Just to reassure everyone, Miss Skittles is home safe and sound with no apparent side effects from her ordeal. Well, I say ordeal because we’re assuming that’s what it was although she hasn’t been able to tell us exactly what happened. I saw her Wednesday evening. She ate her dinner as usual, then I left her downstairs when I went to bed. The next morning there was no sign of her, but although this was unusual, during warm weather it’s not unheard of. Anyway, I was late for work, so I dashed off without seeing her. That evening when I went to feed her I noticed her breakfast bowl of biscuits looked untouched. I asked if anyone had seen her, no, came the answer, not since yesterday.

We went to bed concerned but not yet really worried. After all, cats are fickle creatures that do as they please. On Friday morning, the biscuits were still untouched and there was no sign of her. Now I WAS worried. The last time she disappeared she ended up in Ely after going for a ride in the engine of someone’s car! I put out the word on the street’s WhatsApp and neighbours went to check gardens and sheds and anywhere else she might have got in and got trapped. During the day they all reported back no success in finding her. By that evening, when we all gathered for the usual Friday Happy Hour, everyone was concerned.

I searched our garden again, looking everywhere I thought she might have crawled into or behind. I’ll be honest, by now it was a body I was expecting to find. Either way, I just wanted to find her.

Nothing. We went to bed very worried. I had just dropped off when Franki awoke me by tapping at my door.

Skittles is back! She announced.

Bleary-eyed, I jumped out of bed and went downstairs. From their bedroom over the kitchen, they had heard the cat flap go and went down to find the cat face first in the bowl of biscuits. Skittles was thin, very hungry, and very very pleased to see us. Her coat felt rough and out of condition. The consensus is that she managed to get herself shut in somewhere and was only just released. Possibly in one of the empty flats in the apartment block behind us or maybe in someone’s shed. Who knows? The only person who does is staying quiet on the subject.

Accepting as much fuss, cuddles, and love as we were prepared to give her, we made sure she was okay before going back to bed. The next morning, I went downstairs a little bit apprehensive that she might have vanished in the night, but no, there she was, curled up in a patch of sunlight fast asleep.

Anyway, a special cat tracker is now on its way to us. Not only will we be able to track her movements, but it will monitor her health, sleeping patterns, and calorie intake and burn. She is an elderly cat with a heart murmur so that will give us peace of mind. It will be interesting to see where the little madam does roam and how big her territory is. The collar comes with a vibrating mode. The idea is we vibrate her collar every time we feed her so she will come to associate the vibration with food so when we want her to come home we simply vibrate her collar. There is also a flashlight option so we can light her collar up like a beacon. I can’t help but think that will scare the shit out of her and anyone else in her vicinity.

But at least she’s home and she’s safe. Cats can be such a worry. When they disappear you have no clue what’s happened to them. Are they trapped somewhere? Has someone stolen them? Have they died of natural causes? Are they a pile of squished fur on the road? At least with the tracker, we’ll be able to see where she’s gone and what she’s up to, which will be fascinating.

What else has happened since we last chatted? Well, I completed my first two weeks of training in my new job and I’m happy to report that so far I’m loving it. My new boss is lovely and very kind. The work is not too taxing and is interesting, and the patients are wonderful. The practice dog is unpredictable in her moods but luckily seems to like me, so that’s all right. Although the commute is a killer – a five-minute walk at most (ha, ha) – I can manage it, and it’s fabulous not sitting in traffic jams and being able to come home for lunch.

It has been a long two weeks though. As I was training I worked four days each of the weeks instead of two and it was tiring trying to get my old brain to remember new things – and there were lots of things to try and remember. But I picked it up reasonably quickly, and although I have made mistakes (of course, I have) I only make the mistake once and then I never make it again.

It is great having a big window to look out of and being on such a busy street so when I have a moment I can watch the world and his wife walk by. It’s nice not to come home covered with bruises or grout and to be able to wear pretty clothes. I had my feet done as a new employee perk so I could see exactly what happens and understand the terminology. That was interesting. I found out I have a mild genetic foot deformity which explains why my toes curl and sometimes feel bruised, and I had treatment to help remedy it.

Next week I will only work Monday and Tuesday, then will have six days off in a row because the following Monday is a Bank Holiday. I can’t believe how fast this year is passing by. Franki and Rys go back to university on the 15^th of September. I have booked an Airbnb close to the university for that night. After the drive up there and the long day of hauling all their belongings back out of storage and into their rooms, I will be exhausted. I will also be meeting Rys’s mother for the first time. She is coming to help move them back in and we are all having dinner together that evening. And then I’ll drive home alone the next morning.

There will only be a month before they’re home again for ten days over the half-term holiday and then I’ll be driving them back to university – this time with my parents. It is Franki’s graduation day on the 3^rd of November so we’ve booked a two-bedroom Airbnb house twenty minutes away from the university for four nights and my parents and I will stay there to attend the graduation and look about the area.

I can just about fit five people in my car, but we will all have to pack light because I don’t have a very large boot (trunk to my American friends).

After that, it will only be six weeks until they are home for Christmas and this time I will have two weeks off over the Christmas period!! I am so looking forward to that. The chance to relax and see friends and family at a leisurely pace instead of having to cram it into four days, or evenings when I’ve been at work all day and will be back to work the next. And I am beyond happy I won’t be working Boxing Day anymore.

Both of my previous jobs are still looking for replacements for me, which is a slightly odd fact.

It is wonderful having Franki and Rys home, despite the fact I’ve been working so much so haven’t seen them during the days. It is nice coming home to someone and having someone to eat dinner with and watch TV with. They both seem exhausted after the university year so have been resting and lolling about the house in their PJs not doing much – other than making dinner on the days I’m working.

Last time we spoke I was about to do the Stonham Barns Comic-Con. It was the first time it had been held so no one knew how it would go. I drove myself and two other local authors up there on Friday morning. This was primarily a set-up day for traders and a pitch tent day and settle-in for those people camping for the whole weekend. As the organisers didn’t think we’d sell anything that day they hadn’t charged us and I’m glad they didn’t. We sat there all day and didn’t sell a single book between us. Instead, we spent money on food and drink. Lesson learned. If it is held again next year we will know we don’t have to bother with the Friday. Instead, we can turn up early on Saturday to set up.

The weather on Saturday was appalling. I mean heavy, torrential, coming down sideways, rain of epic biblical proportions. And it didn’t stop. It rained all day.

I felt so sorry for those people camping and for the traders in marquees outside. Luckily, I had taken the precaution of booking our tables in the great hall. With the ground outside rapidly turning into a quagmire, people took refuge in the hall and spent a long time browsing the stalls – which included us.

I took a total of 43 books with me for the weekend. That was a mix of Black Ice, The Forest, Lifesong, Erinsmore, and a few of Mage Quest. I honestly didn’t expect to sell any of the last one as it’s book two in a series but thought it would be nice to have it displayed next to Erinsmore so took four copies with me.

I sold twenty books on Saturday, almost half my stock, which was wonderful. I even sold two copies of Mage Quest. One to a guy there with his family who had bought Franki’s old wardrobe from me when I sold it last year through the local Facebook sales page. He looked at my profile and saw I was an author so bought a copy of Erinsmore for his wife, which I signed. Recognising me, he waited to speak to me and then bought Mage Quest for his wife, which was lovely. The other copy I sold to a lady who loved the look of Erinsmore so bought the two together.

The rain continued. A stormtrooper dashed into the hall and took off his helmet. He grimaced at me and wiped the water from his face.

Bet you’re pleased to be in a plastic costume, I said.

No, he replied glumly. The rainwater has trickled down the back of my neck and gathered in the plastic buttock cups of the uniform so I’m sloshing as I walk, and my arse is freezing.

A seven-foot-tall Chewbacca wandered by, soaking wet and smelling like a wet dog.

Anya from the film Frozen stopped to chat with us. She was struggling to keep her fabulous costume out of the mud. Elsa should have been there as well but had been out on the lash so now had a hangover. Very un-queenlike behaviour.

Through the open door of the hall, I saw a man standing at the entrance to the small traders’ tent opposite. He had his back to us and was holding a full-size, female, store mannequin hugged to his side. His finger was between her bum cheeks, and we realised there was a hole there that his fingers were up. Okaaay. Bit disturbing, standing there, fingering a dummy in broad daylight when there were families and kids around. He turned around, turning the dummy with him and we all recoiled in shock. Where her breasts should be were two gaping holes with ragged edges where he’d sawn them off!! He walked away, carrying his mutilated lady dummy with him, and leaving us wondering just what we’d seen and whether we should report him for abusing a dummy.

By the time I got home that evening, I was exhausted and starving, so put something quick and filling in the oven, ate in front of the TV, and then fell into bed.

The next day was more promising weatherwise as the sun was out, the sky was blue, and it had stopped raining. We had high hopes of doing even better but strangely I only sold 15 books on Sunday. Perhaps because it was a better day people were doing all the outdoor things they hadn’t had a chance to do on Saturday. Anyway, fifteen books sold still isn’t bad, and added to the twenty sold the previous day added up to a successful weekend of 35 books sold out of 43 taken. I also sold one eBook copy of Black Ice which a lady scanned from the Q codes on my table, I spoke to lots of people several of whom scanned my website into their phones, and I handed out lots of cards.

All in all, a profitable and worthwhile event and one I shall do next year.

It was also useful because I found a couple of Franki’s birthday presents there. She’s a massive Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fan, so I bought her a stunning technical drawing of the space station plus a cool nightlight that cycles through seven different colours.

The event finished at 4pm on Sunday and by the time we’d packed up and driven home all I wanted to do was eat dinner and chill, before heading off to bed ready for an early start and my first day at my new job.

It was Franki’s birthday last week. She turned 20. I can’t believe that I have a twenty-year-old child. It seems only yesterday she was born, and I don’t know where the time has gone. We had a quiet family lunch on Sunday where we gave Franki her presents – she loved mine – and she and Rys celebrated together on the actual day because I was at work – although I did cook big, fat steaks for us that evening.

And now it’s Saturday again. We had planned to go to Cambridge today, but we were all so tired this morning that we decided to put it off until during the week. I will have a long run of days off, so we don’t have to go at the weekend and hopefully, it won’t be quite so busy.

I am loving having the weekends off, yet another perk of my new job, and looking forward to days off next week. The year is slipping by, and I have so much to do. I naively thought at the beginning of the year that I would get two if not three, books published in 2023, but now it’s looking like Mage Quest will be the only one. There is a slim chance I can get book six in the Blackwood Family Saga out before Christmas as they are such short books they don’t take long to write or produce, but I’m not putting any pressure on myself.

And I think that’s it for my news. I managed to get a same-day collection slot so will be off to pick up my groceries at four including a nice bottle of wine to celebrate finishing my training and the fact it’s Saturday and I don’t have to work tomorrow. Both are excellent reasons, I think.

Take care everyone and I will be with you again in two weeks.

Julia Blake

By the time you read this on Sunday morning, I shall either be making my way to Stonham Barns for the third day of the Legends Comic-Con or will already be there. It’s a three-day event which is why I’m writing this on Thursday morning. Today is a day of preparing – for the Comic-Con, for starting my new job next Monday, this blog, and a week’s worth of meals because I will be home late almost every day.

I am looking forward to this weekend, although we booked it so long ago I can’t get my head around the fact it’s happening tomorrow. It’s a bit like Christmas. You know it’s coming but because you wait all year for it once Christmas Eve arrives it is still impossible to grasp that it’s actually happening the next day.

Anyway, I am more or less ready. I ordered the books for it several weeks ago and they all arrived safe and sound. Because it’s a Comic-Con I will only be taking fantasy and sci-fi books so that’s Black Ice, The Forest, Lifesong, Erinsmore, and Mage Quest. I hope I have enough books. I could only afford to buy a dozen copies of Black Ice, twenty copies of Lifesong, ten each of The Forest and Erinsmore, and five of Mage Quest. I don’t know what I’ll do if I run out of books – just stand there and tell people all about them, maybe.

It looks like a fun weekend and there is a lot happening. As well as us authors there selling and signing our books, there is cosplay, exhibitions, crazy golf, laser tag, light sabre displays and lessons, several food and drink stands, quizzes, a treasure hunt, and live music. The tickets are only £10 per adult and under 12s get in for free. If you’re in the area, why not pop along and say hello?

So, last time we chatted I was getting ready for my official birthday shenanigans. How did it go? If I say swimmingly will you understand that it pissed it down with rain all day? And I mean RAIN. Not just light spits and spots or occasional showers. No, it was a heavy, constant rain of epic biblical proportions. The meal went well. We were undercover and the rain wasn’t that bad. We had a wonderful meal at The Old Canon Brewery, and they even gave us a lovely tray of brownies to take away because it was my birthday, which were delicious. During the meal, I announced to those who didn’t know about my new job.

We hurried down to the Abbey Gardens as the skies darkened and the rain grew heavier. Because we were late getting there the prime spots under the trees had all been taken so we had to set up out in the open. We had no sooner put up our chairs in a row and sat down than the heavens opened, and it started to rain properly. Heavy, cold, properly wet rain quickly drenched everything. We put up umbrellas and huddled under rugs and blankets.

The rain got into the sound system so we could barely hear what the actors were saying. Bravely, they battled with the elements steadily getting more and more wet. We had taken desserts with us, but it was too wet to even think about trying to unpack them. Instead, we each huddled in solitary misery under our brollies and tried to keep the rain out of our drinks.

Could there be anything more British than watching outdoor Shakespeare in the pouring rain clutching glasses of prosecco in frozen hands? In the interval, the people behind us even bought ice creams.

We stuck it out to the end, then sloshed home and got changed into warm clothing. Tired and cold to the bone, the lodger and I watched TV together. She had wine but I wasn’t feeling too good so had a cup of tea.

I then had eight days off before Franki and Rys returned. Eight days off sounds like a lot, and you would think I had time to write, relax, rest. Nope. Almost the whole week was taken up with preparing the boxroom. As I told you last time, I was having real problems with Argos. On Sunday, I tried just ordering the mattress – figuring at least they would have something to sleep on – and it let me do that and put it on my card with twelve months of interest-free credit. I have been researching what’s going on with Argos now and apparently, it’s a new policy that instead of letting us place a large order and giving interest-free credit on the total, you now have to buy each item separately. This is all well and good but means you end up paying a delivery fee on each item and only getting the credit terms that the value of the individual item entitles you to. Sneaky, Argos, very sneaky.

As you know, I had ordered the three bookcases, the blinds, duvet, barbecue cover, and mirror to be collected from the local store. On Monday I drove there to collect them. The bookcases were so heavy I had to wheel them out to the car one by one. The lovely assistant helped me and as we chatted, I told her I was an author and she got very excited about it and found my website on her phone. An avid reader, she promised to check out my books. I was so grateful for her help, that when I went back on Tuesday to collect the barbecue cover, I took her a copy of Becoming Lili and signed it for her. Who knows? Maybe this simple act of generosity will mean a new loyal reader.

I bought sheets, pillowcases, and a mattress protector from Dunelm whilst I was at that end of town, and, as I was there, popped into Dreams to say hello and took a pack of biscuits with me.

My first thought as I walked in was how clean and spacious it looked. They were pleased to see me – it was my two favourite colleagues in the store that day – and we chatted. They asked how the new job was going and I told them I’d already left and found another job. I think they were both a bit envious that I’m getting out of retail entirely. Apparently, they still haven’t found a replacement for me, and it made me smile that there are now two companies in town trying to replace me.

I also sorted out the issue of furniture. Measuring up the room again and using cardboard boxes to replicate the furniture and the space it would take up in the room, I concluded that trying to squeeze a wardrobe in there as well simply wasn’t going to work. Although the room looked spacious when empty, I knew once a bed went in there that the available space would shrink to almost nothing. I looked on the local second-hand furniture page and found a few pairs of bedside cabinets that looked nice. I sent messages to the sellers asking if they were still available. Then I found a couple of pretty white metal bedframes and again I messaged the sellers. Only one person out of the seven people I messaged bothered to get back to me and that was the seller of one of the beds. Yes, she told me, the bed was still available, and she lived locally. I asked if she thought I’d be able to get the bed into the back of a Toyota Yaris. Hmm, she said, probably not. Where exactly did I live? I told her and she said she was coming into town that day anyway and had a spacious enough car to fit the bed in easily. Would it help if she dropped it off? I thanked her very much and we agreed on a time. I dashed to the ATM to get cash for her and bought a small box of chocolates as a thank you, because it was very nice of her, and she didn’t have to do it – and most people wouldn’t have done it. Anyway, she dropped the bed off and it was lovely. Just a simple little bed that would go nicely in the room.

Giving up on ever hearing from the other sellers, I looked on Amazon for bedside chests and a large shallow chest of drawers that could be delivered within the next day or so. I found a pair of very sweet little bedsides for £55 the pair. Could they be delivered in time? They could. I then found a perfect chest of drawers. As I’d given up on the wardrobe idea, I decided to get the largest chest of drawers I could and provide ample storage space. I found a lovely looking one for £110 and ordered it.

I also tried to make the bookcases. I made one without too much hassle. It was hard doing it by myself, by hand, in a confined space, but I managed it. Then I tried to make the next one. Nope. The bolts got stuck in the holes so I could neither tighten them nor undo them. My hand was a mass of sore bleeding blisters. I gave up for the day and had dinner.

The next day, Wednesday, was a busy one. First, the mattress was delivered from Argos and the delivery drivers carried it upstairs and propped it in the room. Then the bedside cabinets arrived. A little smaller than they looked in the picture, but sweet and thankfully ready-made, not flatpack.

Then my Dad arrived, equipped with a drill, and ready to help. What’s first? He asked. I showed him the bookcases I hadn’t managed to assemble, and we started with them. It was amazing how much easier it was with the right tools and two people. Both bookcases were assembled in no time, and we carried them into the middle room and screwed them to the wall for maximum stability. My measuring proved spot on, and the three cases filled the alcove with a couple of centimetres to spare. The curtains were in the way, so we took them down – there is a lovely Roman blind at the window with blackout lining, so the curtains were purely decorative. Below are photos of the middle room. I am so happy with how this room turned out. It’s now a lovely sitting room and library, plus the day bed is a very comfortable single bed if we ever need an extra bed.

