Tuesday 22 September 2026: Bit tired

I was slow getting started yesterday. I don’t know why. I was a bit tired after the weekend, and having my sleep disturbed three nights on the trot by a niggling back, so perhaps that was it.

I have noticed I’m sliding down my regular armchair of an evening now and constantly having to straighten up. Since we’ve been in this house, I’ve had my morning cuppa in the same chair too, whereas at the old house I’d sit on the settee with the dog in the morning. So I wondered if that was perhaps a contributing factor. So yesterday morning, I sat in my usual seat on the settee, with the dog, and I noticed a difference instantly.

This lounge furniture is past its best and we will be replacing it as part of the lounge renovation, during which we’re also adding built-in cabinetry incorporating a media wall. The walls will be the same white-with-a-hint-of-green as in the bedroom and the inner hall, and the feature wall, aka the chimney breast, will have wallpaper on with a terracotta and green pattern. So the new lounge furniture will be terracotta with terracotta and jade cushions and we’re getting new curtains too.

But we’re just not ready for it yet. If I know that the armchair is contributing to my backache, then at least I can fix it temporarily. It’s just a shame the settee isn’t suitable for us both to sit on as one side of that is sagging now as well.

So I was slow getting started and I hadn’t done yesterday’s blog on Friday, so I had to do that first. Then, while I was in the swing, I started today’s. I put a washload through and when it was ready transferred it to the tumble dryer. And then I started the republishing work for the day.

First of all I went and collected the latest versions of the next ten Wordsworth Shorts, #21 – 30, and collated them in the Scrivener short story master file. I’d already done the covers for the next four but I had to collect the actual stories so I knew I was working on stories that have already been through several proofreading passes and, hence, more likely to have fewer typos and less dated language.

I have standard front and end matter, I just change the title, the blurb and the copyright and picture credit information for each one. The specific copyright and picture credit info then stays with that story now for the rest of its life, through the first collection of Wordsworth Shorts, through any subsequent themed collections, and of course through Words Worth Reading. As I go through this current republishing exercise, I’m making sure I have all the necessary paperwork per story in one place: the Scrivener file.

I was happily rattling through Wordsworth Short #21, Wedding of the Year, when Son #2 and his partner came to visit. He wanted to see how his dad was but they also wanted to see what we’ve done to the house as we forgot the keys last time they met us here, before we moved in. And then he wanted to see inside the campervan again. We ended up sitting in there for ages just chatting and chilling. That always happens whenever we get in the van. We never seem to want to get out of it again.

After they went, it was back to my desk and back to Wedding of the Year. I’d done all the background stuff, now I needed to republish it. And I did. But the day was almost over and the rest of my work was pushed along.

Today I have two books to publish, including one that was pushed along from Monday, a short story to write, and that editing job to finish formatting so I can print it off.

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