This is going to be a short one partly because it’s late and partly because I am in recovery mode after several really hectic weeks. They ended in triumph with my handing over the book manuscript to the Publisher exactly on time after two 15 hour work days. That won't be the end of the saga as there's all the nausea of copyright searches, marketing suggestions, proofing and all the rest if it to come but it still feels like a historic day. The end of the major stage of a two year effort !
The relaxation wasn’t immediate because just two days after I had a two day conference at Newport that was very technical and well outside my confidence zone, but which they had asked me to speak at anyway. I really needed to do some prep for this - and was banging away on the laptop up to minutes before my sessions. It all went OK even the screen sharing. The conference was on abstruse subject of the effect on navies of Artificial Intelligence, machine-learning and quantum computing and I was faintly amused to see that quite a few other people had trouble with screen sharing. One slightly disconcerting thing about the session was winning the informal competition for having the most interesting/attractive background. I’ve come across this before. Americans really seem to like the view they get of my study over my shoulder ! A young lady with blue hair even asked if she could visit !! It was an interesting couple of days but being in the US ended late at 2200 -ish both evenings, so not very restful.
So the relative 'downtime' only begins at the weekend. I am working on a plan to get away from it all in Clovelly next week which will be when the chilling out’ will actually kick in. Not least because there’s no wifi there. I am really looking forwards to it.
But of course despite all this ridiculous intensity happening the usual routines had to go on, like eating, cooking, and sleeping etc. Fortunately I seem to have been adopted by Wiltshire Fast Foods, which despite the name is a national company which Philippa says is the successor of ‘Meals on Wheels.’ They keep checking up on me to see if I’m alright – well at least that’s what they say. I get Chinese and Indian meals as a change from the usual stuff I can manage easily enough. Its very convenient – especially when a conference session ends very late. Normally though my culinary efforts are largely concentrated on ploughing through my garden produce. The last batch of runner beans came in earlier in the week - and I am about to investigate the turnips and swedes, which all look fine.
I have had the occasional distraction though. One was the latest round of the rodent wars. I was amazed and appalled in equal measure to discover in one drawer of Cherry’s dressing table in the bedroom that a little pack of deoderants I had got on line four days before had been attacked. Each top corner of the heavy plastic casing had been chewed off. Astonishing. Mice worry me because the fire that nearly destroyed the cottage over the road. They chewed on the wiring and that caused a fire. So I took both defensive and offensive action. Successfully I think, cross fingers. But it's a reminder that now I have no excuse but to get on with a host of domestic and garden chores that should have been done weeks ago. No rest for the wicked I suppose.
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