Then we put up the blind in the boxroom. It too has a blackout lining which is also thermal reflective so if the sun is beating down on that window they can pull down the blind and keep the room cool. By now it was lunchtime, so we stopped for sandwiches and coffee and Amazon delivered the chest of drawers – in two very heavy boxes which we had to open downstairs and ferry everything up.

After lunch, we assembled the chest of drawers. Now, this makes it sound easy. It wasn’t. I think the schematics for the space shuttle are probably less complicated than the ones for this chest. There were no written instructions, just fourteen pages of incomprehensible diagrams with arrows coming in from all directions.

I put on my glasses and looked at them. Feeling my way through, part by part, and image by image, we painstakingly put the chest together. There was a decorative frame around it and a stepped-back plinth at the bottom which muddied the waters and made it hard to see how it was all going to fit together. But we managed it. By now it was late, we were both very tired, and Mum was calling asking where Dad was. We decided to call it a day and he promised to come back on Thursday to assemble all the individual drawers and the bed, and then hang the two blinds in my room. I ate dinner, fell asleep on the sofa, then woke up and went to bed.

I overslept on Thursday and struggled to get going, drinking strong coffee, and thinking how it was a good job I’d had the week off work, I made a start on the drawers. They were comparatively straightforward, just fiddly and time-consuming, and I had put a couple together by the time Dad arrived. We set up a mini production line and built the rest of the drawers. Trying to put them into the chest there was a moment of panic when one wouldn’t fit until we realised there were left and right-hand drawers, so that was all right.

Then we built the bed. I knew this wouldn’t be a problem because I’ve assembled these types of simple frames before. In between helping me, Dad had to take Mum to her hospital appointment and then go and collect her again. We had lunch and put the mattress on the bed. Whilst Mum and I put the bedding on, Dad hung the full-length mirror on the wall, and then the room was completed as far as we could go. By now it was getting late, and I could see how tired Dad was. We looked at my windows to see how easily my new blinds would go up. Not very easily at all, was the answer. I have wooden pelmets over the windows, and they would need to come down to allow access to the frame to drill holes for the new blinds. It was decided to leave them for now. After my parents left, I measured the space I had left in the room and thought there was enough to fit in a narrow console table on the wall opposite the foot of the bed and a tall, wedge-shaped laundry basket in the corner. The table could be delivered on Saturday, but the laundry basket not until the following Tuesday. Oh well, I thought, they can do without a laundry basket for one night. After all, how much washing could they generate in one night? Answer, none, but they could and did arrive with a suitcase of dirty clothes.

On Friday morning I had a lot of running around. I had my prescription to collect, a trip to the recycling yard to get rid of all the packaging buying so much furniture had generated, and a large shopping order to collect from Tesco. I had a book review to write. Emails to answer and then it was the Authors meet up in the afternoon. This was going to be the first one I’d been able to attend for two months so I was looking forward to it.

Friday evening is normally wine, pizza, and movie night with the lodger but she was staying at her daughter’s flat as she didn’t feel very well so we postponed to Saturday night. Instead, I had spaghetti and an early night – which was probably a good thing.

Saturday had been earmarked to tidy and clean the house, sort out the garden, water and feed all my pots, change my sheets, and catch up with laundry. The new table was delivered in the afternoon, and I began to put it together. It had been delivered in one piece that only needed the four legs bolted on. I mean, how hard could it be?

OMG. How bloody buggery bollocking hard was it!? I got three legs on then could not get the fourth leg on. Examining it closely, I realised that one of the support struts that the legs bolted into had been built into the top upside down, so the bolt holes were in the wrong place. No amount of trying was going to get those bolts into the holes. It was a physical impossibility. I cursed a lot. Then calmed down and thought about it. Yes, I could complain to Amazon and get a replacement, but that was going to take days and I wanted it now. I held the fourth leg in place and put a sharp screwdriver through the bolt holes and marked the place there should be holes. The bolts were too blunt to screw directly into the wood, so I got two long sharp screws and screwed those in instead. It worked. The leg was firmly secured, and the table was steady. I fixed in place the two shelves and stood the table in place. It was a bit rocky because of the uneven floorboards. I would have to think of some way to fix that.

By now it was late in the afternoon, and I was very hot and sweaty, so I jumped into the shower to freshen up ready for a relaxing evening.

Sunday I finished cleaning the house and made sure everything was ready for the next day. Not only were Franki and Rys arriving on the 4.30pm train, but I had a photo shoot at 2pm. I desperately need a new author photo as mine is years old and I no longer look like that. A fellow author from the Writers of Bury & Beyond had arranged a photo session with me and two other authors with a photographer pal of hers. I was dubious – I am notoriously unphotogenic and hate all photos of me – but I needed a photo so decided to give it a go.

Not surprisingly, by the time Sunday evening rolled around, I was exhausted so I had an early night, only to be woken early Monday morning by my landline ringing. It was Franki. Their train had been cancelled due to strike action.

Half asleep, I wasn’t sure what I could do – I really didn’t want to have to drive to Wales to collect them – and I asked how far they could get on the train. Crewe was the reply. Now Crewe is the town nearest their university which is at least a nine-hour round journey. Not helpful. I’ll look at my train app, Franki told me, and call you back.

Now thoroughly awake, I got up and showered. Peering at my eye bags in the mirror I hoped that thick foundation would cover them or that the photographer could do something clever. Thirty minutes later Franki called back. They’d managed to get seats on a train heading out of Wales that went to Birmingham. From there, they hoped to get a train to Cambridge and from there a train to Bury St Edmunds. The whole malarky was going to add two hours to their travelling time so they’d not reach me until 6.30pm.

I rushed around the house getting the last bits and pieces done. Just as I was about to leave for the photoshoot there was a bang at the door, and it was their laundry basket – arrived a day early with no warning from Amazon that it was coming. Typical. I quickly assembled it and put it in the room. It’s standing in a corner by the old chimney breast where the floorboards have been repaired with an odd bit of wood. It rocked dreadfully so I needed something to lift one corner. Earlier in the morning I’d dashed into Wilco looking for something to stop the table rocking and found a pack of sticky pads to go on furniture feet to stop them scratching the floor. They could be stuck several deep and two of them had been enough to fix the wobbly table. I stacked them up on the bottom of the laundry basket. It took five until it was high enough to be even and not rock.

Then I shot off for the photo shoot and what can I say except I hated it. I detest having my photo taken and this was no exception. It’s funny because I don’t mind taking videos of myself and I’ve even taken the odd selfie on my tablet which I’ve used on social media. But there is something about rigidly posing for photos and trying to remember what to do with my face that simply doesn’t work for me and certainly does not lead to good photos. I hate them. All of them. There’s not a single one I want to keep, much less use as my author photo – in fact, I would go as far as saying I don’t actually want to ever see these photos again. I am cross with myself for doing the shoot and wasting two weeks’ grocery bills on a silly photo shoot only to get pictures that make me look like an eighty-year-old chimpanzee who hasn’t slept for a week.

All through the shoot I was checking my phone. They’d made it to Birmingham, then Ely, then they’d reached Cambridge. Franki asked if I’d pick them up from Cambridge, but they weren’t getting there until 5pm and trying to get out of Cambridge bang on rush hour would be an utter nightmare and we’d take longer to get home by car than they would to get here by train.

Once the shoot finished, I rushed home and put together two meatball and pasta bakes – one veggie – so they were ready to slide into the oven to heat through later. I’d just finished when Franki messaged that they were ten minutes out of Bury so I jumped in the car and drove to the station to collect them.

Two exhausted, stressed, and wrung-out little people got off that train. Far from having a holiday in Wales with Rys and their family, they have been helping Rys’s mother move house so have been working nonstop. I took them home and showed them the rooms – they loved them – then put the oven on and pootled about the kitchen getting dinner ready. I couldn’t believe the size portion Franki had – I don’t think I’ve ever seen my offspring eat so much in one go – and they were very grateful for a filling, home-cooked meal. Early night for everyone.

Tuesday was a quiet day. They sorted through all the boxes of books and knickknacks and arranged the new bookcases to their liking. We had dinner together and vegged out in front of the TV.

Wednesday we spent most of the day with my parents and went out for a nice lunch. The weather here isn’t great – certainly not summer weather – and we got wet walking home.

And then today, Thursday, has been a day of preparation. I am preparing for the three-day event this weekend, writing this blog, preparing posts for the next few days to go on social media, meal planning, food shopping, and preparing to start my new job on Monday. It’s a shame I won’t get a break between the Comic-Con and starting work, but it is what it is.

And that is you all up to date. It’s now 3.30pm and I still have to prepare for an early start tomorrow, so I better close now, upload this, and schedule it for Sunday morning. By the time we next speak, I will have finished my two-week intensive training and will hopefully be settled in at the new job. After that, I will mostly be working two days a week with five whole days to do what I like. Bliss.

Take care, everyone.

Julia Blake

Regular readers will be scratching their heads, looking at their calendars, and thinking “Surely, it can’t be two weeks since she last blogged? I know she’s always saying how quickly time flies, but still…” and you’re right. It was only last week that I blogged, but I have so much to tell you and secrets I can finally share, that I couldn’t wait another week.

This blog is going to be part news and part rant as things are afoot that have excited me and frustrated the arse off me, in equal measures.

Okay, where to start?

As you know, I started my new job at the beginning of June. Almost straight away I wondered if I’d made a mistake. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I loved my new colleagues. A fabulous all-women team, they are funny, strong, and kind. A complete contrast to the toxic masculinity I was used to.

There was also a reduction in stress levels, which was good. But, I had not been prepared for the level of physicality that the job would entail. Daily, we were lifting very heavy packs of tiles and even heavier bags of grout and adhesive. Each evening I would drag my sorry carcass home – bruised, battered, filthy, and drenched in sweat – and it was straight into the shower for me with my whole uniform going into the wash.

This wasn’t the worst of it though, I found that standing on my feet all day in heavy work boots was demanding a high price of my knees, ankles, and feet. My knees were swollen and painful, my feet were on fire, and my ankles kept turning underneath me. Not good. The work itself was repetitive and, dare I say it, boring. Despite the companionship of my colleagues, I found every day dragged unremittingly.

There was also the issue of the weekends. At the interview, I had been completely upfront and honest about needing six or seven weekends a year off. No problem, the manager promised me. So long as I have enough notice you can do your days during the week and have those weekends off. However, it quickly became apparent that it was going to be a problem and I was told I would have to use up all my annual leave to get that time off. Hmm, not ideal.

I wondered what to do. I acquired this job through Indeed and as anyone else who has ever had any dealings with them will know, for months afterward they bombard you with emails proudly proclaiming that you will be a perfect fit for ever increasingly inappropriate jobs.

We think your three months of experience at ASDA would make you an ideal candidate for the position of a brain surgeon.

Or – we see you’re applying for part-time admin jobs so here are the details of a full-time job in Barnsley as a mig welder.

You get the drift. I have been deleting these messages as they come in but last week, one dropped into my inbox that made me pause and take a second look. Part-time admin and receptionist in the town centre. Hmm, interesting.

Shall we send them your CV? Indeed piped up, perhaps sensing me lingering over the inbox.

Oh, go on then, I replied. Why not?

I clicked on send CV and noticed that 45 other people had also applied for the job. Okaaay, so I’m never going to hear from them again, I thought.

The next evening – Friday – I dragged myself home from work feeling very sorry for myself. A bag of grout had split all over me, so I was covered in white powder that had the consistency of flour. I climbed into the shower to de-grunge, then wandered about the house wrapped in a towel and wondering what to have for dinner. My lodger was out for the evening, so I was a bit down in the dumps, to be honest. My mobile rang. I assumed it was a cold caller, but answered it, only to be shocked rigid when a lady’s voice informed me she was calling from the job I had applied for the previous day.

They weren’t normally open on a Saturday; she informed me, but they were very keen to interview me as soon as possible. Was I available Saturday morning? Was I? Heck yes.

The next morning, I pulled on smart interview clothes and made the six-minute walk to the practice. And what can I say? Well, not too much for privacy and respect reasons, but the interview went very well. So well, they practically offered me the job there and then, but wanted me to go in for a trial session one morning. Unfortunately, the only time that worked for all of us was the morning of my birthday, but hey ho.

For the next week, I hugged the information to myself, telling hardly anyone in case it all went wrong. It seemed too good to be true. My normal hours would usually only be 17 hours a week on Monday and Tuesday, leaving me five days off in a row, including weekends. Occasionally, though, I would be covering for the lady I would be job-sharing with when she was away on holiday. The practice doesn’t open on Wednesdays, or at the weekends, so not only could I do any book sale, fair, or Comic-Con I liked, but I would also be able to arrange dental, hospital, doctor, and hairdresser appointments for a Wednesday knowing I would have the day off so be able to attend them.

The work was non-physical, I could wear pretty clothes, I would not be going home needing a shower, the practice was air-conditioned and had adequate heating, it was a six-minute walk from home so no more horrible commute in rush hour traffic, I could go home in my lunch break or pop into town. There was even a lovely dopey practice dog to pet whilst working.

Literally, perfect.

Of course, nothing is ever perfect and there is a drawback to this job. It’s freelance, which means I would be self-employed. This is a scary thought, although I have been guaranteed at least 17 hours a week I would not have the safety net of sick or holiday pay or a month’s notice. I would be working three hours a week less than I currently am, but the hourly rate is slightly higher plus I would be picking up a lot of extra days as the other lady seems to have a lot of holidays booked. That, plus the fact I would be saving money on car expenses, and the water and energy saved by not having to shower as soon as I get home from work, would hopefully make up the difference.

I would also have to figure out my own tax, National Insurance, and pension, but I could throw myself at the mercy of my old employer from my days of working in an accountancy practice. Hopefully, he would be able to give me some advice and set me on the right path from the get-go.

It was still a slightly scary thought though and was a gamble. But the thought of the job and the five days off in a row made me giddy with anticipation.

Time. So much time.

Yes, I’ve worked three days a week for the past twenty years so technically this is only one day more, but it is how the shifts are arranged that will make such a difference. Five days off in a row is so much better than four days off split around three unpredictable days of shifts. And having the weekends off guaranteed is everything I ever dreamt of.

Regular readers of this blog and my followers on Instagram will know how tough this past year has been for me. It all began in June 2022, when my car died up north when collecting Franki from university. There were endless months of car shenanigans. I had major renovation work done on the bathroom, and the boiler was replaced. I spent ages stripping out and decorating the dining room. I had the whole stress of leaving one job and starting at another. I’m decorating two bedrooms ready for when Franki comes home this summer. It has been non-stop.

During that time, I did manage to write one book, Mage Quest, but that was only because I took annual leave and deliberately shut myself away to write. I haven’t written a word since. Promoting my books has stopped, and I have been struggling to stay on top of day-to-day author-related things such as social media.

I took on a lodger and this meant a huge upheaval in my house. Plans to start an Airbnb were scrapped, as I realised that whilst I worked unpredictable shifts it was unrealistic. This meant the massive hotel-style king-size bed I’d bought had to be removed from the basement and sold, and my daughter’s bed put there in its place. This has left Franki with no bedroom and no bed. This is why I have been working every spare moment I had to turn the small boxroom into a beautiful new room for her, and the narrow middle bedroom into a cosy sitting room/library/spare room for them to use.

More on how this is going later.

I have been chasing my tail and firefighting for a year. I’m tired. So tired. It hasn’t helped that I’ve had health issues as well. Stress, Menopause, and a recently diagnosed Underactive Thyroid Gland have all added to my general exhaustion and sense of being utterly and completely overwhelmed by LIFE.

So yes, I understood there were risks involved with this job. Big, fat, scary ones. But if there was a chance of making my life happier, less stressful, and more productive from a writing point of view, then I felt it was a chance I needed to take.

The week passed and I went for my trial session on the morning of my birthday. How did it go? Very well. The work is interesting, and I will be interacting with clients all day. I will be constantly busy so time will fly. I was particularly touched when at the end of the morning they told me I definitely had the job, and then produced an envelope of cash as payment for the morning – which I didn’t expect – and a beautiful birthday card – which I really didn’t expect. It made me realise that I did not receive a card from my current job and that I worked for over five years for Dreams and never received a birthday card from any of my colleagues.

I left there on cloud nine, met my friend to go for lunch to celebrate my birthday, and bounced into the restaurant with a huge smile on my face.

Gosh, you look happy, said the hostess.

I am, I replied. It’s my birthday today and I’ve just been offered a fantastic new job.

She squeaked and hugged me, then showed us to our table, and scurried off. She returned moments later with two big glasses of prosecco for us, which was wonderful. My friend had a card for me, so I put that and the card from the job, on the table and we had an amazing lunch. My good mood wasn’t even spoilt when the heavens opened as we left the restaurant and we got soaked to the skin on the walk home.

I went to work the next day dreading handing in my notice. I hate confrontation and don’t like letting people down. I felt so guilty about leaving so soon, especially when I knew how long they had advertised the job before I came along. The manager wasn’t there so I spoke to the deputy manager, and she was absolutely fine about it. They had wondered if I was coping physically, so it came as no surprise, and they were genuinely happy for me that I’d found what appears to be such a good fit. To say I was relieved is an understatement. I didn’t want any unpleasantness over my last few days, so it was nice they were so understanding.

When I went back to work on Thursday I had no idea how many more days I had to work. I knew I was still on probation so only had to give a week’s notice, but I had said I didn’t mind working out the month as it was only one more week. I also had no idea how much holiday I was owed, if any. It turned out I was owed two days, so I was told that Thursday would be my last day as my next two shifts – Friday and Tuesday, were the holiday owed to me. So that was it. I walked out of work Thursday afternoon with very mixed emotions. No, the job hadn’t been a good fit for me, but I did like my colleagues very much and I will miss them. I have promised to go back and see them, and I am going to make good on my promise to donate a copy of each of my books to the staff room so they can read them – because unlike my colleagues at Dreams – these ladies are readers and are very interested in my writing.

So, that is that. An end of an era. I have worked in retail for six years, but I can’t say I’m going to miss it. No more targets or pressure to achieve them. No more being controlled by the counter over the door and being held accountable if too many people came into the store without being sold to. No more working weekends, bank holidays, or Christmas. I can take a holiday whenever I choose, I just won’t be paid for it. No more performance reviews or being taken to task for perceived failures due to circumstances beyond my control. No more customers snapping “I’m just looking”.

No, I will not miss retail at all. This new job could be life-changing for me as it will give me the time I need to really work on my writing career.

