I Don’t Like Monday’s

I think I need to look up my horoscope for today and find out why it all went so horribly wrong. There must be some retrograde Mercury thing happening to certain unlucky Virgoans as my communication is up the spout – be it verbal or virtual. Of course, this would be the day of Tight Deadline, Must Be Finished Today On Pain of Death. Of course it is.

Wrong Things

Up at six to beat Three Mobile Broadband’s usual paddy from 10am onwards

The computer system I am uploading to dies from 9 – 11am. This is my prime Internet time, and now it is wasted.

Three Mobile Broadband starts crashing every half hour from midday. Cannot upload any of my work

Decide to pack up and use free wifi at British Library. This is the nearest reliable source of wifi that has plug sockets available, as my lap top needs plug power

Train fare today is £6.50, yesterday it was £4.50. I query why when it is the same journey. Ticket man shrugs and shrugs, and then finally says it is because I am not travelling direct today (as the trains only run direct on weekends) and am using the tube. I was practically purple with rage at this point. My ‘thank you’ was said through gritted teeth.

Buy a bottle of fizzy drink that fizzes all over my hand and down my canvas carrier bag

Get to British Library and there is not a spare plug anywhere in the building.

Share someone’s 4 plug adapter for 10 minutes before I get told off by jobsworth security man as I have moved my table 2 inches to the left and am running a cable across the floor. I get the cable; I don’t get the tiny table movement. Damn the man.

Work on battery power. Cannot access job website, password’s not working

Manage one section when get new password from tech bloke, and then battery on lap top dies

Cruise British Library desperate for a plug socket, trailing power cable

Find one, but it means sitting on cold marble floor like a looney

Internet falls over half hour later

I give up, and decide to go back home

Get home and Internet works, for an hour only

Make boiled eggs in anger for tea

Internet then crashes at 20 minute intervals until 8.30pm

Right Things

Internet occasionally worked

Kind man at British Library let me share his 4 plug adapter

Found a plug socket of my very own

Deadline extended for me until midnight

My boiled eggs were done to perfection

My mum knows not to talk to me when I am in a snit

I read my ‘Bedknob and Broomstick’ book on the tube

I finally finished my work by 10pm, so I can crash out in bed

A moose loose about this hoose

There has been a strange rustling and scurrying noise emitting from a little-used cupboard in the kitchen. I have noticed the cats are often to be found sitting beside this cupboard with their ears perked. Houston, I said (as I like to call my mum), I think we have a problem.

The screech from the kitchen this morning confirmed it. My mum burst into my room, panting, and said she had seen a mouse. Various sizes were given (size of a finger-nail to half a hand, depending on where in the story she was) and various threats were made to our furry uninvited guests. I pointed out we have nothing to fear, as we live with two cats who are fearsome mice hunters. At least, when they can be bothered and haven’t got some top-level snoozing to get in first.

I am now convinced I can hear plotting mouse activity behind every room in the house. I have taken to singing loudly every time I walk in a room so as to give them time to duck out of sight. It’s the scuttling I don’t like, the quick scampering. It gives me the heebie jeebies.

So here I am, working from home in Mouse Central. And what are my fearsome furry warriors doing? Sleeping. I presume this is to raise energy for the final push this evening, she says, glancing nervously over her shoulder.

Blow me Internet down, sport

Whenever the wind blows, my Internet falls over. So I apologise for not updating for over a whole week – it has been slightly gusty outside the window. Slightly gusty is Three Mobile Broadband code for ‘quick, stop working’. So while it stops, I continue – working from home this week, so no mystery city visits. The best thing about working from home is that you are in your little world, cat on lap, own coffee, and own sneaky biscuit. The worst thing about working from home is that you don’t leave your little world, need extra long arms to work around the cat on your lap, no Starbucks, and the biscuits are usually the ones me and mum rejected now forlorn and soft at the bottom of the barrel.

The cat on my lap is called Ginger, as…um… well, I think you can guess. He likes to keep me alert and active while home-working by digging his claws into my leg at regular intervals. This would be fine if it was my light-pawed Tabby-girl, but Ginger’s second name is Mr Big Paws. Ouch is all I say about that, and I know I could push him off but he purrs away happily and so I leave him slowly turning my thigh into a pin cushion.

Book stuff – well, I haven’t done much over the last week or so. My lovely author friend T got in touch, and I am sending her the first three chapters to look through – it will be so great to get her opinion! So I am hopeful to do that at some stage this week, but I did a very light edit on the beginning pages so I have to read that through to see if it all still makes sense. Sometimes I dive in the middle of chapters and add a word, only to realise that I repeat the same word a paragraph backwards. It’s like my brain knows that word should be there, and forgets to read (yes my brain forgets to read, it’s all its fault) what I had written previously. In the real edit I am still swooshing away at chapters 4 – 7. There is, as ever, a long way to go.

And now I am determined to go for a walk before starting my day, and get a feel for life outside the window. I am going to stride into the brave new world and get a posh coffee.

Chocolate – fuel of freelancers

‘Why are we going down the home-baking aisle?’ asked John, as I headed off past the eggs with a determined glint in my eye yesterday evening.

‘I might do some… um… baking... cooking things,’ I replied distractedly, scanning the shelves before my heart lit up. There.

‘Baking?’ John eyed me warily. ‘Remember the cheesecake?’

‘This is different,’ I informed him, and quickly put the little bag of chocolate-y goodness in the trolley. As indeed it was different. I was not going to cook and destroy these little chips of chocolate, but instead pour them down my throat as a delicious afternoon snack.

Don’t look at me like that! I only had a carrot for lunch – honest!

There is nothing that sharpens the concentration more than a nice chunk of chocolate in the afternoon, and at the moment milk chocolate chips are succeeding nicely on all fronts – substantial, satisfying, and calorie-free – well, at least the packet doesn’t mention any. Hoorah.

And now back to it… the one thing I find working from home is that you get none of that sensation of an upcoming well-earned day off – eg a bank holiday. I do miss that feeling – to me every day is a potential work day, and it is so easy to sidle into the spare room / office to switch on and start up again be it midnight, or Sunday mornings. ‘Turn me on,’ the computer seems to silently say. ‘You can play music and films on me – I can be ever so fun!’ It has me over a barrel, really.