Home improvements… of the mid-life variety
Here are a pair of before-and-after shots of the stairs down into my cellar. See if you can spot the difference. The cellar is where I do all of my writing and a lot of my working. Lately, I’ve found that getting up the stairs in silence has become impossible. I have to make some kind of “H-ups” sound or a grunt or groan as I heave my limbs upwards. It dawned on me a couple of weeks ago, when yet another birthday came and went, that time might finally be upping the price on my joints and their flexibility.
As you can see, Eldest Daughter came to the rescue by ordering those very good-looking silver stair rails that, this weekend, I’ve fixed with my new Bosch drill. I had to replace my existing Bosch drill, which I bought when I built the house, when it packed up. I was slightly miffed about that until I realised that I built this house 22 years ago. Right. So maybe the old drill was entitled to pack up, after all that time? Not sure how all those years managed to slip by quite so quickly. Well, at least enough of me has still not packed up that I can measure, drill and fix the required home improvements that will allow me to keep going when more of me does pack up.
In other news this week, the thriller writer Christopher Fowler sadly passed away on Thursday, aged 69. I’d been following his blog for several years and regarded him as one of those writers worth trying to emulate: he was erudite and very accessible; a writer’s writer, and it is a shame he has gone far too soon.
Regarding my own writing, I have been very much on the back foot of late. The focus of my full-time job has changed for the better but in a way that limits my writing time, and over the winter I got burned by an open-ended freelance job that unexpectedly put my own timetable back by at least two months. However, I am writing and do plan to publish the next novel as soon as possible, although that’s unlikely to be before the summer.
Speaking of which, I’m going to embed again a video I made eight years ago now (already eight years!) that shows what will soon return with the spring in just a few weeks. So, if you’re in the northern hemisphere and feeling done in, fed up and run down after four months of darkness, take three and a half minutes to remind yourself of all that is just around the corner. Stay safe, peeps.
