Thursday 27 August 2026: Is it raining yet?

So the rain we were warned would arrive by 8am yesterday and cause flash flooding everywhere never arrived. Indeed, by 8am it had even disappeared off the weather forecast. At the time of writing, it had been pushed right back to ‘Thursday morning’. I’ll be keeping my nose pressed to the window looking for it, I can tell you.

I was up on time yesterday, feeding the dog, putting washing through, etc. Before he went to work the poet did a few odd jobs as well. He replaced three of the pull-switch cords, 2 in the bathroom (one for the light, one for the vent) and one in the kitchen (the light) because the ones we inherited were disgusting. We’ve been washing our hands every time we used them!

I finalised yesterday’s blog post once the poet had gone to work, chose the picture, and shared it everywhere. And I caught up a bit on the DRM thing, only reading this time not engaging. Then I did a bit of clearing out of my downloads on the computer, as it’s taking me ages to find images I’ve downloaded to illustrate the blog posts.

One of the books I’d published the day before had a small error in it on the copyright page, and while I caught it in time for Kobo, Google Books and D2D, I had to wait for the KDP version to be approved before I could upload a new interior. I’m hoping this is the kind of error I catch once and never do again, but you never know. I have to stop rushing.

I faffed and fannied around for a bit, trying to get going. I put the washload in the tumble dryer and put another load through. There was still no sign of the promised rain, but these were the bathroom towels and they dry so much nicer in the tumbler than they do on the line. I hate it when they go hard and scratchy on the line and would love to know what the trick is. I don’t mind putting tea towels and kitchen towels on the line, but I do like a soft and fluffy bath towel.

I had some play time with the dog, but had to bring him in several times as he was shouting at the neighbours and being a general nuisance, I brought the first lot of towels in and folded them up, and I put another load of towels through.

It took me a while to get into the republishing zone as I tried to remember where in the rhythm I’d interrupted myself the day before. I had to refresh my memory and work my way through the order of work. But I got there in the end and I republished the next 2 books in the series, Wordsworth Shorts 13 and 14. I started the next one but ran out of time so left that one dangling as well.

The poet came home from work, applied a top dressing to the lawn at the front of the house, turned the sprinklers on, and took the dog for his walk. For a person who claims not to like gardening, he’s done a lot of research into this grass lark. Last week he applied a 4-in-1 moss killer/nourishment treatment. At the weekend he scarified it. On Monday he re-seeded it. And yesterday he applied the top dressing of top soil. It is starting to green-up now in places, but it’s been neglected for a long time and, of course we’ve been parking skips and cars on it during the summer.

Today I have the next 2 books to republish, the next 6 covers to make, and, if I get into a good rhythm, the next 6 books to republish as well. The poet has his annual checkup at the hospital following his nose surgery during the pandemic. They told him the polyps would be back within a year. So far, so good – almost 5 years on.

Hopefully it will also be raining by now. We shall see.

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