I commence my new job on the 7^th of August and for the first two weeks will work four days each week so I can be trained. As it is now only the 21^st of July, that means I have 17 glorious days off work to rest and recuperate. Franki and Rys arrive on the 31^st so we will have a week of relaxation together before I start my new job, which is wonderful.

What will I do with myself? Well, tomorrow my official birthday shenanigans take place, and I am anxiously watching the weather forecast because the whole day will be mostly outdoor activities and after weeks of lovely weather it is set to break, and heavy rain is forecast for … yep, you’ve guessed it … tomorrow! Yesterday, the forecast was that it would rain at 1pm on Saturday, but today so far has been a lot nicer than forecast and when I checked the forecast again, the rain tomorrow has been pushed back to begin at 7pm, so we might get away with it. We will need to pack raincoats, suncream, and an umbrella. Well, we Brits are used to preparing for any kind of weather.

The fun will commence with a lovely lunch with five of my friends in the fab garden of a local gastropub, then we’ll trot down to the Abbey Gardens with our garden chairs and hampers, for dessert, drinks, and nibbles whilst watching a performance of The Taming of the Shrew. Really, really hope it stays dry for that. The gastropub garden is all under cover with heaters, so that bit is fine, but there is nothing worse than huddling in layers under an umbrella watching drenched actors trying to emote as the rain hammers down and dilutes your prosecco.

Although the decorating is now all finished in the two rooms, I am still trying to furnish the boxroom and that is proving problematic. Because space (and money) is tight, I have had to research thoroughly which bedroom furniture will fit and it has to come from Argos because I have a store card with them, and they will give me a long interest-free period if I put everything onto one order.

Which I have tried to do.

Oh lordy, have I tried!

Almost everything I wanted was out of stock when I tried to order it all earlier this week.

Would you like us to email you when it comes back in? Argos asked.

Yes, that would be helpful.

Yesterday, at work, my inbox pinged and some of the stuff I wanted was back in stock. Brilliant, I thought, soon as I get home I’ll order everything.

Nope.

All were out of stock again.

I thought about it, had another look, and substituted the bedroom furniture with different furniture that was in stock. Tried to order it. Nope. Half the stuff could be delivered, the other half had to be picked up in-store. Okay, fine, Argos. Have it your way. Let’s split the order. Deliver the heavy stuff and I will go and collect the lighter stuff from the store.

I tried to use my store card.

Nope.

This order must be paid for upfront via PayPal.

What the heck…?!

I tried again, and again, and again. Nope, Nope, and Bugger Off. I tried phoning the customer helpline. It was gone six, so no one was there.

I looked at the order. The bookcases apparently were at my local store, even though they weren’t available for home delivery. Fine. I took down the numbers of the bookcases and all the lighter stuff like the blinds, bedding, etc. I checked stock at my local store. Yes, they were all there ready for me to collect any time from 8am onwards.

Friday morning, the first day of my time off, I was up and out the door by 8am. I drove to the big supermarket that houses Argos. All the tills were shut. We don’t open until 8:30am the signs announced. Then why the bloody hell did your website say 8am, I thought.

I drove to the next retail park and parked. I needed a sheet set for the bed so thought I might as well pop into Dunelm Mill whilst I was at this end of town. I waited until 8:30am when I thought the shop opened. I went to the doors. Nope. They didn’t open until 9am.  I was not hanging around another thirty minutes just to get caught in rush hour traffic.

I drove back to Sainsbury’s and by now Argos was open. Containing how frustrated I was, I spoke to the young assistant, and she punched in the first item number – the bookcases – that the website had confidently assured me were available at my local store.

These are out of stock, she said, and I stared at her in hopeless frustration.

But it said on the website you had them.

Ah, did it say that, or did it say order and collect them from here?

What’s the difference?

The difference is we won’t have them in stock until you order them. Did you try home delivery?

Yes, I replied through gritted teeth. They were out of stock, which is why I’m here.

Oh, well, I can order them to be delivered to this store for you.

So, let me get this straight. I can order them to be delivered from the warehouse to the store, but not to my home a mile away.

Yes. Oh, it does sound odd when you put it like that.

It does, doesn’t it? Very odd.

Was there the teensiest tiniest trace of sarcasm in my voice? Maybe.

So, if I order them – and everything else – to be delivered to the store when would I be able to collect them?

Sunday or Monday.

Right, let’s do that then.

So, I came home empty handed but at least the bookcases, blinds, and all the bedding are on their way and hopefully, I will be able to collect them on Sunday.

Once back home, I took the items I had ordered in-store out of my online Argos basket. This left the bed, mattress, wardrobe, chest of drawers, and two bedside units still in there. I tried again to order them, and it let me select a delivery day, but when I got to the payment page I hit the same problem. I couldn’t use my card. It’s crazy, I used it only a few weeks ago to buy my new barbecue and I’ve had an Argos store card for twenty years. I ordered a lot of things over the years and not once have I had this problem.

You have to pay upfront by PayPal, it kept saying.

No, I bloody well don’t.

I phoned Argos customer services.

Please enter your order number, the automated response ordered me.

I don’t have an order number, I growled, because you won’t let me place the order.

I tried all the options I could. Nope. Without an order number, I couldn’t make it through the first line of defence of the automated system. It used to be that when you called the phone was answered by a real live person who spoke to you and everything. So, if you had a question about a product you wanted to buy, or had problems placing an order, they were on hand to help you.

Now, it’s a stupid automaton that won’t let you in unless you have an order number.

I tried phoning the helpline number on the card. This sounded more hopeful. I picked my way through all the options.

Please wait whilst we connect you to an assistant.

I waited.

We’re sorry, it’s not possible to connect you. Goodbye.

And the f*****g machine hung up on me.

I tried again.

And again.

And Again.

AND AGAIN…..

Nope, the same response every time. I’d get almost to the point of First Contact with a human being when AI would disconnect the call.

I tried the live chat option on the website.

An AI-generated response asked me for my order number.

I very politely told it I didn’t have one because I was having problems placing the order.

It asked me again for my order number.

I again explained the problem.

It said it didn’t understand but did I know that I could find most of the answers to any queries I might have on the website?

It told me again to type in my order number.

I politely told it to get stuffed.

I called the card number again. The same thing happened.

I tried again.

Please be aware, a voice told me, that all our calls are recorded for monitoring and training purposes.

I told it to f**k off.

After much googling, I eventually found an email address for Argos customer services. I wrote an email. Read it through. Deleted all the bits telling them what a shit company they are, and that Sweeney Todd had a better approach to customer service than they did, and instead just explained what was happening and asked for their help. Moments later I had a reply. An automated response told me how important I was to them and that they promised to get back to me within 24 hours.

Well, I’m not that bloody bollickingly important to you, am I?

At this point, I gave up and made a giant bacon and egg sandwich for brunch because I hadn’t had anything to eat yet, and quite frankly, only bacon would do.

If I haven’t heard anything by the time I go to collect the other half of the order from the store, I will ask the help of the very nice assistant. Maybe I can place an order for home delivery there and pay with my card.

Honestly, we are talking about a lot of money so you’d think Argos would be falling over themselves to take my order. But right now, there is nothing else I can do, so I am going to put it on the back boiler, finish writing this, then tidy myself up and open a bottle of fruity cider to drink with my neighbours during happy hour. The lodger and I have a standing arrangement to drink wine, eat pizza, and watch a film this evening but we’re going to be restrained this Friday because we don’t want anything to spoil tomorrow – the weather will probably do that all by itself without us adding a hangover and dodgy tummy to proceedings. It’s nice because it’s my lodger’s birthday tomorrow as well as it’s a double celebration.

I had an appointment with the lovely if rather improbably named Doctor Silk on Wednesday. The good news is that my thyroid situation seems to be under control. The bad news is my blood pressure is sky-high.

Is there anything stressful happening in your life right now? Dr Silk asked.

Well, Doc, how long have you got…

Cheers everyone. See you in two weeks.

Julia Blake

Hello Everyone! It’s July already and I can feel this year softly slipping away. Where does the time go to? When I was a child, it seemed days were endless and the summer lasted forever, Now, I blink and it’s the middle of next week.

Last time we spoke, I told you of my ceiling painting escapades and the beautiful floorboards I uncovered in Franki’s old room. I didn’t include any photos so I thought this time I would and here they are. The first picture is of the floorboards in direct sunlight and the second of them in the shade. As you can see, they are gorgeous. And then there is one of the lovely freshly painted ceiling.

I am just about done with the decorating. Franki’s old room has the furniture back in and looks amazing. I won’t be sharing photos on here yet though. I want it to be a surprise for them so I will put the photos on after they’re home and have seen the rooms. So, the middle bedroom is done. There are a couple of tweaks, but on the whole, it’s finished. I have run into a bit of a drawback with the boxroom – Franki’s new bedroom – though.

Space is an issue in there so for the last few weeks I have been looking on the Argos website at bedroom furniture and comparing the dimensions. I finally found a set of furniture that is attractive and compact enough to fit into the space. A small wardrobe, a chest of drawers, and a pair of bedside chests went onto my shopping list. Along with a double bed and mattress, a laundry box, and three narrow bookcases that, slotted together, will fill the alcove in the middle bedroom. All of this plus bedding, a mirror, and a barbecue cover were going to come to quite a bit of money and that is why I want to get them from Argos. I have a store card with them and know all of these items ordered in one go will get me twelve months of interest-free credit. Many of the items were also in the sale, perfect.

Last week I went to order the lot thinking to get them here sooner rather than later. They are flatpack, so I wanted to be able to spread out having to assemble them all. I put everything in my basket and went to finish the order. Nope. Almost everything was out of stock. What?! Everything? I checked again, yep. Out of all the items in my basket, only the mattress, the duvet, and the mattress protector were in stock. Strangely enough, all of these things are not in the sale. I clicked for them to email me when the items came back in stock. So far, I’ve only been notified of two things now being available – the bed and the barbecue cover. Oddly, just as those items came off sale they were miraculously available.

It’s annoying and worrying. Franki and Rys are home on the 31^st of July, and they currently have no furniture in their room. I tried looking elsewhere such as Amazon to see if I could find similar furniture, but it’s all too big to fit in the room, plus I would have to pay upfront for it. I still have a week or so before I have to decide, so I’m holding my nerve and keeping an eye on my list. What’s the betting that the second the furniture comes off sale they will suddenly be back in stock? I did Google the situation and it seems everyone has the same complaint about Argos – nothing is ever in stock. The general feeling seems to be “Don’t have these items for sale on the website if they are not available for the customer to order, Argos.” I will keep you posted.

So, how is my new job going? Well, I must admit I am struggling to cope physically. Standing all day in heavy work boots is killing my knees, legs, and feet. The lifting side of the job isn’t bothering me. I always make sure I lift correctly and yes, I am covered in bruises all the time, but my back and arms aren’t hurting or anything, no, it’s my feet, legs, and knees that seem to be bearing the brunt of it. I am also growing tired of coming home broken, drenched in sweat, covered in bruises, and so filthy I have to climb straight into the shower. I do love the people I’m working with, but is that enough?

Last time we spoke, I told you I was doing the Hidden Gardens of Bury that day and I’m happy to report that a good time was had by all. We met on Angel Hill at 11 and bought our tickets. They were only £7 each and all of that goes to the St Nicholas Hospice charity. The sun was shining but it wasn’t too scorchio and it was breezy. We were issued a map (how exciting) and off we went. As many of the gardens were gathered in the medieval grid about Angel Hill we decided to do all of those first and then break for lunch.

I took lots of pictures, but they’re all jumbled up and I can’t always remember which photo goes with which garden, so I’ll do the best I can, and I hope you enjoy them.

I have done the gardens many times before, but it was the first time for my friends, and I don’t think they had realised the scale of some of the gardens we would be visiting. There would be a small wooden gate or doorway down a narrow street. “Hmm,” you’d think, “there can’t be a very big garden behind that door.” You’d duck your head and enter, and space would bend to reveal a massive garden with towering trees, a large lawn, and mature flower beds. Sometimes though, it was the opposite. A teeny, tiny space that the owners had transformed into a mini paradise complete with a water feature.

One garden was accessed down a narrow alleyway running alongside the house. I had visited this garden before so hung back and let my friends go first so I could watch their faces as they turned the corner at the bottom and the garden was revealed. A mahoosive garden with a long pond and waterfall, several palm trees that soared many feet into the air. A woodland trail with statues and grottos. A couple of different seating areas. A lovely little garden house with a pergola-covered patio. A large lawn – and I mean large. Wandering down to the bottom we found a carport large enough to park at least six cars and a gravel car park that could easily accommodate the odd coach or three. Utterly gorgeous and two minutes away from the bustling town centre. Incredible.

One garden had a pond with a bridge and a mini beach. One garden had a fantastic grotto made of ancient stones and bits of masonry probably salvaged from the abbey. It had nooks and crannies containing animal skulls and candles and all kinds of arcane bits and pieces. It looked used and I wondered if the owners were frequenting this grotto at midnight, lighting the candles, dancing naked, and summoning up demons.

The gardens of the Guildhall – one of the oldest buildings in town and where I had a stall for the Christmas Fayre with my fellow authors in 2019 – and where the U.K.’s first-ever Indie Literary Festival will be taking place (more on that later) – were open. They are beautiful and crammed with amazing flowers. There is also a sensory herb garden which is a delight and a lovely lady in full-on medieval costume (she must have been baking under all that wool) was on hand to explain what the plants were and what they could be used for.

The sheer imagination and commitment to their gardens by all the owners took my breath away. I came away with so many ideas. We managed to see about fifteen or so gardens before we broke for lunch at two. As my friends live close to where the second cluster of gardens was located, we bought some snacks and nibbles from Marks & Spencer and sat in their courtyard to eat and gulp down much-needed liquid refreshments. Revived and refreshed, we set off again and did the four or five closest gardens.

Consulting the map, we realised we’d missed a garden down by the cathedral. I had assumed it was the cathedral herb garden, which is open all year around and we’d seen it before, but no. Not only was it a never before displayed garden, but it was one belonging to this amazing set of houses built into the walls of the abbey ruins. I have seen the outside of these homes and heard about them – they are so protected that you are not even allowed to hang a picture up inside them and must ask permission before doing any kind of decorating or renovating work. The chance to visit the garden of one of these homes – and maybe catch a glimpse of the interior of it – was one we couldn’t miss, so we walked back down to the cathedral. It was a lovely courtyard garden with interesting pots and garden sculptures by a local artist. The cathedral loomed at one side and over the low garden wall was a stunning view of the rose garden in the Abbey Gardens.

We consulted our map again. There was another cluster of four or five gardens about a fifteen-minute walk from the town centre. Was it worth the trudge? We were tired, our legs were aching, and it was coming up to three o’clock and the gardens closed at four. Could we be bothered? One garden offered homemade ice cream. Another claimed it was a tropical paradise. One stated it had been given over to nature – I always think that just means the owners can’t be bothered to cut the grass or weed – and another stated it was “just a garden” with usual garden features. This modesty intrigued us, so we decided in for a penny, in for a pound, we might as well finish strong.

We took our time wandering the backstreets and admiring the architecture, front gardens, pots, and hanging baskets. I’m usually either in a car or rushing to get somewhere so don’t have the time to appreciate what a truly pretty town I live in, and how much effort and love most homeowners lavish on their properties. Anyway, we reached the gardens and wandered about. Disappointingly, the only ice creams left were made of banana so only one member of our party could indulge, but he said it was delicious. The garden handed over to nature did exactly what it said on the tin and was a haven of wildflowers, bugs, and bees. The tropical garden was astonishing and there was even a little added-on indoor tropical wall in the conservatory that was magnificent.

And as for the garden that was – “just a garden with the usual features” – well, if that was just a garden mine is a hole in the ground. Little paths twisted away through shrubbery higher than the average man. Within the shrubbery were things of interest – a family of white porcelain pigs, a tiny pool with a fountain, a mysterious door leading to Narnia perhaps, a little table and chairs, an interesting statue – it was all rather wonderful.

And then we were done. We hobbled back into town and stopped at mine, I poured glasses of water for us all which my friends gulped down as I got in my washing, fed the cat, and grabbed a cardigan and a bottle of wine. We then walked back to theirs and sat in the garden. We had thought about going out to eat but were so exhausted we couldn’t face it so ordered a Chinese takeaway instead which we ate in the garden. Then the firepit was lit and we sat around in the deepening dusk, drinking wine, gazing into the fire, and telling stories. It was the perfect end to the perfect day.

The next morning, I was wind and sunburnt, and my legs, feet, and calves were aching, but it was worth it. I pulled on my scuffs and set to with the final push of decorating.

And now about the festival I mentioned earlier. I am very proud to announce that the Writers of Bury & Beyond have organised the very first literary fringe festival ever to be held anywhere in the UK. It will be happening in Bury St Edmunds on the 7^th and 8^th of October. For two fabulous days, the town will be host to extremely talented indie authors (including me) along with several independent publishing companies. All things indie in the book world will be showcased, along with workshops and Q&A sessions, book sales and signings, and many other interesting and informative things.

This is beyond wonderful, and I am so excited to be a part of it. As more events are announced I will of course, keep you all updated and if you live anywhere near or fancy visiting for a weekend of indie books, then book your accommodation early to avoid disappointment.

What else have I done since we last spoke? Well, my cherry tree cropped and last Wednesday I began picking. The tree needs a good haircut so many of the cherries were too high to reach and I must admit, I was a little disappointed at how few I got. Spotting my neighbour over the fence, I asked if it was okay if I came into her garden to pick the cherries I couldn’t reach and of course, would give her some. Receiving her consent, I took my bowl into her garden and couldn’t believe my eyes. Four massive branches reaching almost to the ground were draped over the fence into her garden and they were simply dripping with fruit. So, that’s where all my cherries were, in her garden! I picked and picked and picked. In all, I got almost 20lbs of fruit off that tree this year. I gave 4lbs to the neighbour – or rather, I left my full bowl on the ground and ran to answer my door when I heard the doorbell and by the time I came back, she’d found the bowl, assumed it was her share, taken them indoors, emptied the bowl, washed it up, and replaced it on the ground. So, that was that.

I made delicious frozen cherry yoghurt. I also made cherry compote to go over ice cream, and I will dig out my old recipe for ice cream and try making cherry ice cream, and, of course, I will be making cherry vodka and brandy this year again.

