under another sun

Checking in with Mum twice a day these days.  Tomorrow the doctors are meeting to plan what needs to be done with Mas. Be good to know. I feel worried about him and I wish they could get him sorted and release him back into the wild. Mum tired by the constant visiting. Also had time to talk to Janet this evening too. She'd lost a friend this week, and had a couple of days of hospital and other appointments with Ken. Also have my own medical stuff to worry about for this Saturday with the colonoscopy. Studying the sheet with the preparatory mixtures they give you to clean out your bowel. Looking forward to getting this one, um, behind me. Otherwise a bright sunny day. Woke up after a horrible night of dreams. I found myself living back in Guernsey in my Grandmother's house, with mum, but we were being evicted. Into London for a meeting this morning, then after a couple of hours talking about rabies turned around again, and headed home. Train delays again (as they has been ev...

Able to get on with admin and a bit of writing quite well this morning. Not in pain any more, but wrung out after a month of assorted ailments. Able to walk to the post office, buy a bag of cherries and so on. (Cherries are my friends apparently.) Still sleeping loads. This year's Summer Suck really is going for it. Thanking my lucky stars I do not have to commute to London at the moment. Listening to a Julian Barnes book at the moment, called The Sense of an Ending . A quietly wonderful book. Concise but packed with interesting ideas about memory, loss and life. Sparking lots of things in my head, including not so cheerfully memories of a friend I had lived with at university, who had died some years ago. Lorraine home briefly and we walked through the meadowy flowers in the park for ten minutes, before she went out for a salad supper with the governors of the school she was a governor at till recently. She missed perhaps the most astonishing game of football in world cup hist...

Weird shiny hot thing in the sky. Gingerly crept off to the gym, and did a mere loosening ten minutes on the cross trainer, and a bit of upper body stuff.  Walking better today, and feeling fairly cheery. I made some good progress on The New Idea, swapped emails with a potential Spanish client, and when Lorraine returned home we went for a walk through the park. Gravitated to our secret garden, where Lorraine drifts from flower to flower like a cheery bee and forgets about work. On the last bits of Moby-Dick, some wonderful passages and chapters all monomaniacal on whales and whaling of course. Next big read will be Ulysses by Joyce as, emboldened by taking on the great whale, I want to cull a few guiltily unread classics. With audiobooks it is easy. Below: Betty had her pals Laura and Amy around in the evening, lying about on the gold sofa before getting ready to hit the town. I like Laura's lady car.

Ho-hum Rain tumbling from the gloomy Monday sky. Another twitchy morning in The Summer Suck, and between twitching I sorted out posters and flyers for Pack of 3 . Learned next week's work in London is not now happening. I am going through a streak of this kind of thing. But this is good news as I can bring my house move forward by a week, which will banish this limboish feeling. Once this is done I have to seriously focus on generating doubloons, as I can see the wooden bases of the Kenny offers. Visited Di and Adrian to talk to them about the photos I need, and discuss many and several topics. Talked to Lorraine who has the tired/cold lurgy, and I had little cheer to bring her. Worked till 11:30pm tweaking the CD cover. Design and art direction is a thief of time, you can be working away quite happily and realise that three hours have gone. Below between rain had a quick walk down by the sea. Hard to credit this is July. And one of Mum's new cat heads. We had a long chat this...

Sucky Took my external hard drive to a local data recovery place, and told there was a 20% chance they'd be able to retrieve anything from it. However Paul in London swears by some bloke who can recover things. So I will try him next. Cheesed off by the end of the day. I've done no writing, made no money, lost half my data, and felt as if I have achieved nothing this week. It is a recurring theme of the Summer Suck. The summers are usually when difficulties arise. However I have made progress on the CD packaging and this is theraputic work. Long chat with Matt who has been feeling illish all week. Lorraine smelling of rose and geranium essential oils this evening, having had a massage. We slunk off to the local retaurant for a mild-mannered feed, and a cold lager. Back to Lorraine's place where Sam returned from work. He has fractured one of the bones in his arm while 'wrassling' a friend at a music festival in Serbia. His part time job still insisted he work in a s...