On Friday the poet cut the grass because I was already doing a rain dance for the weekend. It’s true, I had seen a blanket forecast for the entire UK suggesting an 80% chance of rain on Saturday and a 90% chance of rain on Sunday, but that particular weather forecast has never been very accurate before, so with tongue firmly in cheek I didn’t hold my breath.
I finished work a whole 2 hours early on Friday too, which is always nice. And no, I didn’t make a start on any of this week’s work because then I wouldn’t have felt like I’d finished a whole 2 hours early for a change.
It was our wedding anniversary and we’d already decided on a takeaway for tea. We opted for Chinese because that usually lasts us for 2 days and it would be nice not to have to cook anything for Saturday tea either.
Saturday morning we were up relatively early and away to the butcher’s for our meat for the week. We puppy-proofed the house and left him on his own for the second time every for less than half an hour. We bought turkey steaks for Sunday dinner, diced pork for later in the week, and back bacon for a quiche on Friday.
Back home we were relatively impressed with the dog. He’d only found and destroyed one roll of poo bags I’d inadvertently left on a windowsill, the only thing I left within his reach and he found it. But actually, he hadn’t had time to completely destroy the entire roll, so we were able to rescue quite a lot of it.
We had our midday breakfast, then I went out to do the rest of the shopping while the poet stayed home with the dog. I got back, we put it away, had our afternoon meal, then took the dog out for a walk around one of the local lakes. It’s a lake we go to at least once a week now. And so far, the weather was glorious, although we did see on the news that the south-west of the country had ‘got it’.
We were up early again on Sunday and this time, once we’d had our morning drinks, we headed out to a reservoir that used to be one of our local regular walks, Scout Dike. The sky had clouded over but, so far, the weather was holding. We arrived at Scout Dike about 45 minutes later and because we were early we managed to get a parking space. We’ve tried to walk this dike a few times with Alfie, but we’ve never been able to park. Plus, there’s a height restriction, so if we’ve been in the campervan, we’ve not been able to get in.
On the drive over it started to spit with rain. By the time we were putting our coats and boots on, it was pouring. We decided on walking boots because we knew it would be a wet one. What we didn’t expect was the kind of rain that soaks you all the way through to the bone. We both had raincoats on, but mine soaked all the way through. We were both wearing jeans too, and those were completely drenched within seconds, literally, thanks to rivers of rain falling off the car by now onto where we were putting our boots on.
The dog thoroughly enjoyed it and didn’t care a bit that he was getting soaked. He stopped to have a shake every few minutes, and he was probably getting a bit tired by the end of it (we’re gradually increasing the length of these walks as we do them). But he thought it was great.
We’d forgotten to put towels in the car for us to dry ourselves on, but there was a clean, dry dog towel in the boot that we used before the dog did. We were supposed to be going straight to the mother-in-laws, but we were so wet we went home first and got changed into dry clothes. Even with the car seat heaters on and the car heater blowing hot air on us all the way home, we were still very wet when we got there.
The mother-in-law had asked us to bring her some pork dripping from the butcher and some dog chews she could give to the dog as she’d been unable to find any in the supermarket. We were starving hungry by the time we got there, and she was going out for her Sunday dinner, so after about half an hour, we headed home again.
After we’d eaten we rescued an injured collared dove from the garden. He’d been visiting for a few days with a broken wing, but with all the rain now, he was completely water-logged and couldn’t get away from the dog. Rather than traumatise him, we caught him and took him to an animal sanctuary about 10 minutes away. The lady said she’d have the wing amputated and he could live in her garden with about 30 other birds she’s rescued. We suspect he may have been euthanised, though, which is fine if that’s the best thing for him, and at least we didn’t have to do it and he didn’t suffer any longer than necessary. However, hopefully he had the op and he’s fine.
We started to watch the recent remake of A Woman of Substance on Sunday night, but I was disappointed with the opening scenes as it looked like AI. I mean, how hard is it to get stock footage of a 1970s New York traffic jam? I obviously expect too much, though, because the other NY scenes were filmed in Liverpool, England! Low budget or what? Very disappointing, but not as disappointing as them writing out a main character (Emma’s older brother, Winston) and renaming another important character (Blackie O’Neill).
Monday was a bank holiday and we planned to do absolutely nothing, diddley squat. The poet ended up clearing a shelf unit in the garage, taking some rubbish to the tip, and baking 2 loaves of bread the proper way, i.e. not in the bread machine, which is very useful if we’re pushed for time but the bread is much, much nicer made in the oven. And the dog had a nice, local walk for a change, which still kept him happy.
Tuesday, we both slept in. His alarm went off and he turned it off instead of snoozing it, and my alarm had been turned off on Friday to make sure it didn’t wake us up on Monday. So we didn’t have that for backup either. Fortunately, he was working locally and off he went.
My reading hour was spent catching up on social media. My housework hour was spent feeding the dog, feeding the birds, putting some washing through, emptying the dishwasher. The editing job I sent to the author 2 weeks ago came back with the author’s changes, acceptances, and amendments. I had a quick look at that. My publishing hour seems to have disappeared into a dark hole, probably as a result of getting up late. The dog went for a quick walk, and when we got back, I started today’s blog post.
When we got back I was supposed to be republishing the next short story in the series but I decided to see instead if the workshop I was joining this week was live yet. It was, and so I watched the first week’s worth of videos for that, which are the same as those in the archived workshop. We get to hand in assignments when it’s a live workshop, so I’ll be interested to see if they record a new response video for the assignments or if they use the ones on archive. I still get the accountability, to hand something in by a specific time, and I still get feedback on the assignment.
Next, I collected the assets for a proofreading job I’m starting this week, and I responded to the author who sent his edited file back for the client edit I’m in the middle of. Then I made a start on this week’s assignment for the live workshop, and oh, did I fall down a big hole then. I’m not going to go into huge detail as it’s part of the workshop, but I ended up going back to 2021 to find the old ghostwritten novels I wrote back then, and, of course, I’ve not only changed computer since then, I’ve also changed from PC to Mac, and what should have been a very quick job ended up taking the rest of the day.
Ah well, there’s always today…
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Busy weekend, but a good one. Poor little bird.
Lucky you, bank holiday Monday!
We get another one at the end of the month as well!