The tree desperately needs cutting so I will make sure the tree surgeon does something about all the fruit-bearing branches over the fence. I’m not being mean, but I would like to have some of the fruit on my side.

I think that’s it. So far today (Saturday) my niece called around for coffee and to drop off my birthday presents – I turn 56 on Monday – and collect her presents – it was her birthday last Monday. Honestly, June and July are full-on months for me. Both my parents have birthdays, as do I, my niece, my lodger, and two friends. It was also Father’s Day in mid-June.

This afternoon I have a video chat planned with an author friend, which will be nice. Say what you like about technology, but it does help to keep people connected. On my birthday I am going out for lunch with a friend, and then there are all sorts of other shenanigans happening during the week culminating with a big lunch outing plus Shakespeare in the park on Saturday. But I will tell you all about that next time – and I may have an announcement – or I might not. It all depends on what happens next week.

Anyway, take care, everyone.

Julia Blake

Hello everyone from beautiful sunny Suffolk in the very East of England. Well, summer is here. The heatwave I wrote about last time stuck about for a good ten days, during which we Brits got very hot and sweaty and moaned a lot. Leave us alone, it’s our national pastime. We have no air conditioning and the heat here is a horrible, muggy, humid heat that leaves you rank and sweaty and makes sleeping a nightmare. Thankfully, it seems to have cooled down slightly to a balmier 25 degrees. Hopefully, it will stay like this for the rest of the summer with the odd downpour to water the garden and keep the farmers happy.

What have I been up to since we last spoke? On my next day off, Wednesday, I had a blood test booked at the hospital. Doctor Silk wants to see what’s happening with my hypothalamic levels. The way he explained it to me is if the levels have improved but not enough, then we will know the medication I am on is correct, but the dosages need tweaking. If the levels are the same or have even decreased then we know it’s the medication itself that needs to be changed.

It was a bright sunny day, so I set off to make the twenty-minute walk to the hospital. I always walk if I can. Parking at the hospital is a stressful, expensive procedure and the walk is through the rather beautiful water meadows and down shady footpaths so it’s a nice walk. Also, if it’s a blood test I’m going for – and it usually is – then a brisk walk beforehand gets my blood pumping, and they can find a vein easier. I pulled on my comfy sneakers, as it was such a warm day I didn’t bother with socks. Big mistake. Huge mistake! By the time I reached the hospital, I was in trouble. After the blood test, I set out for home. By now I was limping, and every step was agony. I stopped at the shop to buy some bits and bobs and picked up a large box of plasters – I had a feeling I was going to need them.

By the time I reached home, I was whimpering with pain and almost in tears. Peeling off my not-so-comfy sneakers, I winced at the state of my poor feet. Ten screaming blisters where my toes used to be. Both heels rubbed away to nothing. Lines of blisters down each side of my foot. I dressed my feet, trying not to think about the fact my sneakers were now full of my blood. Does anything hurt more than blisters? This happened over ten days ago, and they still hurt, especially one on the second toe of my right foot. That one went quite nasty, and I had to clean and dress it every day.

Lesson learned. Socks are the way to go unless the shoes are well and truly broken in.

Regular followers on Instagram know I have embarked on yet another round of decorating. This time the boxroom is being transformed into a beautiful new bedroom for Franki, and her old bedroom into a sitting room/library/spare room.

Well, work has gone on apace in the boxroom. The plumber came and moved the radiator to a different wall. This is to allow space on the wall behind the door for furniture. He also bought a signed copy of Black Ice for his wife, which was nice.

I’m trying to keep costs down, so I poked amongst all the various pots I had left over from other decorating projects and found almost a whole tin of universal interior surface primer. Hmm, I thought. The boxroom is indoors and it’s the surfaces I need to prime, so I’m sure it’s fine. It went on thick and helped even out the old rough plaster. There was just enough in the tin for two coats. After that, I had enough of the grey paint left to do two good coats and one thin coat on the walls. It looked lovely. Even though it is the same colour as I painted in the middle bedroom – Franki’s old room – because of the different light it looks more blue-grey. I didn’t have enough to paint the radiator the same colour as the walls, but I did have some thick cream interior wood and metal paint, so I slapped on a couple of coats of that. It smartened up a rather old and stained radiator and it looks very elegant against the grey.

Now for the floorboards. I had intended to sand them down and simply put a clear varnish on them. I borrowed Dad’s hand sander and had a go. Whilst it did remove the larger blobs of paint, it didn’t do much else other than hurt my hand. I looked up the cost of hiring a sander. Very expensive. And all the dire warnings about how dangerous they could be, put me off. I looked at how much the varnish was going to cost. A lot. I thought about it. I poked about in the box of odds and sods of paint and stuff. Half a tub of pale grey wood paint was left over from doing a makeover on the Welsh dresser and basket unit last year. Hmm, I thought.

I painted a test patch where I knew the big rug was going to go. It looked good. So, I painted all the floorboards. It still looked good. It looked better than good. I let it dry for 24 hours, then put on another coat. The pale silvery grey bounced light all over the room. It was smooth underfoot and had covered up all the splotches of ancient paint and different shades of varnish. I let it dry for another 24 hours. I found a tiny tin of clear indoor varnish in the box. That was enough to do half the room, then I painted the other half with some clear lacquer I found. Left them to dry for a couple of days and considered it done.

Wednesday, my day off, I laid down cardboard all over my beautiful new floorboards and lugged everything from the middle bedroom into the boxroom. I then paid a visit to my parents to borrow their stepladder and take over the chest of drawers that was in Franki’s old room. Over Christmas, I painted it and the matching bedside cabinet cream and grey. They had already been gifted the bedside cabinet because it ended up surplus to requirements. I swapped the chest of drawers for a simple wooden storage unit that holds four stacker boxes. It used to be Franki’s toy chest when she was a little girl, then it went to my parents and now it’s coming back. I’m going to paint it, get smarter new storage boxes and it will be the new stand for the tortoise enclosure.

I must admit I’m very tired of decorating. I feel it’s all I’ve been doing for the past year. I’m fed up with the house being upside down. That’s the thing when you decorate one room, it has a knock-on effect in the rest of the house. The carpets end up bitty with dust and bits of wallpaper and other detritus that sticks to socks and gets trodden through. I find it upsetting to live in an untidy and dirty house. That’s why last weekend I made a real effort to tidy, cobweb, polish, and vacuum thoroughly the ground floor. And on Monday I took apart my bedroom, cleaned it, and put it back together again. I was horrified at what I found under my bed. Forget dust bunnies, I had dust dinosaurs!

Once it was all done, it was so nice to sleep in a clean room. At least when I’m in bed I can forget about the state of the rest of the upstairs.

Okay, apologies if it’s the time on Sunday when my blog usually drops into your inbox, and it wasn’t there. Once again, I ran out of time and had to finish it Sunday morning. I am finding it hard now that I work every Thursday and Friday to fit everything in.

Friday morning was the time I always wrote my blog but of course, now I have to work, and even if it’s a shift that doesn’t start until 11:45 I still seem to have lots of other things to try and fit in. Take this Friday, for example. I needed shopping, so Thursday evening I did my shopping online and booked a 9-10 collection slot. When I got home from work Thursday – as usual filthy – I loaded up the car with miscellaneous bits of rubbish that needed taking to the skip and booked a slot for 9:30am Friday.

Friday I was up ridiculously early – my body has made the unilateral decision that sleep is something I no longer require, at least not very much of it, so total exhaustion is now my default state. I showered, then spent an hour catching up with necessary paperwork and correspondence and I wrote a book review. I left at 9:15 and went to the surgery to collect my prescription. Then I bombed to the recycling centre and gained immense satisfaction hurling the rubbish into the large skips. There was the old barbecue, a tatty wicker laundry basket, broken bits of trellis, and sundry other bits of crap I’d unearthed when clearing the bedrooms. I’ve been to the skip so many times over the past year it’s a wonder they haven’t issued me a loyalty card, or maybe points off in the shop. I am always tempted to go and look in the shop but have resisted. I’m getting rid of my own tut so don’t want to spend money bringing other people’s tut home with me. Out it all went. On the way home, I stopped at Tesco and collected my shopping. I was home and the shopping was unpacked and put away by ten.

To be fair, I did then sit down and manage to write about half of this blog, but then it was 11 and time to get ready for work. It’s so weird, although I was only doing a six-hour shift I find they drag on for longer than an entire day. The afternoon felt endless, even though I was busy for all of it. I don’t know if it’s because it’s purely manual work and I’m bored, or what it is, but I honestly feel time moves differently at work. Anyway, I left off at 5:30 and drove home. The neighbours were already gathered in the street, glasses clutched in hand, so I quickly had a good wash and got changed – I’d even had the foresight to hang up clean clothes in the bathroom before going to work – poured myself a glass of wine and went to join them.

Thirty minutes later, my lovely lodger came home, poured herself a glass of wine, and joined us. My legs were shaking. I stand on my feet all day at work so by the time I get home I’m physically wiped out. We chatted for a while, then came in and put pizzas in the oven – I’d included a couple in the Tesco shop and my lodger paid me for them.

Friday night is shaping up to be our pizza, wine, and TV night, which we both enjoy, but this Friday I was exhausted. The sleepless night, the early start, the long day, the physical exhaustion, and then wine on an empty stomach, and a big meal, all combined to make Julia a very sleepy girl. I struggled to keep my eyes open, but by 9:30 I was done. I apologised and made my weary way to bed.

Saturday morning, I could not get going. Despite the fact I’d had several hours of sleep, it was like my body wanted more. I pootled about until gone eleven, hanging out laundry and catching up on social media. Giving myself a good talking to, I pulled on my scruffs and went to paint the ceiling of Franki’s old bedroom. I have been trying to remember the last time it was painted, and I think it must have been when I decorated the room when Franki was away on a five-day school trip in the last year of primary school. We were still in the three-tier school system then, so they would have been about eight, so twelve years ago.

I didn’t think it was that bad, but thought whilst I had the stepladder, no furniture in the room, and the carpet was going to be ripped up, I might as well. Especially as I still had a third of a big pot of that ceiling paint that is supposed to go on pink and dry up white. Regular readers will remember that I have never had much success with this paint and that I always struggle to tell which bits I’ve painted and which I haven’t.

Oh, my word, not this time! From the first stroke of paint, I realised precisely how disgusting the ceiling was. I’m not sure why, I mean, it’s not like we ever have a fire in that room, no one has ever smoked in there, and it’s not the kitchen so no cooking fumes, but it was grey and dingy. Not only could I see easily where I’d painted, but the light coming through the window made the paint look pink – quite a vivid pink, which stayed pink for a long time – such a long time I wondered if it was going to stay that colour. It didn’t, it’s now a beautiful clean white.

Yesterday highlighted how much this thyroid issue is kicking my butt. Paint a ceiling? No problem, give me a couple of hours and I’ll have it done. Not this time. It took me hours. I kept resting every time I had to move the ladder. I was having to force myself to keep going. But I persevered and by three in the afternoon, I had a gleaming, clean ceiling to show for my four hours of work. I desperately wanted to stop, but I had to get the carpet, underlay, and grippers up. My brother is coming on Monday to put more sockets in there, so it all had to be up by then, and I was going out for the day on Sunday.

Gathering together my flagging energy, I set to with a Stanley knife and sliced the carpet into sections and pulled it all up, rolling it up and dumping it on the landing ready to be taken down to the car. I pulled up the underlay. Despite being a lot older than the underlay I’d taken up in the boxroom, I think this was a lot better quality because it didn’t disintegrate into sandy dust, thank heavens.

The room was carpeted in 1996 so I had no recollection of what the floorboards were like underneath. I fully expected that I would have to paint them as I had the boxroom boards. To my delight though, as the underlay came up stunningly beautiful boards were revealed. A glorious riot of shades of honey and caramel, they gleamed in the late afternoon sun. Absolutely delighted, I pulled up all the gripper rods, then made endless trips to get everything down the stairs and into the back of the car. One more trip to the skip on Monday and then I’m done. Well, for now, anyway.

I swept the boards and examined them closely. All they will need is a good wash and then a single coat of lacquer to make them glow and seal them and that’s it. They are so beautiful I honestly don’t know why I covered them up. All I can think is that I was with my husband then and he wasn’t so keen on the “natural look” as I am. And yes, no two boards look alike but that is why I love them.

By now it was almost six and I was beyond exhausted, I was also very hungry. Rummaging in the freezer I found a couple of homemade sausages left over from the barbecue along with a hotdog roll, so I popped the sausages in the oven whilst I swept up the biggest chunks of carpet and underlay, fed the cat who was threatening to leave a bad review on TripAdvisor due to the lateness of her evening meal, had a quick shower, then ate dinner in front of some thriller or other that, to be honest, didn’t really sink in. The lodger was away for the night, so at nine I switched off all the lights, locked the doors, and went to bed. I did read for about thirty minutes, then sleep dragged me under, and I knew nothing until almost seven this morning, when I got up, made tea, fed the cat (again), and sat down to finish our chat.

I am allowing myself a day off today. Once a year, several gardens in town open their doors and let the general public in. The Hidden Gardens of Bury has been running for decades – I remember going with my mother when I still lived at home – but my friend and fellow local author, Rachel Churcher and her husband had never been. I am meeting them on Angel Hill at eleven to buy our tickets and then we shall wander about gorgeous, quirky, and imaginative gardens for the day. I imagine food and drink will be involved at some point. The sun is shining, and the forecast is promising a lovely balmy day, but not too hot, so walking about will be a pleasure, not a sweaty torture.

Before then I do have things to do. My bed is already stripped, and the washing machine is on. I have almost finished writing my blog. I need to shower and have breakfast and, if there’s time, get a coat of varnish on the middle bedroom door. I need to take an overflowing bag to the bottle bank and dispose of the evidence, then pop into the shop for more varnish and some bubble wrap – I have things to sell on eBay and need it to wrap them. Then I shall wander down to meet them and give up the rest of the day to enjoyment. Don’t worry, I shall take lots of pictures. They will go up on my Instagram feed and I will share them with you all next time. I’m not working tomorrow so can relax and simply enjoy whatever the day brings.

As for tomorrow, well tomorrow I will make the most of having my dad’s stepladder and get down the muslin at the front windows and wash them, and clean all of my windows inside. My house is Victorian so ridiculously high windows that I can’t reach the top of without a ladder. My brother is coming to put in more sockets. I will need to go to the skip, and hopefully, I will get another coat of varnish on the door and maybe even a coat on the skirting boards but that will depend on what time he comes and how long he is here.

And then Tuesday I shall be back to work, sigh.

One day, my life will not be this endless exhausting round of chores and work. One day. But at least today is a day of fun, so I better go and get on with it. Have a wonderful Sunday and I look forward to chatting again soon.

Julia Blake

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads, stepdads, grandfathers, brothers, uncles, and godfathers, who are positive male role models in a child’s life. We see you and appreciate you.

I am sorry that A Little Bit of Blake is on the drag today – usual story, I ran out of time and ended up finishing it Sunday morning. I’m up early anyway because I didn’t sleep much last night. It was so noisy outside that I kept being woken up. There were drunked up clubbers going home at two who were incredibly loud. There were rude noisy gulls who screamed their heads off all night. A truly horrible sound – it was like a cat was being tortured. A road sweeper decided that 5:30am Sunday was THE time to sweep our street. There was a group of lads larking about at six. In all, I managed about four hours of very broken sleep so eventually at seven I gave in and got up.

I went to make tea but what was left of my milk was a solid lump in the bottom of the carton despite still having three days left before its expiry date. I don’t know what’s going on, this is the third time I’ve had to throw away milk that’s become cottage cheese. And I know the lodger has thrown away a couple of cartons as well. Luckily, I picked up another pint yesterday, but I did peep at the lodger’s milk, and it was suspiciously thick so that’s gone as well. Is it just the heat? Although surely in a fridge that shouldn’t matter. Or is there something wrong with my fridge?

Hello Everyone! It feels like a million years have passed since we last chatted and I have so much to tell you I don’t know where to begin! Bed, tooth, new job, it’s all happening here. Okay, deep breath. First of all, as so many of you have sent concerned messages, I will begin with the tooth.

It’s out. I had my first day at work on the day after my last blog (Monday) and mentioned to my new boss what the situation with my tooth was. I asked if I could have my shift patterns for the next week or so because I needed to book an appointment to get the tooth out.

Just book the next appointment they have, she told me, and we’ll work around it.

Good start, I thought. During my lunch break, I phoned my dentist.

I can see from your notes that it’s an emergency, the receptionist told me, so we can fit you in at 4:40 tomorrow afternoon.

I booked it, then went and told my boss.

Okay, she said, that means you’ll need to start at 8:15am so you can leave off at 4pm. Is that okay?

Absolutely, it was. I was just grateful the appointment was sooner rather than later because I was now in serious discomfort.

On Tuesday, I left work at 4pm and hurried home to wash, change, and rush to the dentist to make my appointment. He stuck a big needle in my gum – which I didn’t like – and then, when that didn’t numb the area enough – he stuck another one in. And then he took the tooth out. And I did not like that one little bit.

Practically standing on the arms of the chair, he wrenched and wiggled that tooth with a pair of mole grips. I could feel the tooth grinding and moving in the socket and then it was out, and I was rinsing and spitting out blood, lots of blood. He stuck a cotton ball in the hole and told me to bite down. I did. A couple of minutes later it was soaked through, so he put another one in. He gave me a prescription for antibiotics – stamped this time, I checked – told me to take ibuprofen for the pain, have soft food for a few days, come back and see him if I had any problems, oh, and I must start seeing the hygienist because the rest of my teeth and my gums are in a shocking state and I will start losing them if I don’t get them professionally cleaned. Yep. At £80 for a twenty-minute session.

I paid, then walked back into town. Did I have any soft food at home? I didn’t think I did. I was passing Marks & Spencer, so walked in and grabbed a basket. Wandering the aisles in a daze, I didn’t know what I wanted. Soft food. Where was the soft food? I was beginning to feel very peculiar. My face was throbbing, and I was trying to keep the cotton ball in the hole. I could taste blood trickling down the back of my throat. I needed to go home, but I needed soft food first. I threw a couple of tins of soup in my basket and one of rice pudding. There was a deal on Italian ready meals – three for £9 – so I picked out a mac’n’cheese, mushroom risotto, and spaghetti bolognese, figuring they were soft. I went to the tills. They were quite busy, so I queued at the least busy one. An elderly lady was taking her sweet time unloading her trolley onto the conveyor belt.

