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So here I am at the far end of a busy weekend that has been work work work since Friday night. All I have to do now is tonight’s slot on Through the Night and then I can flop into bed until morning. I’m hoping I’ll sleep right through but I’ve been having trouble dropping off lately and I’m averaging sleep from 3 till 7am.

In fact, it’s the end of a busy month, and the last fortnight has been like none I can remember. I have a pile of emails waiting to be replied to, and I just know that they are all going to start out ’sorry it’s been so long since I mailed but…’

Anyone waiting for a reply from me who happens to be reading this deserved my unreserved apologies.

Anyhow, the work is done, with just a few tweaks left to complete, and now I can sit back and breathe easy, then pull out the book again and get on with the writing.

Yesterday was a scorcher. Bright sunlight, so hot it was burning me through the open window and I had to draw the curtains as I sat working while Paul, Trevor and Jon lay on the beach. By evening, though, the clouds had blown in and covered the sky. It was a strange blue-black and looked like a soft, tarry gloop. As it snuffed out almost all the light and the streetlamps switched themselves on early, so it started to spit and then great forks of lightning tore across the sky and the spits became heavy fat drops of rain.

In poured in through the windows as I ran around pulling them closed, moving my work out of the way of the drops being blown in by the wind that had whipped up in a matter of seconds, then relaxed in the bath, listening as it slapped heavily on the windows.

They got back from the beach just in time to stay dry, so we met up for pizza in town where we sat on the corner watching the flashes in the sky. It went on for hours, and even at two this morning as we headed towards bed it was still sparking in the distance.

Today I decided on a major push to get this work out of the way, and it paid off. I worked through from ten until four, then headed around to mum’s to see the cat and drink tea on the patio where I lay down in the sun, cat slouched on the bench behind me. For the first time I thought she looked old. She has two bald patches - one on a leg and one on her tummy, and she seemed to have lost weight.

As she ages she gets more friendly and docile, though, and is no longer so prone to scratching and biting as she once was.

She is spending the night alone tonight, as everyone else has gone out but I’m sure she’s found herself a comfy corner in which to curl up and sleep, which is precisely what I, too, must do now. I did the radio piece half way through writing this entry, and now it is time to rest, at last feeling I can relax with those big jobs finally behind me.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2003 at 11:05 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.