Tuesday didn’t start as well as Monday. I was late getting up and then late getting to my desk. But once there, I did crack on.
The first job I did was to book 2 nights of our next holiday: the one going and the one coming back. We’re going to North Devon for 5 nights to scatter my parents’ ashes. The poet had already tried several times to book the 5 nights in Devon, but the website kept crashing on him. He had to send an email and the owner came back to him, telling him how to get around the crashes. It crashed him out once more, but then it all worked. It only took him 2 days.
Once that was sorted, we knew which dates to book going down and coming back. We could do North Devon in a day, but all we need is some unexpected traffic and we’d likely miss the check-in time. On some of these sites, if you miss check-in, you can’t get in and have to park outside somewhere. So we try and book somewhere on the way there and on the way back to (a) break the journey, and (b) give us a bit more leeway.
The site we’re going to in Hereford is one we discovered last year. We said it’d make a great stopover point then, but next time we might have a few days there as there’s a bus right outside that goes into Hereford one way and Ledbury the other. The site we’re going to in Croyde, North Devon, is one we don’t know, but it’s close to the beach where we decided to try and do the deed.
So I booked both the outgoing and the returning dates in Hereford, and then I sent an email to my brother and my sister, letting them know when we’re going down. I don’t expect them to be able to make it as my brother lives in Canada and Ireland and my sister travels a lot and she may be leading a walking holiday that week anyway. But if they can, that would be great!
Our next trip after this one is probably going to be a long weekend in Stratford upon Avon as a business I used to work for back in the 1990s is having another of their reunions and now I’m in touch with them all again, we were invited to join them. Most of them are already retired now, early. But some of us still work. The poet and I will be taking the Thursday and the Friday off work to meet up with them, then spending the rest of the weekend in Shakespeare country, not far from my own original stomping ground. I believe we’re having a boat ride and a barbecue.
This business was a very small team within the larger National Grid and we always used to have social events throughout the year. We did a lot of work with EDF (Électricité de France) in France, and we met up with them once a year for a cricket game and a jolly. One year they were the hosts, the next year we were the hosts. Our small team in Coventry used to meet up at each other’s houses too, or we’d go to the theatre or out for a meal, and if they could, our 2 colleagues down in Kent and their wives would join us, or we’d go down there.
It’s been almost 30 years since I saw any of them. It will be interesting, and very nice.
My next job was Week 4 of the writing with depth workshop revision. I watched the videos, highlighted the notes in my exercise book that I’d still like to remember, and I looked at the assignment, number 4.
Then I finished writing yesterday’s blog, posted it, and started today’s. I had a message from Jetpack saying yesterday’s blog didn’t auto-post to BlueSky, so I went and shared it there. But, more worrying, the email pointed me to a help page that said auto-post is only available for Block Editor. I use Classic Editor still. I wonder if they’re finally phasing that out…I hope not.
I had to make a couple of posters next for Monkey Dust, as the next gig is almost upon us and a later one in the year was asking us for posters. There’s another gig, after the next one, who have already created an event on Facebook. That’ll teach me, taking a week off…
And yes, I did keep to my Meta boycott last week. But when I went back to FB in particular on Monday, I couldn’t believe how saccharine it all seems to be. Of course, it probably hasn’t changed and I’d probably de-sensitised myself to it, or whatever it is they call it. But after a whole week off, I went back and truly wondered what all the fuss was about. And on Tuesday, my feed was Ad City anyway.
I can’t see me going back to using it as much as I did. I’ll use it for Monkey Dust, and I’ll keep using the MD Instagram too. But I’m also contemplating deleting my Instagram completely. I only went on it because the poet was sharing all of his wonderful photography on there and I wanted to help share it. But then he got hacked, by one of those apparently sexy women who must have done it for his followers.
The poet didn’t notice, he ignored all of the Meta warnings saying his account had been hijacked (because, you know, phishing emails), and his account was closed down. He doesn’t miss it, and he still has all of his pictures. Even so, I felt a bit violated on his behalf.
Anyway, I created the *next* gig on Facebook, added the gig to Diane’s Gig List, and shared the poster I’d just created.
My final job of the day was more novella work, more timeline work.
What a productive day! And the trips sound wonderful. Very smart to build in extra days, so you’re not pressed for time.
I kept forgetting IG was part of Meta, but I stayed off FB & Threads. Didn’t miss Threads at all, and I haven’t been much on FB for months. There are some local things that only post there, so I have notifications set up, but I’m not posting there anymore. Every time I open it, my feed is a hellscape, no matter how much blocking I do.
IG is so much part of the work life for the artists community here, it will be at least the end of the year before I could remove myself from there. I might keep that as my one Meta.
The extra days on either side are part of the holiday too. If we can, we’ll spend longer in a place. But this time, we want to get to where we’re going so we can stay there for a few days.