Oops, she said. I’ve forgotten something, you don’t mind do you?

And before I could say, that yes, actually, I did mind, and could she please either hurry up or let me go before her, she’d disappeared.

I waited. The cashier caught my eye and gave me a disapproving glare. I imagine with my jaw tightly clamped, and my expression one of disgruntled pain, I probably looked like I had a resting bitch face.

She’ll be back soon, he said, and I nodded. I couldn’t speak because I was afraid the cotton ball might fall out or I might dribble blood like some kind of horror film. She came back with the focaccia bread that apparently she couldn’t live without. The cashier put the rest of her things through – and then the blinking woman couldn’t find her purse.

I wanted to kill her.

Sorry about that, the cashier said, after the woman had finally packed all her shopping and left. Do you need a hand packing?

I had to respond somehow, so I shook my head.

Nah, I muttered around the cotton ball. Juss had toof taken out, can’t speak, hurts.

Oh no, he said, his whole attitude changing now he knew I had a valid excuse for looking like a grumpy toad called Karen. You poor thing.

He whizzed my things through in record speed, I paid and left. I still needed to get to the pharmacist and collect my prescription and some painkillers. I reached the door of my usual chemist just as they turned the sign to closed. Because the old lady had taken so much time faffing about with her shopping it was now 5:30pm and the shops were shut.

In a slight panic, I realised that thankfully, Boots the Chemist didn’t close until six, so I scuttled in there and stood in the very long queue for the pharmacy. Why are there always queues everywhere you go?

Eventually, it was my turn. A bit afraid they might not have the antibiotics I needed again, it was a relief when the pharmacist just nodded and disappeared out the back to get them. I didn’t get home until gone six. I’d been up since 6am, pretty much on my feet since then. I’d done a full day’s work, rushed about, had a tooth extracted, and then had to walk to buy food and pick up my meds. I was done for.

Reaching home, I was shaking with cold and starving hungry. I looked so bad my lodger was quite concerned about me. I put the heating on – in June!!! – and then warmed up the soup. I ate the whole tin. I was still famished. I cooked the mac’n’cheese and ate it all, it was actually very tasty, but I was still hungry. I warmed up half the tin of rice pudding, and then I was full.

I huddled on the sofa, watched Netflix, and then toddled off to bed at ten. By then the numbness had worn off and my jaw hurt a lot, so I took the pain meds and hoped I’d sleep.

The next morning, trying to peer into my mouth in the mirror, I could see a dark black blob of something had formed in the hole where my tooth had been. I Googled tooth extraction and read that it was normal for a blood clot to form to protect the exposed nerve and bone. That I was to leave the blob alone and not “jiggle the jelly” otherwise I might dislodge it and get something called dry socket which sounded horribly painful and something I’d rather not experience. I have taken great care not to jiggle the jelly and luckily, ten days later, it seems to be healing nicely.

The next thing to tell you is about the bed. You remember the bed. That mahoosive hotel-style king-size bed which had been relocated to the tiny boxroom. Well, Wednesday morning I put it on the local Things For Sale website. I was hoping to get at least £750 for it, so I put it on for £900 because people like to haggle over the price. Bought new, the bed plus mattress and all the bedding would cost £2000. It is less than six months old and has hardly been used, so it was a bargain, I thought. Anyway, less than thirty minutes later I had a message from someone with an Eastern European-looking surname.

I buy the bed, the message announced. I pay you by transfer now and will collect it this evening.

Oh, umm okay, I responded, somewhat taken aback. Don’t you want to come and view the bed first?

No, no, I have seen the images, it is all fine. Please send me your bank details.

Just to check, you do realise you will need to dismantle it and get it downstairs? Do you have someone with muscle to help? Will they have the right tools?

To each of my enquiries, they sent a thumbs up.

I hesitated. I was pleased to have sold it so quickly and for the full amount, but something wasn’t sitting right with me. It all seemed a little too quick and easy. And who simply drops that amount of money without at least glancing at the product first? But there wasn’t a lot they could do with my bank account details other than pay me, so I sent them my name, sort code, and account number.

A few minutes went by, then …

Please may I have your email address?

Umm, why?

I need your email address to pay the money into your bank.

No, you don’t.

Yes, I do.

No, you really don’t.

Your bank is saying it needs your email address to verify payment.

Since when? My bank never asks for an email address either when I’m receiving payment or making one.

They sent me a screenshot of an odd-looking form asking for the payee’s email address and my spidey senses went on overload.

That’s an odd form, I messaged back. I’ve never seen one like that before. I’ll call my bank and see what they’re playing at.

No, I don’t have time. You give me your email address and I send money straightaway.

I ignored this message and called my bank and explained the situation to them.

Absolutely not, they told me. Do not give them any more information. With your bank details, email address, and home address they will be able to find out your full name, your date of birth, your maiden name, and even your mother’s maiden name. They can then apply for buy-now-pay-later credit on big-ticket items and the first you will know about it is in nine months when the company takes payment from your bank account.

We live in a sick world where you have to be on guard against this kind of crap on a daily basis. Anyway, my bank put an alert on my account to be on the lookout for suspicious activity, and needless to say, I did not receive any more messages from the “buyer”.

Thursday morning, I had a more sensible message from a genuine-looking buyer. They knocked me down to £800 and made no offer to pay until they came that evening to look at the bed and dismantle it. In the afternoon, the buyer called me to get my address and it was arranged they would pay by PayPal upon inspection of the bed. Anyway, he and his mate arrived in their work van, and he looked at the bed, pronounced himself happy, and attempted to pay me.

Now, I’ve used PayPal many times, it’s quick, safe, and easy. Not this time it wasn’t. The website glitched, it didn’t want to know, and the payment wouldn’t go through. The guy phoned his wife, who looked at their PayPal account and said the payment hadn’t been activated for some reason. The guy had brought cash with him as well, just in case, so he paid me with that, they finished loading the bed into the van, and off they went.

An hour later as I was eating my dinner, my phone pinged with a notification that I had received a payment of £800 from PayPal. I texted the guy and told him I’d refund it, and could he let me know when he received it. This time, PayPal took an hour to send the money back to him. Honestly don’t know what was wrong with it, but at least it all got sorted in the end.

I am very relieved I hadn’t paid the full retail price for the bed because it would have been gutting to get so little back for it, but at least it was gone, and the next stage of decorating could commence.

I couldn’t do anything Friday because I was at work. So, Saturday I was up bright and early and pulled up the carpet and underlay. It was a baking hot day, so I was wearing very little but still got hot and sweaty. Now, I don’t know if you have ever taken up underlay, but it disintegrates into a very fine sand-like dust that proceeded to stick all over my sweaty body. It was like I’d been tarred and feathered. I then had to lug all the carpet and underlay downstairs so the whole house was gritty underfoot with the stuff.

I piled it all in the car, then started pulling down the bookshelves. They were flimsy and not very well made so it didn’t take much, but it took lots of trips up and down the stairs before it was all down and then I only just managed to squeeze it all into the car.

I needed a shower. Boy, did I need a shower. I had booked a slot at the local recycling centre – it’s so posh now you have to make an appointment – but I had time for a quick shower to wash all the dust and bits of underlay and carpet fluff off me. At the recycling centre, there were lots of sweaty people unloading hedge trimmings and various garden sundries, so I guess the nice weather had people tackling outdoor chores put off since last summer. After I’d heaved all the broken bookshelves and rolls of carpet and underlay into the skips, I went grocery shopping and treated myself to steak with all the trimmings and red wine for dinner. Well, I was celebrating my first week at my new job, selling the bed, and being A Very Brave Girl about my tooth – and I was tired of soft food, I wanted something I could chew.

Now, about the job. I’ve been there for two weeks. Am I enjoying it? The people, yes. They are lovely, friendly, and funny. The job itself? Hmm, bits of it are fine – I love all the different tiles and I’m enjoying learning about their functions and uses. I’m going to be taught to cut, lay, and grout tiles, which I’m quite excited about. It is a lot more physical than I was expecting and I am going home each evening broken, drenched in sweat, filthy, and covered with bruises. Hopefully, I will toughen up. But it’s early days and I will wait and see how things progress.

This week on Wednesday and Thursday which were my days off, I pulled up all the gripper rods, stripped off all the wallpaper, washed all the walls down with sugar soap, and filled and sanded all the holes and cracks in the walls and ceiling. I then went to the recycling centre again to get rid of everything – honestly, they’ll be giving me a loyalty card at this rate.

Friday – long, hot, sweaty, exhausting day. It was our delivery day, so I and the other new girl spent the whole day lugging bags of grout, packs of tiles, and assorted tools off the delivery pallets, checking and putting them away. Drove home at 5:30 desperate for a shower. One of the bags of grout had leaked all over me so I was covered in white powder. Reaching home, all the neighbours were out in the sunshine clutching drinks and chatting. Going into the house, I saw that the lodger wasn’t home yet, so I shot into the bathroom, stripped off my filthy uniform, and dumped it in the laundry basket. I didn’t have time for a shower, so I had a good wash instead, then realised I didn’t have anything to put on. Never mind, I thought, the house is empty, I’ll just dash upstairs and get changed.

Clutching a small hand towel to my chest, I exited the bathroom and ran straight into the lodger. There was a lot of shocked shrieking, and I shot upstairs as she covered her eyes, laughing like a drain. Once respectably clothed, we wandered outside with bottles of drink and chatted with the neighbours for a while. I’d been on my feet all day though, so my legs were shaking with tiredness by the time we came in. As neither of us had dinner plans, we ordered a pizza, cracked open a bottle of wine, and watched Sense and Sensibility.

I had so many plans for Saturday, but it was one of those days where everything took longer than it should have. I had sold something on eBay so had to go to the post office – on a Saturday, shudder. And it was worse than I imagined it would be. The queue was out the door, only one assistant was serving, and only one of the automated machines were working. I tried using that, it got so far then told me I had to wait for an assistant. WTF?! What is the use of using the damn thing if you still have to wait for an assistant? I looked around. There was only one assistant, and he was currently trying to deal with a queue that was bigger than my future.

I waited patiently – well, that’s a lie, I waited very impatiently – but nope, he was showing no signs of coming over, so I marched over to the till, bypassing the queue, and interrupted him, informing him that the machine had got stuck and was demanding assistance. To be fair, he did come over and get it going again, but then the machine didn’t print my proof of postage with the parcel tracking number. Without this, I would have no way of proving if the buyer had received the parcel or not. Back to the head of the queue I went, over he came again and banged and fiddled about with the machine until it reluctantly coughed out the receipt. I did apologise to the queue, and they were all good-natured about it. Our post office is a joke. They don’t pay their staff enough and make them work under shit conditions. This means they are frequently without staff which causes queues of biblical proportions and an average wait time of almost an hour to send off a parcel. It is seriously quicker to drive to my parent’s village and use their post office.

Anyway, now running late I shot into Waitrose to grab a few essentials and four bottles of artisan beer for my dad for Father’s Day. I did try to write my blog yesterday, but only managed about half of it before I had to dash over to see my parents and take my dad his gift and card.

And now it’s Sunday morning, almost nine and I’m just about done with all my news. It’s shaping up to be a lovely day although it poured with rain overnight and I heard a couple of rumbles of thunder – maybe that’s why the milk is off. Lying there listening to the rain hammering down I thought how it would at least be watering the garden and washing my car. Then I remembered all the cushions had been left out on the garden chairs and my heart sank. They take days to dry out properly and then stink of old fish because the foam is wet.

So, plans for today? Post this blog. Have breakfast. Then get changed into my painting clothes and dilute some white paint to put a base coat on the boxroom walls. If it dries quickly, which in this heat it probably will, I might even get the first coat of grey paint on as well. There is the ceiling to touch up and tomorrow I will get the second coat on the walls. If it dries in time, I shall lightly sand down the floorboards ready for varnishing. And then I’ll be back to work.

What an exciting life I lead. I wonder at anyone wanting to read this blog.

Have a great Sunday and I will chat with you again in a fortnight.

Julia Blake

First, I apologise for the lateness of this blog. I held a barbecue yesterday for eleven people. Do I need to say anymore? Anyone who has ever had a barbecue knows what sheer hard work they are. I have been busy all week planning, shopping, cleaning up the garden, and preparing for eleven people to sit in my garden and eat meat cooked over an open flame. It always makes me laugh when men airily tell their partners – let’s have a barbecue, it’ll give you a night off cooking. Umm, no it doesn’t. A takeaway does or going out to eat. A barbecue creates an unbelievable amount of work and worry. Anyway, more about the barbecue later.

What a manic, crazy, up-and-down fortnight it’s been. Okay, where did we leave things last time? ***hastily casts eye over last blog*** Ah yes, I had a secret. It was a nice one though – Franki surprised me earlier in the week with the news that they were coming to stay for two weeks. One week just her and then their partner would be coming to stay for a week. The reason I couldn’t tell you was that although my parents don’t follow me on social media, they do read this blog, and Franki wanted it to be a surprise.

Franki’s train was arriving just before five on Sunday evening and the plan was to nip straight to the village where my parents live and surprise them with a brief visit. It is only a ten-minute drive to my parent’s house, so no worries.

The train arrived on time and as I hugged my offspring I realised how much I’d missed them. We jumped in the car and set off. I don’t normally go via the station side of town to my parents so didn’t realise they’d blocked access through another village until I got to the no-entry sign. I did a three-point turn in the road, and we had to drive through the new housing estate. It added a six or seven-minute delay to our journey, but never mind. Pelting through another small village, I indicated right to get onto the main road leading to my parent’s village – big barriers and road closed signs. What the actual?!

Yellow diversion signs took us off into the wilds of Suffolk. Going miles out of our way, we weaved through villages sleeping in the late Sunday afternoon sun. The road narrowed and I honestly had no clue where we were. The diversion signs did what diversions signs usually do … led us to the middle of blinking nowhere and then buggered off. Relying on Google Maps on Franki’s phone we popped out of a tiny county lane onto a bigger one and I suddenly recognised where we were. The next village over to the one we wanted; we would enter the village at the other end to where we normally do. Time added to our journey – twenty minutes.

And were my parent’s surprised? Very. We had a nice visit and then set off for home. Now I knew about the road closures and where exactly they were, we took a different route home that only added an extra five minutes to our journey, but it was still gone seven by the time we got home. A “quick trip to surprise Nana and Grandad” had taken two hours, but there were mussels in white wine and garlic and French fries for dinner which cooked quickly, and we didn’t have to be up early the next day.

Monday was earmarked to get down all the contents of the top cupboards in my bedroom and pull out the storage boxes from under my bed. It’s all Franki’s old toys and dolls that we put into storage when they were only thirteen – so still emotionally attached. It was a lot of stuff, taking up a lot of space, and I was hopeful that viewing it with the more objective eye of a nineteen-year-old, Franki would be able to bring herself to let some of it go.

The first large box we opened contained close to forty, stark naked Barbie, Ken, Liv, Bratz, and Disney princess and prince dolls.

Aye, Aye, I said. What’s going on here then?

With many a side trip down memory lane, we examined and sorted through all the boxes. Some things were damaged or worn to the point where they were of no use to anyone. A few things were put aside to sell or donate, and a few things were deemed too precious to get rid of so were carefully packed away again. At the end of the day, I had taken a carload to the local skip, we had two bags of books to go to the local charity shop, and some books had been given to the lodger’s little grandson and the baby of Franki’s old friend.

We sorted through almost sixteen years of Franki’s education and selected those few things that either had to be kept or were too seeped in memory to let go. Everything was packed back up into the top cupboards and space was gained, so the mission was successful. There was also steak for dinner with all the trimmings, so we felt it had been a very productive first day.

I thought we would have so much time together to simply relax, but what with appointments Franki had and people she wanted to see, that first week flew by and then we were off to the station to pick up their partner from the afternoon train.

About the bed situation – the week it was just Franki sleeping in the small box room on the mahoosive bed, I think they managed okay with the reduced space, but the minute another person was thrown into the mix it became apparent that the bed was too big for the room. I can’t see any other option but to try to sell the bed and mattress, plus the super king duvet, and all the other bedding that will now be of no use to me.

If I can’t sell the bed I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do. Does anyone want an amazing hotel-style king-size bed plus a very comfortable combination pocket spring and memory foam mattress? Included are matching bedside cabinets with double USB ports that light up in the dark. There are two massive drawers that roll out on wheels and extend almost the whole length of the bed. Also included is a super king “Just Like Down” duvet and two super king duvet covers with matching pillowcases, two king-size mattress protectors, and two king-size fitted sheets. To buy new, this lot would cost £2000. I’m asking £900 ono. Less than six months old, barely been used. Buyer collect. If anyone is interested, please message me.

I do have some bad news in that my toothache came back. I was aware of it gradually getting worse so I made a dentist appointment and went to see what could be done about it. As I thought, the tooth will need to come out. I’m on more mega-strength antibiotics to try a bring the infection down enough to extract the tooth, but because I don’t know my new shift pattern yet, I was unable to book an appointment to take the wretched thing out. Whilst at the dentist, they took an x-ray to see what was going on with the tooth. Now, I’ve had x-rays before – having a mouthful of mercury fillings means they need to keep an eye on me in case they start leaking – but this time they took me to a tiny cupboard filled with a complicated and alarming-looking machine. Gingerly, I climbed into it and inserted my face where I was instructed. The dental nurse then scrambled out of the cupboard and shut the door – which didn’t worry me at all. An American voice issued instructions, lights flashed, and then it was over, and the nurse took me back up to the dentist.

Now, I’m no medical expert, but even I could tell looking at the X-ray that things were amiss. There was the tooth that was giving me the problem. The last tooth at the back on the bottom left-hand side. A dark blob had consumed half the tooth and the dentist said it was a nasty abscess. Then next to that tooth, there was another tooth, further back.

Hmm, said the dentist, in his thick South African accent. Do you see that?

Yes, is that another tooth?

It is.

But I don’t have any teeth further back than the infected one.

I ran my tongue over my gum to check. Nope, all was smooth and flat back there.

It is one of your wisdom teeth, and look … He pointed to the four corners of my jaw. See, here, here, and here. All of your wisdom teeth are buried under the gum. They have not come through, but instead have impacted so far into the jaw they have calcified and form part of your jawbone.

