Sporadic blog returns! (just in time for a holiday, what)

Sporadic blog returns! So, it’s been… four months. Four chaotic, whirlwind months, although most of that consisted of me running in small circles, screaming, ohmygod there is so much to DOOOOO!

Although in July, the Bossman took me on a week’s holiday to Dublin, courtesy of his new job. It was a working holiday for him, being at a tech conference, and a ‘working’ holiday for me because I got up early every day, retired to the terrace with a four-hundred euro bar allowance and cranked out the first five chapters of the second book of this straight-to-Amazon trilogy. We also went on the Viking Splash tour, which was awesome because you get to wear a silly horned hat and have to shout, Rarrr! at anyone who looks like a fellow tourist (‘lost’ Celts, identifiable by an upside-down map, Cappuchino Celts at the pavement cafes, and Rival Celts tour buses). Also, you then go on a wee sail around the marina, while the guy in charge tells you jokes about Bono. And there was an unexpected street theatre expo, which was so mobbed with pushchairs that we eventually fled. But not before I had my first go at soldering (turns out, I am the very last in my social circle to have had a go at soldering).

August was a hectic nightmare – everyone has a birthday ending in a zero this year, the Allotment Open Day was upon us, there were parties of every description, the annual roleplaying conference the Bossman takes me to, the annual Historic Scotland outing to see folks dressed as every sort of soldier over the last two millennia having mock battles, and a ‘work’ night out with my two favourite colleagues to the Rocky Horror Show. As is sadly quite commonplace, despite my being with people I know and trust, not to mention everyone being packed in like sardines, there was a ruckus with the older couple in front of us when one of them spent the first half stroking my knee (I was in fishnets, there was no way to misidentify a knee in fishnets! also no matter how I rolled my jacket over my knee, the hand found its way back under it, oh yes it did. As Rice Krispies said later, Bet you wish you hadn’t shaved your legs, eh) and the other one caught me complaining about it and nearly started a fight. Usually, it is the bloke who gets handsy and the missus who gets the hump, but oh no, not this time. As my new cellmate said when I gurned about it to him the next day, Yeah cos you really want to go for a night out and get sexually assaulted in the gods!

The younger generation, they are very sensible and well-informed. I approve.

Despite all this, I took a whole bunch of time out to work on my book cover and a variety of gifts for friends. By ‘time out’ I mean, time on top of keeping the allittlement under control, going to exhibitions with my new mate at work and trying to organise a website for my artwork, of which I have ironically enough got sod-all done this year. (Well, three wedding commemorations, two of which have gone down a storm and one which is still to happen, but the resale value on these is nil).

The allittlement has really come into its own, hurrah, with six kilos of raspberries off a very small raspberry patch, a decent tattie harvest, and my first year of currants. Also, it’s a blindingly good year for the hedgerows – more elderberries than I’ve ever seen, the rowan trees literally weighed to the ground under bunches of fruit the size of my two fists, and a decent crop of beautiful rosehips. which sadly meant masses of time spent harvesting, prepping and preserving as much as possible. I had to buy new five-gallon vats just to deal with the amount of wine, and both freezers are full to bursting.

And then, just as the nightmare that was August was almost over, the washing machine broke (naturally – only early that day, I had been persuaded to blow all my money on a cloak and beautiful battleaxe. Of course something broke) and left me destitute. I then spent the whole of September with a really vicious lurgy, so bad that I had to take an actual day off sick, and the Doing Of Things had to be strictly curtailed so I would still be well enough to be a pleasant companion on holiday. Gah!