Monday and although I woke early I managed to contrive to not get up early. I’m not sure quite how it happened, there was no great amount of cyber litter or messages so I guess cognitively pottered for a while. When I did get up I made myself boiled eggs and toast. I’ve come to the conclusion that soft boiled eggs are beyond my culinary skills, they are never quite right and I end up feeling dissatisfied with my efforts. It’s disappointing really as I have such god fantasies about how much I like boiled eggs adn soldiers. I take my meds and set about life admin.

My intention was to complete my tax return for the last tax year but realised that the accounts book I thought I had has in fact been used for the previous tax year. So I order a new ledger and set about ordering my papers in my over stuffed in tray. By lunchtime and the departure of my partner to see her mother I am all admined out. Just as I am about to spring into action I get a phone call from New York, it is a guy who is welcoming me to the Amazon Writers Clique. He tells me he has my manuscript and that someone will call me later to talk about things and that he will appoint a project lead who will contact me. He confirms the tittle of the collection as The Cancer Years and also asks if I am on WhatsApp, I confirm I am and we say goodbye. I then wrestle the Christmas storage boxes back into the loft and end up feeling quiet knackered.

I settle down to have a quiet moment and to watch a bit of snooker. No one cares about the German masters, no commentators and no crowd. The match I watch has a world ranked player in it but the standard of play is appalling as if no one can be bothered. My partners friend arrives and I make her tea and chat until my partner returns. My partner and her friend go out for a meal and I scuttle down to the local co-op to get some cash from the ATM. I need this to pay the plumber tomorrow when he rocks up to install the new shower. When I finally return to my laptop I find I have a a new WhatsApp message from the publishing folk. I am pretty sure this is a chat bot, but it tells me its sending me three questionnaires about my project. I get the questionnaires and set about completing them. It takes most of my evening. There are always things people think you know when you don’t, like what different fonts look like and what size books are. I had to measure a book to pick my size. So this took up my evening. Eventually I get the forms completed and send them back. I WhatsApp the bot (Ted Baker, got to be a chat bot) and tell it/him that I’ve emailed the the forms. To my surprise he acknowledges that they have arrived and tells me he is going to send me a couple of style examples to choose from in the next few days. By the time my partner and friend return I am all project admined out.

My final chore of the day is to complete the changes to the Tesco order adding in Christmas goodies and then drafting the blog. I down my night meds and go through my me pre bed rituals before finally climbing into bed, very tired and very curious to how my book project adventure is going to turn out. I will either be pleasantly surprised or deflated but unless I try it I will never know. If it turns out okay I will have found a vehicle for my vanity. Lets face it the members of my poetry stanza are the real poets and writers, I am just taking a short cut to my ego, but it would be nice to have a couple of small collections of my poems to leave behind me. I take inspiration from Billy Connelly who no one had heard of in England when he started out. His first move as to book a Croydon Hall, a big venue and take the risk of it turning out okay. He went down a storm a never looked back.