Tuesday

So I wake up thinking, let’s get this month’s short story out the way and then I can start tomorrow – the 1st, and there’s a nice feeling about that, given that I have until the 31st to get it done – on the book. Except, 9.46 arrives and, lo and behold, a call comes in from this place I went to last week for an interview driving a van. Poo. I don’t even know, to be honest, why I’d applied – it’s miles away for a start; I thought it was in Oxford – and I must have pushed out of my mind the fact I’ve got a holiday booked for pretty much the whole of October; I don’t know, I was just up late one night scanning gumtree – probably feeling like I needed to change something in my life – and saw it there and sent off the old email, there you go. So they call me yesterday, and ask if I can go in and do a job to Staines, and I’m kind of thinking, sure, and I’m kind of thinking, that’s probably a bad idea given all I’ve got on, and so I say, sure, and then toss a coin to confirm, and the coin says yes and soon enough I’m on an hour long bike ride in the rain to get to Abingdon.

And I get there, and me and this chap get in the van – and we drive straight back to Oxford, right past my house – d’oh! – and then fifty miles to Staines, to pick up some old computers, and then fifty miles and straight past my house – d’oh! – again, to drop me off in Abingdon so I can ride another hour back. And out the window goes the writing, and I spend the evening reading Derren Brown in the bath and then contacting old Charlottesville associates and bed.

Mrs H. is sick and I tend to her a little too.