Karma!

Isn’t it funny how life can turn on a tuppence? When we spoke last week, it was looking as though I would have to forget about going the insurance path and simply pay to get my car fixed myself. It seemed the only way I could keep my car, my spotless insurance record, and avoid my premiums going up unnecessarily.

But fate is a fickle creature. I awoke early last Sunday morning and for some reason was desperate to have a cup of tea straight away. This is a deviation from my normal routine of shower then tea, but I thought it’s Sunday, so what does it matter? Heck, in lockdown, what does any of it matter? So, I made tea and took it into the lounge to drink. Whilst I was flicking through my notifications on Instagram, I heard a large van very slowly and quietly reversing up our road.

As I listened, the absolute conviction grew inside me that it was him! The Yodel delivery driver who had smashed into my car three weeks earlier. Quickly, I grabbed pen and paper. I heard my next-door neighbour’s doorbell ring, and her answering her door, and then thanking someone – clearly, she was getting a delivery. It must be him!

Quietly, I opened the front door and crept down the steps to peer around the hedge that divides our houses. And there it stood. The infamous large white van. I wrote down the numberplate, checking it twice to make sure I’d copied it correctly. Then the driver walked back to his van, turned, and saw me. We just looked at each other. I said nothing. I wondered if he was going to start something, but instead he climbed back into his van and drove away.

I called the police, gave them the number. Monday morning, I called the underwriters and gave it to them. I also told them that I was not prepared to let them simply write my car off. That I had taken it to my mechanic who had examined it. It was just the wing that needed replacing. Total cost for a new wing, paint, parts, labour, and VAT was £250. Okay, they meekly agreed, let us have their details and we will contact them.

Since then, things have moved on apace. It’s amazing what a difference simply getting that number plate has made. The insurance company have already paid for the car to be repaired, minus the £100 policy excess – apparently, I get that back when he has admitted fault and his insurance has paid. The police are now paying a great deal more attention to the matter, and I’ve been informed they are pursuing him with a view to prosecution, although it could take up to six months.

Overall, the situation is a lot rosier than it was this time last week. But clearly, he is still working for Yodel. I think an email to them advising them of his number plate, the cost of repairs to my car, and the police case reference number might jog them a little. I’m not a vindictive person, and if he had only stopped and swapped details with me, as any normal decent person would do, then this whole situation could have been resolved between us without any need to involve Yodel. Accidents happen, of course they do. But, reversing away at speed as the owner of the car you’ve just decked chases after you is not an accident. That’s a conscious choice and shows exactly what type of person you are.

Anyway, we shall see what the following week brings. I received notification in the post this morning that my policy is up for renewal, but I certainly won’t be staying with the insurance brokers who took almost two weeks to call me back and then lied to me about trying to contact me and hadn’t even passed the details onto the underwriters. I shall be asking the underwriters for a quote though, as they have been nothing for fair, upfront, and honest with me, which I appreciated.

Being in lockdown, of course I’m home all the time, the only exception being when I pop out to get essential supplies. I walked to Waitrose to pick up some milk, fresh veg etc, on Tuesday afternoon. I was gone about thirty minutes, and when I got back Miss F was waiting for me.

HER: Someone called.

ME:  Who?

HER: Dunno, someone from the insurance company?

ME:  Which one?

HER: Shrugs

ME:  Well, was it One Call the insurance broker, or Ageus the underwriters?

HER: Dunno, she didn’t say.

ME:  What was her name?

HER: Didn’t give it.

ME:  Well, where’s their number?

HER: Didn’t leave one.

I gave up at this point and decided to try Ageus first – and it was them – but honestly, it’s just as well Miss F isn’t planning a career in an office, she’d be rubbish at it.

She’s been on half-term this week, so her stress levels have thankfully subsided a bit. She’s rested a lot, played online with her friends, and caught up on her assignments. Back to college on Monday, and I’m wondering if they are ever going to let her know if she’s supposed to be having her exams or not on the 8^th of March. Seeing as we are nudging towards the end of February now, they are seriously leaving it a little late to be advising students if the most important exams of their lives so far will be going ahead or not.

It’s been a quiet week; I’ve been busy putting the final polish to all my books and uploading covers with my publishing company logo on the spines. Someone once said to me that they could always tell an indie book from a traditionally published one merely by looking at the spines. Traditionally published books will always carry the logo of the publishing company at the base of the spines. Not sure I believed this, I looked at all the books on my shelves and realised she was correct. All traditionally published books do carry a logo, whereas indie books are blank.

I thought about this a lot. I’m always looking for ways to make my books indistinguishable from traditionally published ones as there is still a lot of stigma attached to being an independent author in this country. I also researched setting up your own publishing company and realised that anyone can do so to publish their own books. After all, I not only write the books, but I also publish them as well, so I am, effectively, a publishing company. All you must do is think of a name – preferably one nobody else is using – and then create a logo to use. And that’s it. There’s no cost involved, and unless you go stratospheric and start making thousands of pounds, no need to register the company anywhere either.

