Unwillingly to school …

Groan. First day back at work today, so such a trauma getting myself out of bed when the alarm went off. The alarm! Imagine, my dears – what an intrusion!... Mind you, at least it’s a Wednesday so I have only one day to do before I can get back into my essential snooze routine tomorrow. Yes, I know you all hate me. Having read the last few sentences back, I hate myself. If it makes it any better, I can reassure you that next Monday when the working week really starts will be hell.

Anyway, this morning I’ve managed to deal with the emails which have drifted in over the Christmas holidays – goodness me, what a lot of spam the Student Care Services inbox gets. Everyone wants to be our friend – how nice. And we’ve done a heck of a lot of catching up too on the social front, which has been good. Ruth got lost on a mountain somewhere over the holidays – which was hugely embarrassing as it was the same mountain she got lost on before and even she admitted she should have known the route. Carol bought most of Guildford in the sales, Colin survived his New Years’ Eve party (in spite of photographic evidence to the contrary) and David managed to get a whole five hours sleep during one night (they have a new daughter …). No news from Andrea, as she’s not back till next week. My, what excitement she’s missing! Not that there’s anyone else apart from us and the cleaner on campus right now.

I’ve also been brave and sent out the invitations for the Thorn in the Flesh launch party in February – so far nine people are coming, so at least it’s not going to be just me and Lord H, hurrah! I already know which section of the novel I’ll be doing as a reading. All I have to do now is to start practising the darn thing. If I don’t, my stammer (nerves, plus family genes, you know – we all do it!) gets a little lively. Especially with “p” words. And I’m a little wary around the “s” ones as well.

This lunchtime, I am putting on my emotional body armour and going to visit Gladys in hospital again. Well, we’re just next door here at work, so it makes sense. And at least it means I can have a free evening. But I shall be on the look-out for anything she might throw at me in response to my inherently evil nature and hope for the best! UPDATE: actually in the event she was asleep most of the time and only surfaced now and again to say things which didn’t make any sense. Heck that sounds just like a normal day for me. Anyway, I didn’t stay long. I feel we might be coming to the end of a road somewhere along the line – she certainly looked terribly frail, which adds weight to my theory that hospitals are not very good for you. Unless of course she manages to rally – we’ll have to see.

During the afternoon, I attempted to read a Higher Education article entitled “Managing the Experience? How Outsourcing is Driving Changes in Stakeholder Experience.” No, I didn’t understand that either. I made several bold efforts to maintain my interest levels throughout the first paragraph, but my brain kept imploding. Sigh. Who the hell writes these ridiculous articles anyway?? Really, they should get a life. Any life.

Tonight, I’m planning not very much, though I must watch Part Two of “Three Men in Another Boat” – it was wonderful last night! Such a great comedy combination – I really hope they do more.

And so far, I’ve failed miserably in my New Year resolutions – yesterday no meditation of any sort happened and I was late to bed. Well, one does have to watch “Midsomer Murders” – it’s an English tradition, you know …

Mind you, January looks like being busy. I have the edits to do for Jay Margrave's Luther's Ambassadors (for Goldenford). And today, in my home inbox I find (a) an email from John Jarrold saying that he'll be sending me the edits for The Gifting by the weekend - thanks, John! I shall look forward to changing everything. He did say it was an "interesting novel", but really, m'dears, that could mean anything, yikes ...; (b) an email from PD Publishing telling me the name of my editor for Maloney's Law and that they'd be in touch with me shortly; (c) an email from Juli at Mighty Erudite Publishers asking if I could do more editing for her. Am happy to do whatever I can - honest! - but I've let her know about the sudden editing influx and asked her what the timescales are. I don't want to lose paid work (paid work - goodness me!! Whatever next?), but I really have to put at least my two to-be-published novels first in the queue. Ah, dahlings, what it is to be popular, eh. But hey it won't last!...

Today’s nice things:

1. Surviving Day One in the office
2. Getting some launch party acceptances
3. An astonishing editing influx!

Anne Brooke
Anne's soon-disappearing website
Goldenford Publishers