Oh, I said. I wasn’t sure how to process the news. I have always assumed that I didn’t have wisdom teeth. After all, none had ever come through, I’d never suffered any pain from them, and I have been going for regular dental check-ups all of my life – you would have thought a dentist would have mentioned them at some point.

What do we do about them? I asked, nervously.

Well, you have two options. The first is to go to the hospital to have them removed. They will have to break your jaw in four places to get the teeth out. The gaps in the jawbone will have to be filled and bolted together which might change the shape of your face. It will be painful and time-consuming. And expensive.

Right, I said. And option two?

Leave them be. They haven’t bothered you for so many years that they are not likely to now. The only thing you will need to be aware of is that one blow to the jaw, one punch, fall, or severe knock could shatter your jaw like glass.

I see. I thought about it. Does this mean I need to give up the cage fighting, I asked.

What? Yes! Immediately.

I looked at him.

He looked back.

Then he looked at his nurse who was laughing, then back at me.

Ah, I see. It is a joke.

Leaving the dentist, I went to the pharmacy to fill the antibiotics prescription. It will take about ten minutes, I was told. In a lot of pain, I sat down and looked through my phone. Getting engrossed I was unaware of the passage of time until I suddenly realised that an awful lot of people who came in after me had collected their medication and gone.

Excuse me, I said, standing up and walking back to the counter. But I’ve been sitting here for over thirty minutes now and you said the prescription would be ready in ten. Is there a problem?

Oh, yes, the dentist hasn’t stamped the prescription so we can’t do it.

What? I was stunned. So, you let me sit there for half an hour waiting for a prescription you had no intention of making up?

Umm, sorry, we’re busy, and …

Yes, I’m busy as well, Too busy to waste thirty minutes. Why on earth didn’t you say something?

Well…

Are you telling me I have to walk back to the dentist to get it stamped? What is this stamp anyway? Some kind of medical release or something?

No, it’s a stamp showing their name and address.

I know their name and address, it’s … I then rattled off the information.

We’re not sure if we can …

Look, I’m in a lot of pain and I need that medication. If you told me thirty minutes ago I might have been more inclined to walk back, but now I’m tired and cross and my jaw is swollen and throbbing with pain.

Yes, I know, I was channelling my inner Karen, but I was fed-up and in pain, running seriously late, and frankly pissed off that they’d let me sit there all that time when a simple – oh, this isn’t stamped – when I handed them the prescription, was all that was needed.

I think they realised this could escalate beyond an incident into a “nastiness” and meekly wrote the dentist’s name and address on the slip.

And do you know, forget the original ten minutes they told me it would take – they managed to fulfil that prescription in one minute, Just goes to show that they can be quick when they try.

Next day off I will book an appointment to get the tooth taken out. Oh, and I must book a blood test – they need to check my thyroid levels. And I need a haircut.

How is it possible these two weeks have gone by so quickly? Looking back, each day was full but I’m not sure what with.

This evening we are popping to the neighbours for bubbly and nibbles to celebrate their 50^th wedding anniversary, and then we have a games and Chinese evening planned with the lodger. And tomorrow it is the Barbecue.

And yes, it is Barbecue with a capital B.

What was originally intended as a simple catch-up with friends and family Franki wanted to see whilst they were home, has grown and grown and grown.

I sent messages to the people we wanted to see. What days/evenings do you have free between the 29^th of May and the 3^rd of June? Back came different days – no two matched. I tried again, individually contacting people to see if these were the only dates they could do. Everyone was adamant. Nope, they were only free on those dates – they were very busy people, didn’t I know?

I sighed. Resigned myself that rather than doing everyone at once, we would need to do people separately. A few could do the 3^rd, and as it was a Saturday it made sense to focus on that day and then slot the others around on dates to suit them. Okay, I text everyone, we’re having a barbecue on the 3^rd, it’s such a shame you can’t come, but we can arrange to see you another day.

Back came several messages.

Barbecue?

And suddenly, everyone was free. Yep – every single person who’d claimed they were so busy the only times they could do were an hour or so on the 28^th or possibly the 2^nd – mysteriously had windows open up on their schedules. Funny that. Anyway, it was nice that everyone could come on the same day. So now there’s a barbecue for eleven people happening in my tiny garden on Saturday. Everyone has kindly offered to bring booze and meat and I have bought everything else. I’ve probably over-catered because I always do.

Thursday I planned to spend most of the day in the garden getting it guest ready. One job on the list was cleaning the barbecue. Does anyone like this job? I have an old built-in barbecue which hadn’t been cleaned since last summer. It was filthy, rusty, covered in spiderwebs and all manner of weird creatures lived underneath it. Taking a deep breath, I approached it. It was going to take me hours. The grill was disgusting. Normally, I put old towels down in the bath and clean it there – but I have a shiny new bathtub now so didn’t want to do that.

Sod it, I thought, I’ll buy a new one. I went back inside and looked online. Barbecue to be delivered today? With one click of a button, it was mine. Now I just had to get the old barbecue dismantled and clean out the space ready for the new one to go in. It was gross. I was storing paving slabs underneath and when I began pulling those out worms wiggled away, snails and slugs were startled, millipedes scurried, and mahoosive spiders glared at me angrily. A robin flew down and surveyed the squirming pile of worms. He cocked his head and looked at me as if to say – are these going begging? Help yourself, I told him, and he did. He plucked the largest one and disappeared with it, coming back a couple of minutes later to grab another.

At the end of the day, I was filthy and exhausted, but the garden was looking amazing. Too tired to even think about dinner, we had a takeaway and then the barbecue arrived, which caused Franki a troublesome hour as it proved to be a nightmare to assemble. Requiring tools I didn’t possess, we did the best we could.

The weather so far this week has been horrible. Cold, overcast, and windy. We’ve needed the heating on most evenings because we’ve been so cold, and I have been worrying about Saturday. But, the weather forecast is promising hot, hot, hot, so – fingers crossed.

And then Sunday Franki and their partner go back to university, and I won’t see them again until late July. But I will be so busy those two months will fly by. What with starting a new job, various health issues, and hopefully decorating the two bedrooms – if I sell the bed, of course. Will I have much time to write, probably not. Oh, and that reminds me – Rambling Rose, volume three of the Perennials Trilogy, will be leaving Kindle Unlimited on the 4^th of June so now is your last chance to read it for free if you have a KU subscription. Don’t worry if you think you won’t have time to read it before it leaves Kindle Unlimited – so long as you don’t delete it from your library, so long as you have downloaded it before then you can read it at your leisure. The universal link for Rose is on the books page of this blog.

Saturday morning, I was awake at four because apparently sleeping is something I don’t do anymore. I knew I’d be very unpopular if I got up at that time, so I lay there and thought about everything that needed to be done before the guests arrived at one – and then at six I got up, had a cup of tea, wrote my long to-do list, then began to work my way through it.

I worked consistently and steadily through the list – only pausing to cook an omelette which I ate standing at the kitchen counter – I just kept going. At about ten, Franki her partner got up and started doing things off the list. I’d forgotten the bread to make garlic bread, so they popped to the shop to grab some. Finally, all was complete, and it was twenty to one. I hastily put on make-up, brushed my hair, and got changed into something more party in the garden appropriate.

Texts began to arrive – we’re running late, we’re running late… Okay…

Finally, people began to arrive, and we were off. For the first two hours of the party, I did not sit down. I was dashing about bringing out food, taking meat to the barbecue to be cooked by the men, taking cooked meat into the house to put into the hot trolley, throwing away rubbish, washing up, topping up drinks, bringing out things I’d forgotten. Sensibly, I stuck to soft drinks feeling sheer exhaustion, running on four hours of sleep, and an empty stomach was probably not a good mix with alcohol.

At first, it seemed we had way too much food – and it’s true there are leftovers – but not as much as I thought there would be. The main thing I have left over is cheese – so, so much cheese. The hard cheese I can put in the freezer, and the soft cheese I will put in sandwiches to take to work for my lunch this week.

I think it was a success. I think everyone had a good time. The afternoon and evening passed for me in a haze of tiredness. There was a lot of clearing up and the garden this morning looks like a troop of inebriated trolls passed through it. I’m not sure where to begin, so I’m having a cup of tea and finishing my blog.

Franki and her partner need to be taken to the train station at ten, so they need to be up soon as it’s gone nine. The two weeks have flown by. We did plan to have lots of time to rest and relax, but, as usual, so much had to be crammed into the time that we are exhausted. Once they have gone, I will spend the rest of the day trying to clear up my bomb site of a garden, clean the kitchen, and prepare to start my new job tomorrow. It still doesn’t seem real. I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the fact I’m not going back to my old job. I hope I’ve made the right decision. I think I have, but only time will tell.

And now it’s almost nine-thirty, so I need to see what progress has been made in the packing department. Take care everyone, and I look forward to chatting with you all again in two weeks.

Julia Blake

Good Morning! My goodness, haven’t these past two weeks flown by? I have been so busy that I practically met myself coming backwards and my stress levels have been at tsunami level. Firstly, what is happening regarding the new job situation? Well, as you know, I handed in my notice two weeks ago. There were some complications about when I was leaving and how much holiday I was allowed to take, but eventually, HR told me 27.5 hours. Looking at my rota though, they have only allowed me 25 hours, so I have been emailing people trying to find out where the missing 2.5 hours have gone and why I am being made to work them. HR passed the buck squarely to the guy covering as manager – they still haven’t found a new manager yet – so I emailed him. He is in the wind though and now no one will answer my emails so I assume I will have to just accept that they have stiffed me those 2.5 hours. Will I be paid for them? Who knows. I don’t even know how much of my commission I’m going to be paid. Some of it? All of it? None of it? I suppose I will have to wait until I get paid next week and see what I get. It will be very unfair if I lose the commission on sales I made which are not scheduled to be delivered until after I have left, but I don’t suppose there will be anything I can do about it.

I don’t know the starting date for my new job yet, some time from the 1^st of June onwards is all I know. But I have dropped off all the paperwork they needed, so everything is in hand.

Now, the lodger. Well. As I told you last time, the lovely lady came and viewed the room and later said she wanted it and would like to move in the following Friday. As a parting gift, my old boss had given me five days off over the bank holiday weekend so on Monday I made a start dismantling beds, boxing up stuff, and moving furniture.

There were three beds in all to move. The giant king-size bed in the basement was going upstairs to the tiny box room. The single daybed already in the box room along with the desk, bedside cabinet, and small bookcase needed to be moved into Franki’s old room. Then, the small double bed in Franki’s old room needed to be moved down to the basement – along with a desk and chair, a bedside cabinet, and a small armchair.

I got up early and made a start. I had assembled the single daybed and the wooden small double bed, and they both came apart like a dream. I cleared the box room and moved as much as I could by myself.

Then I heaved the mattress off the king-sized bed in the basement and started to take it apart. My dad was coming Tuesday afternoon to help move everything so I wanted to be as prepared as I could be by then. Six bolts were fixing the wooden slats to the base. Five came out with no problem, but the last … the last flatly refused to budge. They were the type of fixings you need an alan key for and I knew I was using the right one because I’d already taken out the other five fixings easily.

I kept trying. Nope. I put my glasses on and had a closer look. This bed was assembled by two burly delivery drivers who clearly didn’t know their own strength. Peering at the fixing, I could see they had overtightened it so much they had mullered the inside of the fixing so there was nothing for the key to grip onto and so it went round and round, going nowhere.

Bugger.

I kept trying and trying. Nope. I swore. A Lot. That didn’t help either. I fetched my toolbox and tried every tool and gadget I could think of. Nope. By this point I was sweating like a pig and using language a sailor would blush to know. There was nothing for it, I was going to have to confess to my dad I was being a right big girl’s blouse and needed help.

Complicated arrangements were made for Tuesday.

Since the death of my dad’s old van, my parents are a one-vehicle family which, owing to their very diverse interests and past times, can lead to issues. Dad was playing golf in the morning, but Mum needed the car for some sort of church thing, I think. Dad’s golf partner who lives in Bury had offered to pick him up and drop him off so he could still play golf. It was arranged that the partner would drop Dad off at mine after golf. As this saved him from driving out to the village my parents live in, he was more than happy with this new arrangement.

Meanwhile, Mum would call around between her church appointments and drop off Dad’s tools ready for the afternoon. As a thank you, I offered to cook us all a nice roast lamb dinner to have after we’d successfully moved everything.

Monday evening, I placed my order on Tesco for everything I would need and booked a collection slot between 8 and 9 the next morning. I aimed to be as close to 8am as possible because I knew I had a busy day.

Tuesday – I was up and hit the ground running. By 9am the shopping was collected and unloaded, and a shoulder of lamb was roasting in the oven, along with potatoes and parsnips which I took out just as they were starting to crisp and set aside to cool. There was also a lovely wedge of Cambozola squelching on the cheeseboard for later.

I had social media to sort, emails to reply to, and more stuff to box up and move. Once the shoulder of lamb was cooked, I wrapped it in foil and left it to sit for a while. I then carved it into slices and placed it in a casserole dish. I made a thick gravy with the juices and covered the lamb completely and put the lid on. It would now only take about twenty minutes to reheat in the oven.

By now, my dad had arrived, so I made him a cup of tea and we sat in the garden to drink it and allow him a bit of a rest – he had just done 18 holes of golf, bless him.

I can’t get that bed apart, I told him, once we’d finished our cuppas. He took his toolbox and went down into the basement. Approaching the fixing with a confident grin, as it refused to play ball with him either, the smile slipped. Although I wanted the bed to come apart, I must admit to being secretly pleased it wasn’t just me being a girl, that the fixing was shagged (a technical term, apparently.)

He tried tool after tool, muttering things under his breath, eventually we had to chisel away the wood of the slat around the fixing and slip it out. It won’t affect the stability of the bed in any way, and we had no choice. This bed HAD to be moved.

Next, we had to get it out of the basement. The stairs up are narrow and there is a sharp turn at the top. It went down, but the headboard has two wings which were bolted on after it had gone down those stairs. We tried to bring it up without unbolting them. We got the headboard out. Just. With Dad pulling and me shoving underneath, we inched it up step by step and managed to angle it into the kitchen and then straight into the dining room. It was awkward getting it up the main stairs, but not as tight as the basement stairs had been and we got it into the box room where it filled all of one wall. I looked at the bulk of it and gulped. I prayed my measuring had been on point.

The rest of the bed came out easily and we assembled it in the box room. It fits, but the room is full of bed and there is only a narrow gap all the way around. I don’t think it’s practical for long-term use – there is nowhere for suitcases and travel bags to be stored when Franki and their partner come home. There is no room for even a chest of drawers, let alone a small wardrobe. I honestly think I will have to sell this mahoosive bed – lovely though it is – and buy a more sensibly proportioned double bed.

We heaved the king-sized mattress up to the dining room and left it there whilst we got on with everything else.

Then we moved Franki’s old small double bed down into the basement. Compared to moving the king-sized bed it was easy and went together like a dream. The small double mattress was an absolute pig to move though. Containing over 4000 springs and layers of wool, it weighs a ton despite only being a 4’ mattress. We heaved and grunted and strained to get it downstairs. I had taken the precaution of taking the pictures off the wall, but as we were shoving the mattress downstairs I heard a rip. Oops. Once down and in the basement I examined the mattress. A tiny hole had been made by a picture hook, but it is tiny and right in one corner where the pillow will go so it won’t affect the lodger sleeping. We brought down all the bits of furniture to go into the basement, then spent twenty minutes or so moving it around until we found an arrangement that worked.

The last thing we had to do was get the king-sized mattress up the stairs and into the box room. I was pulling it up and Dad was underneath shoving. It wedged in the stairwell and caught on the hall ceiling. It was just too wide to go up. We pulled and grunted and shoved and wiggled it. Nope. It did not want to know.

We rested for a minute, gasping for breath. Sweating and spent, I could not believe we were stuck on the final furlough.

It’s not going to go up, said Dad.

It f*****g well will, I snarled, and then I went all Hulk on it. Yelling and cursing, I gave an almighty yank and the mattress lumped up a step and then another. Flakes of ceiling paint fell, scraped off by the side of the mattress. It’s fine, it needs painting anyway. Together we pushed and pulled and strained and we got that bollocking thing up the stairs, into the box room, and onto the bed.

I thought I’d broken my poor dad. I hurt all over. Later, when I got ready for bed, I would discover I was covered in bruises from head to toe.

We stopped and gulped down glasses of water and I noticed the time; it was coming up to 4:30 and I knew Mum would be around soon. I turned the oven on to heat and took the partially cooked potatoes and parsnips out of the fridge.

Whilst Dad took a much-needed rest confessing he felt a bit tired – I wonder why! – I laid the table, prepared the veg, and slid the meat into the oven to warm through. The potatoes would only take ten minutes to finish roasting and the parsnips even less than that. I drizzled some honey onto the parsnips and put Port Salut and Cornish Tickler extra mature cheddar onto the cheeseboard. I washed and dried grapes and put them on the board as well. I opened a bottle of wine to breathe.

I then popped up to the box room and made the bed so we could see how it looked.

It does look good, well, it is a lovely bed, but it is far too big for that tiny room, and yes, it does have two massive drawers underneath, but you can’t fit suitcases in them. I need a double bed frame with space underneath to store bigger items.

I slid the potatoes and parsnips into the oven and put the veg on. I’d washed and scraped baby carrots, put peas on to boil, and put a portion of braised red cabbage from the freezer into the microwave to heat through. We poured out wine, dished up dinner, and sat down to eat. I was so hungry, and everything tasted so good. Best of all, there was enough to plate up two more meals for the freezer.

I hadn’t bothered with a dessert, instead, we had a simple cheeseboard with soft French bread and Cornish salted butter and fresh fruit. And it was all delicious. Dad and I were exhausted but satisfied with a good job done. And done just in time. I was at work on Wednesday and Thursday, two long days which wouldn’t leave me with any time to do anything, and then Ms E was moving in on Friday. She told me that it wouldn’t be until the afternoon, so that gave me time to clean the bathroom and kitchen, vacuum the ground floor, and make sure the room was ready for occupation. The rent money plus the damages deposit arrived in my bank Friday morning so we were all good to go.

She turned up with a lot of stuff and I did wonder how it was all going to fit in, but one advantage of my room and – as she later told me – one of the reasons she liked the room, was that it does have lots of storage.

