A cicada in the light of day

Just noticed that this is the 3,002nd post on this blog. Writing it has become part of life - and curiously good for my sanity.

Best news of the day was that I got an email from Janet saying Ken is safely returned home, which is excellent.

A a slightly trying (Mercury retrograde?) element to the rest of the day, which was earmarked for freelance work, but the day-long unavailability of my client to talk through the new brief meant I could not finish the job. I spoke to Seana, my glamorous accountant, asking her to chase the tax office once again. She emailed me saying the money owed me should now be on its way, and was delayed because they were waiting for one of my payments to clear. I said I'd actually paid this in at the end of December, i.e. several weeks early. This earliness seems to have created the problem. Unbelievable. On a better note, had a poem Cicada accepted for The Frogmore Papers, a poetry magazine based in Lewes, a welcome acceptance after some recent wrong-headed rejections. Cicada was 'published' once before in Other Poetry, but the fates slid in with a nasty late tackle, and Other Poetry mangled the poem, misprinting the title, losing a line etc. They said they would print it correctly, which never happened. So hopefully this tiny poem will see the light of day later this year.

The new tenants in the Twitten have settled in, and I got my first rent, which was welcome. Despite being told they wanted the table and chairs, they do not, so will have to collect them this weekend, thus negating the point of having a managed service.

Sonya informed me that both toilets were blocked. Once she left I had the pavement up outside the house and, cursing the Gods of Brighton's terrible drainage, did some semi-professional poo poking to solve the problem, although one of our two toilets is still draining with a degree of unwilling. Having finished this Augean task and washed my hands OCD-style, I found one of the cats had left me some warm sick.

Out this evening, went to watch the Dipak-less Shakespeare Hiptet (or Heptet depending on who you ask) chatted with Steve Cartwright, who it was good to see. The venue was the one pub near the Twitten I rarely went into, The Duke of Norfolk, and it was crowded with nowhere to sit. Anton came in, and as we needed to speak, we repaired to the Sussex Yeoman, and had such a long and deep talk in there that we missed Richard's gig altogether, an apt end to the day.

Sloped home to a sleepy Lorraine in bed.

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