted to do.

An email came in from the internet company, acknowledging receipt of the form the poet signed and sent off and confirming we were still on track for our new service.

While we were off I worked out how to delete an old Diane Parkin email address on Rocketmail and ended up doing that by accident. I had 30 days in which to change my mind, but I also planned to use that time to both delete all the unwanted files and folders and download everything I wanted to keep. Rocketmail was part of Yahoo and Yahoo is now limiting our storage to 4Mb. I’m well within that, but thought it was a good opportunity to get rid of the old account. I made a start on that, intending to try and spend 5 minutes each day doing something.

I’m also trying to empty one box or one bag a day, to chip away at the mountain of stuff still jammed in everywhere. Yesterday it was a bag of mugs, which all miraculously survived the move. The mugs were rinsed and stored on a shelf; the bag was added to one of our several bags of bags. Well, one never knows when one might need another bag…

I hung the first washload out, put the next washload in, and started today’s blog post while it was all still fresh. Then I tootled off to catch up on my friends’ blogs. I wanted to do that then switch off the hotspot on my phone as the phone overheats when the hotspot is on.

Another email came in from the letting agents, meanwhile, saying the owners of the house had agreed to us getting our bond back, in full. It was good that they arranged that so quickly and it means it will land in our bank account in five days instead of at least thirty days.

Once I’d caught up, I returned to non-internet related work, and I hung out the second washload. Then I took the dog for a walk and called it a day.

Today will be back to planning. The blog will start appearing on Patreon and Medium again while I formulate something substantial going forward on the former. And the diary is already filling up again.