Today I am back at the Durham Grange campsite and it’s cold, wet and quite windy. I did my monthly sit at Mak and Fern’s house last weekend, during which, I managed to get a large area of the inside of the van propely cleaned out. Pete dropped over on the Sunday and fixed the waste water drainage pipe, which had started leaking for the second time. The pipe dropped onto the road during a journey last Summer, resulting in the terminal tap having to be removed, as the friction from the road had worn a large hole in the pipe above it. After this episode, we removed the tap, shortened the pipe (to get rid of the hole) and I’ve been using it as an open pipe and just draining it continuously into a bucket ever since. Until last week, when it began leaking from the other end of the pipe, where it attatches to the van. So Pete took the whole thing off and attached a new length of waste pipe, then added back in the old tap to make it fully functional again. Yay! One less bucket to carry around!
I can’t believe how quickly time is passing. With one sixth of my year behind me, I came to realise how little I had achieved towards my writing goals. I am not unrealistic and I know that a year will only make a small dent in all that I want to fulfil, but at the very least I would like to
- get a Scuttling Gourmet blog based website up and running in place of the current Shunamite Rats site and create some Rat Diet E-books on there.
- start a blog based website on the subject of setting up and running a dog service business, along with creating some short E-books on the subject.
- write some poetry.
- develop this blog.
- maintain the dog blog and Custom Canine Care site.
Today I spent preparing a section of the Scuttling Gourmet for publication as an E-book, essentially un-formatting text and correcting irrelevant references to other pages and chapters. I have the whole chapter done, and now just need to reformat headings and the like to make them compatible with a Kindle reader. Then I will publish Rat Diet – feeding for longevity, well-being and in old age on Amazon. I have spent some time in past weeks, reading through the whole publishing process and it doesn’t seem beyond me. Watch this space. Of course, I’ll have to employ someone from fiver to create a cover.
Tomorrow, I’m picking up Imogen from her place of work near Durham and we are heading over to Thursby to visit Mum and Dad, before the big op. It will be lovely to have some social “time out”. March is essentially house-sit-month. Not ideal to be doing three or four in a row, but I guess that’s how it will roll at times. Next time I find myself on a site – 22nd March – I’ll be staying North West of Newcastle near St Mary’s lighthouse at the Old Hartley site. I’m looking forward to having more choice, as all the sites open after the Winter break. Being by the sea, and in an area with some gorgeous walks might lead to Old Hartley being one of my favourites.