Her daughter and her daughter’s partner helped her move in, so I stayed out of the way and left them to get on with it, only emerging to give her the key and show her how it worked. They disappeared off to have dinner, and I settled down to eat mine. It felt odd to have a lodger again and be aware they could come into the house at any time. But I managed to live this way for over seventeen years so I was sure I could do so again. She hadn’t come home by the time I went to bed. I was vaguely aware of her coming into the house at about 1:30am – I guess the celebratory meal stretched into an evening out – but she was reasonably quiet, and I think I was probably sleeping with one ear open just in case she had any issues with the lock.

I wasn’t working on Saturday, so I had tea in bed and read for a while before getting up. There was no sound from the basement, so I assumed she was sleeping off the stresses and strains of moving in plus a late night, and maybe copious amounts of alcohol. The day ticked on with no sign of her and I began to wonder if she was okay. I was also admiring her bladder control. At my age, there’s no way I could sleep until gone two in the afternoon without having to get up at least once to pee.

Finally, at almost four o’clock I could hear her moving about and eventually, she emerged.

I made a pot of coffee, and we sat down and went through a few housekeeping bits and pieces such as where the switch for the outside light was, where the bins were and which was for what, how the appliances worked and where cleaning products were kept, you know, stuff like that.

I asked what she was doing that evening and she said nothing, so I asked if she’d like to share a takeaway and watch Eurovision with me, which she happily agreed to.

It was a nice evening. We shared a Chinese and a bottle of wine. Eurovision was fun and all in all, it was a great bonding experience. I think this is going to work out very well.

Sunday I was back to work and if I weren’t leaving soon I would be in despair. Ridiculously high targets have been set for all of us, but no one is buying. Many days we don’t sell anything or even see any customers and there is a rising sense of panic. The day dragged and I was pleased to come home, especially as I had the next three days off. It’s amazing how much better I have been sleeping on my days off – yet another indication it is work that causes my sleepless nights.

Tuesday was busy because it was the day Mage Quest was due to be released as an e-book. It had been available to buy in paperback for a week and it was wonderful how many people had bought a copy and posted about it. Some had even read the book and already reviewed it. Quite a few pre-orders for the e-book had been placed and on the stroke of midnight on the 16^th the e-book was sent to all those who had pre-ordered.

Was it a success? For an indie author with a zero publishing budget, it was as successful as I expected, although it did get to number 43 in the hot new Kindle releases on Amazon in its category, which was wonderful. I received a lot of support on social media, which is always heart-warming, and I finished the day on a high.

Going into work on Thursday, I was greeted with the news that I had to take a course on the new products coming into the shop, at the end of which there would be an exam. I was stunned.

Really? But I’m leaving soon.

Doesn’t matter, Head Office says you have to do it.

Sigh. I did it. At least it filled an hour in an otherwise long and dead day.

Today (Friday) was another day off and sadly I had a dreadful night sleep-wise. Barely managing three hours in total, when I climbed into the shower at 6:30 I was tired and gritty-eyed. I couldn’t even stay in bed and try to catch up with my sleep because I had to collect my shopping at 9 and had a doctor’s appointment with the rather lovely if improbably named, Dr Silk. I still think he sounds like the lead character in a medical romance novel. We’re trying to get the dosage of my thyroid medication correct because so far it has not made me feel any better at all so it’s back to the hospital for another blood test I have to go.

When I got back there was the shopping to unload and laundry to sort, then I settled down to write my blog because I’m back to work tomorrow and won’t feel like doing it when I get home. I broke at midday to have lunch and then it was time for the Zoom meeting with my local author group. It was a bit sad because it will be the last time I can attend the whole meeting. I have been told by my new employers that one of the days I will probably be working each week is Friday. Depending on when my lunch break is and how the staff room is set up, I might be able to pop in briefly whilst I’m eating lunch, but I will have to wait and see how things work out.

And now it is now. The meeting has finished and I’m sitting at my desk writing to you. The sun is shining through the window, and at 5:30 there is Happy Hour outside with the neighbours. I have a nice bottle of red wine to look forward to and pizza for dinner. I have one more day at work before I have ten days off, so there is that to look forward to as well. The lodger has settled in nicely and book fifteen was successfully launched. There is a feeling of things coming together which is gratifying. I hope, no I believe, that this job change will be good for me. Talking to Dr Silk about the stress I’ve been under he asked me what I did. When I said front-line, commission-based sales, he pulled a face and said – oh, not good, say no more. I understand now why you’re stressed.

I am sure some people thrive working in such an environment and I am good at my job, but it’s burnt me out and I’m done. It’s time to try something else although I can’t wrap my head around the reality of the fact I am starting a new job. It still doesn’t feel real.

Okay, I need to stop now. I do have something else to tell you, but it will have to wait until next time because it’s kind of a secret – I know, another one, but it’s a nice one – and I can’t spill the beans just yet because it’s not only my secret to tell. And on that note, I will say goodbye, take care of yourselves, and I look forward to chatting with you next time.

All the best.

Julia Blake

“The time has come,” the Walrus said. “To talk of many things, of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings.” Well, I’m not going to talk about shoes and ships or sealing wax – and although I did make a big pan of delicious braised red cabbage this week, I won’t be talking about cabbages. Even though I did forget about it and left it in the oven overnight. It was fine, I had turned the oven off, I just forgot the cabbage was in there. I found it the next morning, portioned it up, and put it in the freezer.

And as for kings – I think you’d have to be living on Mars not to know that Britain has a new king and that he is to be crowned this weekend. Today. I have the TV on and the long-winded run-up to the ceremony is happening in the background as I write.

Am I a royalist? I’m certainly not anti-royal. I think the Royal Family play a vital part in making Britain what it is. I think if we ever did away with the monarchy then we’d be reduced even further down the worldwide stage to being some impoverished and insignificant chilly little island off the coast of Europe. Spiralling ever deeper into recession and poverty and dreaming of long-ago glory days, Britain would be nothing. The pomp and circumstance of the Royal Family – despite, or maybe even in spite of the way some of them behave – is what elevates us into something out of the norm.

I feel it would be a shame to willingly throw away one of our greatest assets. I’ve had very strident anti-royals shout in my face about how much they cost taxpayers. Yet, they fail to consider the revenue the royal family generate in tourism, merchandise, and TV revenue. The whole world loves the pageantry that many in this country sneer at. I mean, how many millions of people around the world tune in to watch royal weddings, funerals, and coronations?

Anyway, that’s just my humble opinion. I don’t think the Royals cost us anything. I think they are a self-funding institute that does more good than harm, and honestly, are the anti-royals suggesting another Civil War, for heaven’s sake? Because we Brits did that once and look what we ended up with. Oliver Cromwell. A boring, self-righteous, bible-bashing prude who didn’t like parties or the theatre and didn’t see why anyone else had to right to enjoy themselves.

Hmm, not tempting.

Anyway, the Coronation is happening today and tomorrow it is my road’s street party. Once again, our road will be closed and we will hang bunting and flags, contribute food and drink, and enjoy ourselves despite the weather. It’s not looking good. I cannot believe we’re into May and I’m still having to put the heating on because it’s so cold.

Anyway, I hinted at things happening in my life which will mean big changes for me, and followers on Instagram will have gathered there was something AFOOT.

Up until now, I’ve been unable to say much because nothing was resolved, and I honestly have no clue who reads this blog. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life, it’s that everyone knows everyone and the only way to keep something secret is not to talk about it.

As you know, I told you a couple of blogs ago that my boss had handed in his notice. This was a complete shock to us all. I always thought he was such a company man that if you cut him in half he would have the company logo all the way through him – like a stick of rock. Apparently, he has been fed up ever since the lockdown and has been planning his escape. Whilst I am stunned at this level of duplicity because if I’d tried to keep such a secret inside me for almost three years, I think I would have exploded, I completely understand his motives for going. It started me thinking. I’m not keen on my colleagues. Individually, they are all right. Together they are backstabbing tell-tales who create such a toxic “back to school” vibe, that it has been making me more and more reluctant to go to work.

As our personal sales targets have risen to ever-unrealistic heights, the tensions between my colleagues have also risen. It’s a bit dog-eat-dog, despite our best endeavours to play the team card, and petty jealousies and resentments are rife. It’s stressful and unpleasant. I don’t think I fully appreciated how stressful I was finding work until my boss announced his departure. Suddenly, I realised the one person who acted like an adult and stuck up for me when the others were sticking their knives in was no longer going to be there. I wanted to vomit. This sick, tight knot formed in my stomach and wouldn’t go away. My boss had also been the only one with any understanding or sympathy for my writing. He always arranged the rota, so I had alternate Fridays off to attend my local author meetings. He would arrange my workdays so I could have the odd weekend off to attend book fairs and the like. There was no guarantee that the new manager would be so accommodating. I had the feeling they wouldn’t be accommodating at all.

Now, I dislike change. I resist it for as long as I can. I tend to stick to people and situations way beyond the point when I should have cut my losses and moved on. But. When I decide to do something, I tend to do it immediately.

Within three days of my boss dropping his bombshell, I had reactivated my old account with the online recruitment site, Indeed. Updated and tweaked my CV and had a trawl through the part-time jobs offered to see what was out there. If I was a healthcare worker I had my pick of hundreds of jobs. It was a sobering reflection of the crisis our NHS is facing when they are so short-staffed. Likewise, if I wanted to be a cleaner or work in hospitality. Whilst I would be very good working in hospitality, the pay is shocking and the hours worse. I wanted to improve my working situation, not make it worse. My current job pays very well, and I knew I would struggle to find anything to come anywhere close to my salary.

I applied for a few part-time roles as an administrator and in sales. I even applied to be a paid companion to the elderly. I was offered that job and the hourly rate was good, but they couldn’t offer me enough hours to live on. I went on a few interviews and was offered a couple of jobs – but on closer inspection, there was always something not quite right. The ad stated only occasional weekend work, but in the interview, I am told it was all weekend and every weekend. Or the ad was coy about the pay and when you outright ask it’s shockingly low. Stuff like that.

Anyway, I finally went for an interview at a local tile showroom. Straight away, everything felt right. Fantastic all-girl team that was welcoming, kind, and funny. The interview lasted over two hours and turned into an informal chat at the end of which I was offered the job. Yes, it’s sales, which I wanted to move away from, but it’s not so front-line, heavily commission based. There won’t be the cut-throat need to outperform your colleagues all the time. The shop isn’t open Sundays or Boxing Day – so there’s that. I was upfront and honest with the manager about my writing and my need for the odd weekend off. She was excited and encouraging about my books and said so long as she had enough notice, it wouldn’t be a problem. There were just two drawbacks. The shifts would still be a little bit unpredictable – not as much as where I currently am when I sometimes don’t know from week to week what days I am working, but still a bit uncertain. And then there was the pay. Without the big commission payouts I’d come to rely on, it would mean quite a big drop in income. Too big a drop if I was honest with myself.

Promising the manager I would think about it, I drove home with my head in a whirl. I had the next day, Tuesday, off and spent it thinking and looking at finances. I wanted the job but didn’t see how I could make the money work. The only option was if I did Airbnb. But that could only work if I had predictable shifts and worked the same days every week. It was unlikely I was going to find a job that offered that – not with my skill sets.

Work was … challenging … seeing how excited my boss was as he worked his last few days I grew ever more desperate that once he escaped, the prison door would clang shut on me and that I needed to do something fast.

I kept playing with the sums but couldn’t make them stack up. On Friday, I reluctantly phoned the manager of the tile shop and told her that although I would love to join them, the money just didn’t work. She was disappointed. I was disappointed. It was all horrid.

Work dragged on all the next week. I wasn’t sleeping. I felt sick all the time and on the verge of tears. A crop of hives erupted on the back of my neck. My stomach was … unsettled … if you know what I mean. I knew I was suffering from stress. I talked to friends about it. Things came to a head Wednesday night. I couldn’t sleep. I kept waking up. Finally, at 4am, I got up and made tea. I had the feeling I was standing at a crossroads and only I could tell which was the right direction for me to take. I went over the sums again and realised something. Even if I found this mythical perfect job for the same three days every week, say, for example, I worked Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I would only be able to let the room for Airbnb for three nights – Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. At £50 per night, it would be £7800 per year mostly tax-free. Very nice.

BUT I realised, that was only IF I let the room every single one of those three nights, every single week of the year. How likely was that to happen? After all, there were going to be times I didn’t want to let the room – if I was ill, or away – and times I had no bookings. Wasn’t I simply swapping one stress for another? Trading in a well-paying job for the uncertainty of Airbnb. And then there was the constant bed changing and laundry. Potentially three times a week I would have to completely strip and remake a bed. And I would have to keep the house at a hotel level of cleanliness all the time.

More stress.

Airbnb was beginning to look like a bad idea. Then I thought about taking in a permanent lodger. I know I said never again, but I’d had lodgers for almost eighteen years with a small child and then a teenager in the house. If I could manage it then, surely it would be easier when it was only me in the house. Only two people sharing a bathroom. No noisy child to try and keep quiet.

Hmm, worth thinking about. It would also alleviate the whole “having to be there for check-in and check-out times”, there would be no bed to strip or laundry to do, plus no constant stream of strangers parading through the house. There would be only one person who would quickly become a friend. This would be their home. They would have paid a damages deposit and so were less likely to trash the place or steal anything.

It had been over a year since I’d advertised for a lodger and then the most I could get for my room was £500 per month. How much could I get now? I logged onto the letting website I use and checked out rooms like mine in my area. I was stunned to realise that prices for rooms had risen to £600 per month. About the same as I’d get for Airbnb, and it was guaranteed.

Excitement rose in me. Maybe this was the missing piece of the puzzle that I’d been looking for.

Then realisation crashed onto me. In my desire to do Airbnb, I had bought that mahoosive hotel-style, king-size bed with matching bedside cabinets that now filled the room. Perfect as the room was for overnight luxury stays, it was not set up for long-term living.

Oh, poop. What to do?

I found my tape measure and went down into the basement and carefully measured the bed. I then went upstairs and measured Franki’s old bedroom. Nope. Due to the narrowness of the room, the bed simply wouldn’t fit, no matter which way round I tried it. What about the small back bedroom? Although smaller, it was a box shape. I measured. I measured again. Yes, it would fit. Just. True. It would fill the space – the room would identify as bed – but it would fit.

The day bed, desk, and other bits of furniture in the back room could go into Franki’s old room to create a comfy sitting room/office for her when she came home.

The lovely sturdy grey wooden small-double bed that was currently in Franki’s old room could go down to the basement for the lodger to use. It would match all the colours down there, would provide the lodger with the best mattress in the house, and being more sensibly proportioned, would ensure the maximum amount of living space for the lodger.

It was doable. It was all doable. Yes. It would involve major dismantling and relocating of three beds plus other furniture, but it could work. It could be the solution.

Very excited, I messaged Franki. I needed to run the idea past them. I had promised that they would have the basement and the big bed every time they came home. I needed to see if they were okay with a slight change in plan. In my distraction, I didn’t notice the time. I’d been up since 4am and it was now only 7.05am. I had messaged a teenager at university on their day off at silly o’clock in the morning. It did not go down well.

A snappy reply came back. Then a video call from an irate teenager annoyed at having life-changing decisions dropped on them so early in the morning.

We talked. I explained. I reassured them that there would ALWAYS be a room in my home for them. But, if I didn’t find a less stressful job I would end up in an institute, sucking my thumb, and rocking quietly in a corner. And, if I didn’t find another source of income they would be sharing a cardboard box with me on the streets.

We talked for a while. Compromises were reached. Franki accepted we would put the king-size bed in the tiny boxroom – for now – and see how it worked. If it was ridiculously big for the room, then we would sell it and buy a more sensibly proportioned double bed.

Her terms?

That I did not attempt to sort out and arrange their old room, that they would do it when they came home in the summer.

Deal.

And that in the summer we would make/buy a bigger and better habitat for Poe the Tortoise.

Deal.

I then got ready for work, my head swirling with plans and possibilities. As I drove to work I saw I was a little bit early. The place that offered me a job was in the same retail park as my current place of employment. Much to my shock, as I turned onto the park I found my car turning left instead of right and I parked in front of the tile shop.

Still not quite believing what I was doing, I walked in. One of the girls I’d met before at my interview was standing behind the counter.

Hello, she said in surprise. What are you doing here?

Is the job still available?

Yes.

Umm, I think, can I have it?

A big smile spread across her face.

Yes.

Umm. Okay. Great.

It was arranged that the manager, who wasn’t in that day, would call me the next day to discuss it and I went to work still unable to grasp what I’d done. It felt surreal. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. The next day, the manager phoned, and we had a long chat. She asked what had changed regarding finances and I explained about my plan to get a full-time lodger. I think she was a little concerned until I explained that this wasn’t my first rodeo, that I’d taken in lodgers for almost eighteen years with never a rent-free period.

When I went to work on Saturday, I took my boss to one side and had a quiet chat with him. I confessed I’d been offered a job and he was pleased for me and very supportive. He told me to whom I had to send my resignation letter and how to find out how much holiday I was owed. As I had Sunday off it would be the last day I saw him. We’d all had a whip round and bought him a leaving card and present, which he was touched and surprised by. I honestly don’t think I’ll get anything when I leave – a card at most.

The next day was the Indie Author Fair at St Ives, Cambridgeshire. Four of us were going in two cars and we planned an early start. I was driving and had never been to St Ives before so wanted to allow plenty of time for finding the venue, unloading the car, and then trying to find the car park which we’d been assured was close by.

Loading the car at the crack of dawn, I wondered what the day would bring. It was the first time the fair had been held so it was very much a suck-it-and-see situation. The weather was looking set to be a fine dry day and the roads were empty – it was a Bank Holiday weekend after all. We reached St Ives in good time, found the venue and, to our delight, a row of free parking spaces right in front. Perfect! The early bird catches the free parking spot. As we parked, the other half of our party turned up in their car.

The organisers turned up soon after and led us into the venue explaining that they hadn’t had a chance to set up yet, but if we wanted to leave our trolleys of books in the corner there was a Costa Coffee two doors down where we could go and get a much-needed coffee. Another author whom I knew off Instagram and had video chatted with a few times was also attending – and she too had arrived early enough to grab a free parking spot and join us for a bucket full of excellent coffee.

And what a day it turned out to be.

The organisers were brilliant and super helpful. The other authors were wonderful. The venue was great. And the crowds of people who poured in all day had come for one thing only – to buy books! I talked myself hoarse chatting to people about my books, and I sold, I sold a LOT. When I finally had a chance to add up the cash and card payments I had taken a total of £80 in cash and £194 by card, which is amazing for a small six-hour-long local Fair.