Then I had to think of a name. I came up with dozens, but a quick Google search always found someone else had already snaffled it. As a multi-genre author, I have long been using the tagline – an author for all seasons – and have recently had a banner made to show a tree in all four seasons to be used in my Facebook profile and on my new website. I’m also a British author, a fact I do emphasise a lot. So, I started researching old English words and then I found it – Sele – it means the seasons, prosperity, and good luck. It was perfect. A quick check revealed no one else was using it, and the domain names were up for grabs, so I purchased both selebooks.com and selebooks.co.uk and let my website designer know. Once the website is up and running, should anyone Google the name they will be taken to my website.

The lovely James at Platform House Publishing created me a great logo to go inside all my books and on the website, and a slimmed down version to go on the spines of my books. As a tree is in my banner, we decided to go with a leaf with the initials S and B entwined within it. I love it, and feel they enhance the look of my books. Maybe no one will actively notice it, but subconsciously they might, and it’s nice to know that when my books are lined up on a bookshelf they won’t stand out from traditionally published books in a negative way.

[I was going to include a picture of the logo here, but due to technical issues I can’t this week, so I will include it with next week’s blog.]

My next project is my website. At the moment it is a hot wordy mess, and it needs a major overhaul. I’m allowing myself the weekend off to draw breath and rest, then Monday morning I am starting a new regime. I’m going to allocate two or three hours every morning to start writing my next book, then in the afternoon work on the website, and slot housework and other chores around it. I need to start writing again. I’ve spent the last six weeks in lockdown working on my existing books, and now it’s time to get cracking on the next.

Judging by the government’s roadmap to leaving lockdown, non-essential shops won’t be reopening until the end of March, maybe the beginning of April, so I have about another five or six more weeks of being paid to stay home. Best I make the most of it. I think I will probably write book four of the Blackwood Family saga next, and as that will be a short book, I should get it written in that time and maybe even start on the next book.

I’ll keep you posted.

Our cat got into an enormous fight last night. I was cleaning my teeth ready for bed when almighty hell erupted outside in the garden. Unearthly shrieks and screams that startled me so much I nearly choked on my toothpaste!

Cat fights are horrendously noisy. All that swearing and yowling and hissing – I honestly did not know my cat knew that kind of language. Normally, I’d simply leave her to get on with it. But this fight sounded brutal, and it sounded like she was getting her arse handed to her in a sling. I pay the vet bills for that arse, so I switched on the garden lights, pulled on my shoes, and went out there.

The rumble was going down in the next-door garden, and the fence was thumped as they bounced off it. I heard the clang of garden chair against table and the cacophony of threats and screams got louder. I banged the fence and hissed my cat’s name. I was ignored. I thumped louder and hissed more vehemently. Total silence fell next door. I could imagine them staring at one another as they realised, they’d been caught scrapping by mum.

I called my cat again. There was a rustle, a thud, and then she appeared on top of the fence and jumped down beside me. Her tail was puffed up like Tufty the Squirrels, her ears were down, and there was a wild look in her eyes. She shot between my feet, nearly sending me flying, and charged up the path like all the hounds of hell were after her. It made me a bit nervous as to what exactly she had been fighting – and it was very dark out there, so I quickly followed her in and shut the door.

She has a few scabs, a scratch on her ear, and a sheepish expression this morning, so I can only conclude the other guy was quite a bit bigger, and if I hadn’t intervened, she might have suffered more. She’s only a tiny cat, I’m amazed she even tried to fight him at all, but I guess he was invading her turf, so it was a matter of honour.

We have an enormous Tesco home delivery booked for between 5 and 6pm this afternoon. When my car was first hit, four weeks ago now, I had the foresight to go onto the Tesco website and book the next available delivery slot as I had no idea how long I would be without car, so unable to collect my shopping as usual. Even though I didn’t care what time slot I got – I’d have taken 11pm if it had been available – today was literally the earliest I could get, so I booked it. I figured even if my car were mended, I could always change the delivery slot to an earlier click and collect slot as they tend to be easier to obtain.

But here we are, four weeks down the line with my car still out of action, so I am very relieved that a month’s worth of shopping will be brought to my doorstep today. Yes, I’ve been able to walk to my local Waitrose to pick up a few essentials, but the trouble with having to carry everything home is that you can’t get very much in one trip. After all, a carton of milk, a box of juice, cat food, laundry liquid, and some toilet rolls, and you’re about done. We’ve been gradually adding to the list over the past four weeks as we thought of things – I love how you can do that – and we had until 11:30pm last night to submit our final list. At 11pm we added a couple of last-minute things and we were done. Thank heavens I live in the middle of town though. If we lived out in the middle of nowhere how would we have managed?

How indeed would we have managed lockdown ten or even five years ago? Nowadays, almost everyone in the country has access to the internet. Home deliveries and click and collect are an established part of British shopping, with online shopping threatening to destroy the High Street. Online schooling has been a godsend for parents of school age children and working from home is now becoming the new normal. Zoom, Skype, Messenger, and all the other face-to-face communication sites have helped not just businesses conduct their affairs, but families and friends keep in touch as well. It does make me wonder if, when this is all over, whether the country will go back to being exactly the way it was before, or if a new structure will be established.

Anyway, this was meant to be a short blog, but as usual it grew. I really hope, wherever you are, that life is treating you well, and that you and your family are staying healthy and happy.

Speak next week.

Julia Blake