By the time I got home, I was beyond exhausted. The stresses of the past few weeks, not sleeping, the anxiety about my job situation, and the worry about finances, together with the early start, the drive to and from, and the long day being perky and bright, had left me wrung out. I ate something – I can’t remember what – unpacked all my boxes and put them away, then fell into bed for an early night.

Over the weekend, I received an official email offering me employment at the tile shop. This was real. This was happening.

Monday was a Bank Holiday, so the store was busy. We were down a member of staff because my boss had left, so we were kept on the go all day long and I didn’t have a chance to even think about writing a resignation letter, let alone sending it to HR. Besides, Head Office doesn’t work Bank Holidays – it’s only us shop staff that do that. Home, dinner, and another early night. Tuesday was my one day off and I had so much to do, so thought it best to try and get some sleep.

I was awake and up by 4:30am on Tuesday. I had so much to do and one day to do it in. I made tea and made a list. It was a long list. First, write my resignation letter, and try and persuade my printer to print it. It had a stroppy fit because I wasn’t using proper Epson ink. Get over it, I snarled and persisted until it reluctantly spat out the single page which I signed and scanned to my laptop. One copy was sent to my divisional manager with a copy sent to HR. There, it was done. No going back now.

Next, final check of the paperback version of Mage Quest, upload it and hit publish. Final check of the eBook version and upload it. I’ve taken the opportunity to polish Erinsmore as well, so uploaded the paperback and eBook versions of that. It sounds like a quick and simple task, trust me, it’s not. What with all the checking and double checking, and tweaking, and sending it back and forth to my formatter because it needed amending. Finally, it was done.

I made a universal purchase link for the book. This will direct people to the book’s listing on their local Amazon from wherever they are in the world. I also ordered my author copies.

Then I gathered together everything my website designer would need to make the page for Mage Quest on my website and sent it to him.

Then the book details had to be uploaded onto my Goodreads page and an author review written and posted.

I stripped and remade my bed, did two loads of laundry, tidied, polished, and vacuumed the basement. I also cleared the basement of as much stuff as I could.

I made posts for social media promoting the launch of Mage Quest as a paperback, its pre-order status, and the eBook sale on Erinsmore.

I had an hour-long phone call with my parents to update them on everything that was happening in my life – a book fair, a book launch, a decision to change jobs and take in a lodger – there was a lot to tell them.

I’d borrowed the Vax from them because my hall and lounge carpets and a couple of rugs desperately needed cleaning. I set it all up and away I went. Something was wrong. My socks were wet, and nothing seemed to be coming out of the nozzle. Looking down, I realised the pipe carrying hot clean soapy water to the carpet seemed to have a split in it and hot water was gushing out. Bum! I frantically tried to work with the puddles of water on the carpet and scrub it in and then suck the water out. It didn’t work terribly well but it got the worst off. Looking at the colour of the water collected in the base of the Vax, it was clear my carpets were very overdue for a good clean.

I finally ate dinner at gone seven, collapsed on the sofa and binged a bit more Broadchurch – I know I’m ten years late to the party but I’m really enjoying this tense British crime drama series. And then an early night. I was a big bit tired – can’t think why.

Wednesday I was on shift with one of my colleagues. I was unsure whether or not to tell him I was leaving, In the end, I did, and it was just as well I had because HR phoned up about it and spoke to him. That would have been a bit of a shock if I hadn’t already told him. Unbelievably, they are already advertising my job but not as a part-time position. No, it’s being advertised as a full-time role. Nice to know I wasn’t being completely paranoid when I felt pressured to do more hours.

So, it’s too late to change my mind now – not that I want to.

There was just the question of a lodger. Logging into my account on the letting website I use; I scrolled through the people looking for a room in my town. I decided I wanted to try for a female lodger, so concentrated my search on women looking for a room. One, in particular, caught my eye. Almost my age, looking to move because her family live here. Her interests tied in with mine and in her bio, she came across as quiet and respectful. I privately messaged her, along with four other women who seemed suitable.

Two never bothered to reply.

One came back immediately and said thank you for reaching out, but she’d already found a room close to her workplace. I wished her well and that was that.

One replied that she was not going to pay £600 a month for a room and that her budget was £425. I had another look at her list of demands on her bio – off-street parking, her own private bathroom, and a balcony! Jog on, Juliet, that isn’t going to happen, not with the way prices are now.

The original lady I’d spotted came back and seemed quite keen. We messaged back and forth, and arrangements were made for her to come and see the house Friday evening. I warned her that the room was not yet in the state it would be. That it was currently full of bed, but if she could picture the room empty I could show her the bed that would be going down there and the choice of furniture there was to choose from – desk, armchair, TV etc. So, she could effectively customise the room to suit her needs.

Anyway, Friday morning, I scrubbed the bathroom and kitchen until they shone, tidied, polished, and vacuumed everywhere. Had lunch, then went on my author Zoom call. Sadly, one day I know I will always be working at my new job will be a Friday so I will no longer be able to attend the meetings – unless I pop in for an hour during my lunch break. Then it was time for the potential lodger to arrive and what can I say? She was lovely, we clicked immediately. She liked the house, the room, the garden, and I think (hope) she liked me. She left saying she would think about it and discuss it with her daughter – who came to the viewing with her – and let me know. A couple of hours later she texted that she loved everything and please could she move in the following Friday.

Now, I just have to hope my dad and brother can come and help me move three beds and a ton of furniture before then.

There is a feeling of kismet about everything that is happening. I wanted a friendlier, less stressful work environment. One came along. I needed a lodger. One came along. Do I dare to hope that after many years of adversity and bad luck, the wheel has finally turned and I’m on top instead of being crushed in the mud?

I just glanced at the coronation to see Charles being helped into ceremonial robes. I hate to say this, but he looked like someone’s ageing dad struggling into a dressing gown.

And now I must stop. You must be fed up with my ramblings and I need to eat something and make a start boxing up all Franki’s belongings from the back room to keep out of the way whilst all the furniture is moved.

One last thing, Mage Quest ~ Volume Two of the Erinsmore Chronicles ~ is now available to pre-order in eBook format at a special low sale price of only £2.99, and to buy as a stunningly illustrated paperback.

Erinsmore ~ Volume One of the Erinsmore Chronicles ~ is currently on eBook sale for only £1.99. But Hurry. Official launch day is the 16^th of May when both books will go up to their normal retail price of £3.99 each. Both books in all formats are available from Amazon.

Take care everyone and I’ll catch up with you again in two weeks when hopefully I’ll be able to report a smooth arrival of the lodger and that my departure from one job and commencement of a new one is all progressing as it should be.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Julia Blake

Hello Everyone. Yep, another two weeks have flown by, and it is once again time for our chat.  I know what you’re all dying to discover – what happened to Peter the Mouse? Well, the honest answer is, I don’t know. He’s no longer in the bathroom, that I am sure of. I took everything out, scrubbed it down with bleach, and then watched to see if his little “messages” appeared on the floor. Nothing. I wondered if he’d got into the kitchen and then under the cupboards. I wanted to give the kitchen a good spring clean anyway, so I pulled everything out of the tall cupboard where the ironing board lives, climbed in with a torch and checked on the floor down the back. There is a gap where a mouse could squeeze through from behind the fridge and I’ve had mice in there before.

There was evidence a mouse had been there at some point – a pile of tiny poops – but I didn’t know if they were Peter’s, or a past mouse visitor. I cleaned it thoroughly and put the trap down. I even sacrificed some of my Easter chocolate to make it extra tempting. And then I waited. I’ve checked the trap daily and so far the chocolate remains untouched. Looking again this morning, the trap is still unsprung but I think there has been a mouse down there. It’s hard to see – it’s dark even with a torch and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, but I think there are tiny dark pellets down there. I’m not convinced this posh box trap is any good, so I might go and buy some cheap old-fashioned wooden mousetraps again and see if they work any better. But, for now, it looks like Peter still lives.

What else has happened? The answer is, not a lot. Well, obviously, stuff has happened, but some of it is stuff I can’t tell you about. I honestly don’t know who reads this blog and who knows who, so I’m afraid things are going on that I can’t talk to you about – yet.

For the authors out there, as you know, there is more unrest about Amazon and their latest crimes against indie authors. It has long been an issue that if you put your books in Kindle Unlimited then you agree to sell your eBooks exclusively through Amazon. This is fine, but when an unscrupulous hacker gets through Amazon’s lax cyber security and data scrapes your book and puts it up for free on a pirate book site, although it is absolutely none of the author’s doing, Amazon punishes them and punishes them hard, for breaking the exclusivity clause. Amazon shut down the author’s account so they can no longer sell through Amazon. This effectively ends the author’s career because although there are other places where you can sell your books, Amazon is the main marketplace.

Is this fair? No, of course, it’s not. It is Amazon’s fault the eBook has been copied, not the author’s fault. Often, the author doesn’t even know the piracy has occurred – until Amazon tell them their account has been closed with no right of appeal. This has been happening more frequently and has sent a tidal wave of concern throughout the indie community. Thousands of authors are pulling their books from KU and are going wide. Going wide means selling their books via other selling platforms such as Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Google Books, Apple Books etc, and the author is perfectly entitled to do this so long as their books are no longer on KU.

A petition was started to demand Amazon protect their authors better and stop punishing us for acts of piracy which are not our fault, and that we can do nothing to prevent. I signed it, as did over 50,000 other authors, but what happened after that I don’t know. I think Amazon quietly ignored it.

The latest event is even scarier. Amazon is closing down authors’ accounts for no reason – well, a reason is given, the rather nonsensical one that as far as Amazon is concerned, the author has had a KDP account previously. For some reason, this is considered a heinous crime. Now, I know of seven authors this has happened to and not one of them has ever had any other KDP account.

Again, they have no right of appeal and Amazon refuses to produce any kind of proof of this “previous account”. Indeed, they won’t even talk to the authors, instead send terse emails stating that the matter is closed, and no further communication will be entered into.

The axe is falling arbitrarily and it’s terrifying that it could happen to anyone. It could happen to me. This has made me stop and think. Yes, the majority of my pitiful sales come from Kindle Unlimited and I have a few readers who can’t afford to read my books anywhere else but through KU. But … do I earn enough from KU to risk keeping my books in there? Probably not. So, I’m thinking I must remove my books and go wide. I have fourteen books out there – with number fifteen due out in May – it’s going to take a lot of time and effort, and that’s something I honestly don’t have a lot of right now.

It’s a stressful situation and is giving me a headache. Most of the authors I know, and follow, on social media, are leaving Kindle Unlimited in droves. They are scared, and quite rightly so. Then there are the readers who are outraged that this is happening to authors they love, so they are cancelling their KU subscriptions. This is having an adverse effect on how much the authors remaining in KU are being paid for pages read of their books.

And then there are the AI-generated books. For those of you who don’t know what this is, it is the latest leap in technology when AI is churning out books which no human mind has created. Rather they are an amalgamation of words stolen from elsewhere and put together to make a formulaic novel. For people who like to read the same type of book over and over again – think Mills & Boon type novels – then they will not be able to tell the difference between an AI book and that written by a human. For those of us who prefer our books to be unique and imaginative, it is a situation that is filling us with horror.

Kindle Unlimited is already filling up with these AI books. It seems that’s the way it is going and there is nothing to be done to stop it. Yet another reason to remove my books and go elsewhere. Kobo has started a reader subscription service – Kobo+ – which is gaining in popularity and doesn’t have the same Draconian exclusivity laws that KU does. I know a lot of authors are switching to them and who knows, maybe I need to do the same. Perhaps this change will be a good thing. Maybe I will make more money going wide than I ever did in KU, which was admittedly, not a lot.

So, that has happened in the past two weeks. In other bookish news, I revealed the cover and title of book fifteen. Mage Quest is Volume Two in the Erinsmore Chronicles, and the full paperback cover is below.

Isn’t it gorgeous? I love it and can’t wait to hold the proof copy in my hands. As soon as I’ve finished writing this I will be uploading it to KDP and ordering my author proof copy so I can have a final proofread. Once I’m happy it’s all perfect, it will be turned into an eBook and uploaded, and it will then be available to pre-order. It’s looking like the paperback will be launched at the beginning of May and the eBook a week or so later. I know it’s unusual launching the paperback first, but I’ve done it this way for my last two books, and it worked so well it’s going to be normal practice from here on. It gives me a chance to order my copy and copies for my street team so they have them before the official launch day (that’s when the eBook goes live) and can post their reviews and promotional posts with the actual book. I am also lucky that many of my readers prefer to buy a paperback so it means they can receive their copy by the time the eBook goes live and don’t have to wait – which is unfair.

In other news, the Indie Author Book Fair in St Ives, Cambridgeshire is nearly upon us. If you live anywhere near the venue or are visiting that weekend, why not come along and say hello? I will be there, along with three other local authors – Rachel Churcher, Jackie Carreira, and MT McGuire. We will have our books ready to sign and sell, along with bookmarks and other promotional material, and we’re always up for a chat. I was also lucky enough to be awarded a book reading slot at 1:10pm, when I will read a couple of short extracts from Black Ice, followed by a short Q&A session. If you can, please come along. It would be great to see a friendly face in the crowd.

Last Sunday, I had a niggly ache in my left hand, bottom molar right at the back. It was tender as I ate dinner, and I hoped it would be gone by morning. The next day, I awoke to a world of pain. My jaw, throat, ear, temple, and the whole left side of my face were swollen and puffy. It was throbbing with pain and my tooth was wobbling alarmingly in my gum. I phoned the dentist and managed to get an emergency appointment for later that day. Then I popped a couple of painkillers and tried to slurp up a bowl of cornflakes – even though it felt like my teeth were grinding on bone.

It wasn’t my normal dentist – he was on holiday – but a delightful man with such a thick South African accent I struggled to understand through his heavy-duty mask. I explained that this was the fourth time I’d had an infection in the same place over the past twelve years and that my dentist would prescribe me mega-strength antibiotics which would clear it all up super quick. He nodded, then mumbled something about the tooth might need to be taken out. Umm, I don’t think so. I managed a brave smile and said I’d see my usual dentist when he got back from holiday.

Clutching my prescription, I trotted round the corner to the pharmacy attached to my doctor’s surgery. Nope, they didn’t stock such strong antibiotics. They suggested Boots the Chemist. I went uptown, calling in at Superdrug on the way. Goodness, the dispensary exclaimed in horror, looking at the prescription. These are a bit brutal, no, we don’t stock such strong drugs.

I went to Boots and queued for ages behind a lady intent on coughing up a lung into the general atmosphere. No mask, no attempt to catch it in her hand or a hanky or even on her sleeve. Nope, old Cough Candy had a nasty cough and wanted to share. Being British, no one in the queue said anything. We merely rolled our eyes at each other and shuffled backwards several steps. Anyway, after Covid Cora had coughed and spluttered away, it was my turn and the dispenser looked at the prescription.

We don’t stock these, she exclaimed in outrage – almost as if it was crack cocaine I was trying to buy – I suggest you try Croasdales.

I went across the road to Croasdales. By now, my whole face was a painful puff adder mess of throbbing pain, and I was ready to bite the next person who told me they didn’t stock the drugs I desperately needed.

The lady in Croasdales looked doubtfully at my prescription which was a little crumpled around the edges. I’m not sure, she said. These are very strong antibiotics, so I don’t know if we stock them.

Please, I begged, give me drugs, you have no idea how much pain I’m in.

The lady looked at me and her eyes widened. Goodness, she said, you do look swollen. I’ll go and check out the back and see what I can find.

I perched miserably on a chair in the corner of the shop and waited. She was gone for ages. I wondered just what she’d meant by “out the back”. My imagination ran wild as I pictured her stepping out into a darkened alley and approaching a shadowy figure in the corner. Hood pulled over his face, he holds out a hand and takes the grubby notes she stuffs in his palm. Reaching into his pocket he pulls out a pack of contraband street drugs and furtively hands them over …

Here you are, she said, we did have some after all.

I thanked her, paid, and hurried home to take the first dose. I’ve had these before so know the score. Take on a full stomach. Absolutely no alcohol. Take a good quality probiotic with them. 90% of antibiotics prescribed are inert and although they say to avoid alcohol, you can have a glass or two without it causing much damage. The meds I have been prescribed are super-strength live antibiotics. This is why I have to take a probiotic as well because it will kill all the bacteria in my body – including the good stuff that you need to stay healthy. As for alcohol, well I learnt that lesson the hard way the first time I had this infection. Although I avoided alcohol, when my mum offered a bowl of trifle laced with some kind of alcohol I didn’t think and yummed it up, only to be sick as a dog almost immediately afterwards.

I’ve been taking the medication for four days now and it is clearing the infection up although it’s still very painful and my throat and ear are swollen and hurt whenever I swallow.

The last time we spoke it was Easter. I only had Easter Sunday off – much to the company’s disgust they are forced to close that day. Franki didn’t come home this year because she had gone to Cornwall for ten days on a university trip. Keeping me up to date with daily bulletins about her activities, I was rather startled to open a picture she sent me to find it was of my daughter with a very large adder wrapped around her wrist. I don’t like snakes anyway and as I know the adder is the UK’s only venomous serpent I was a tad alarmed.

Don’t worry, she breezily told me, I had a gauntlet on, so it was perfectly safe.

Looking at the picture again, I saw she was indeed wearing what looked like an oven glove. I was not reassured.

We’re in the Cheddar Gorge, she told me, where the largest adder sanctuary in Britain is, so I got to cuddle a snake and have cheddar cheese ice cream. Best day ever!

Hmm, I think this must be some strange definition of “best day ever” I hadn’t previously been aware of.

But, she had a great time and made it safely back to university without the snake – or the cheese ice cream – inflicting any damage. And now I won’t see her until the summer holidays. Thank heavens for things like WhatsApp, Messenger, texting, and video chatting on Instagram so we can stay in touch.

And I’ve run out of things to say and it’s coming up to almost eleven o’clock on Saturday. Time for a coffee and then tackle the chore of uploading Mage Quest. I do know how to do it – after fourteen books I should hope I do – but this is slightly more complicated as I have to create a new series, The Erinsmore Chronicles, and link it to Erinsmore so it shows as Volume One and Mage Quest as Volume Two.

Wish me luck.

Julia Blake