… a little better today that yesterday, which was in itself an improvement from Monday. However, before I start getting up my hopes, I have dialysis tomorrow, and so I’m expecting to be down at Ground Zero again on Friday morning.
But carpe diem, hey! Let’s just talk about today, shall we?
And “today” is probably right because it was after midnight this morning – 00:15 to be exact – when I finally crawled into bed after such a hectic day yesterday. And despite the howling gale that was going on outside … "and is still going on right now even as we speak" – ed … I managed to go to sleep fairly quickly.
Once more, though, there was the dramatic awakening at about 02:00, just like yesterday and with no good reason either. I was tossing and turning for what seemed like hours, and I noticed that I was still awake at 02:53, but I must have gone to sleep at some point thereafter because at 06:29, the alarm awoke me from a very deep sleep.
Surprisingly, I was able quite easily to be sitting on the side of the bed. But changing from that position to being upright and moving about is not so easy. It took a good ten minutes, maybe even more, before I was sitting on my chair at the computer.
The first job was to spell-check the notes from yesterday and put them on line. And then there is a pile of little things that need doing, so I made a good start on them. But eventually, I heard the sound of distant coffee mugs being rattled, so I stopped what I was doing and went off to investigate.
Sure enough, coffee was on its way, so I nipped off for a quick ride on the porcelain horse and then into the bathroom to sort myself out. And I was finished and back in the kitchen just as the coffee finished percolating. How good was that timing?
While we were drinking our coffee, we were chatting about the overnight news and things like that, but we noticed that all of a sudden, the Hound of the Baskervilles stood bolt-upright, his ears erect and his tail wagging. And then he made for the door.
About thirty seconds later, the doorbell rang and in walked the nurse. The Hound of the Baskervilles darted towards him and insisted on having a good stroke and hug before he would let him in.
Eventually, the nurse could turn his attention to me, and he dealt with my legs and feet. However, on leaving, he was once again cornered by the Hound of the Baskervilles, who insisted on yet another good stroke.
After the nurse had left, the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies. I made breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.
Today, they were discussing the village of Kilpeck, of which the castle was the administrative centre of “Archenfield”, the part of the Welsh kingdom of Ergyng that was annexed by the Mercians towards the end of the Ninth Century.
Naturally, that led me off down another dead end, so I didn’t progress very far with my book. Never mind, though. There’s always tomorrow.
Back in here, I finished off what I’d been doing before coffee and then continued my summer holidays. After all, my visitors leave me tomorrow, so I’m back at work on Friday.
Perhaps the most important task was to proof-read the seven chapters of my book so far. I found several mistakes and made a few alterations here and there to clear up a few bits of confusion.
Having done that and had my disgusting drink and midday medication this afternoon, I programmed another artificial intelligence chatbot to be a proofreader and also to check for continuity (I don’t want my characters leaving home in red clothes and turning up two minutes later in green ones) and for chronometrical errors (none of my characters would be using a mobile telephone in 1987, for example).
Having done that, I ran my book through the chatbot, chapter at a time, and he pulled up a few errors that I had missed, as well as a couple of continuity errors. He also asked me if I would like a few suggestions as to how I should continue (I hadn’t asked him to do that, by the way), but I declined.
Having said that, though, when I’ve finished how I want this book to be, I’ll go back and ask him to make some suggestions, just to see, out of curiosity, where he would have taken this story from this point onwards.
At some point, though, I must have fallen asleep because I awoke rather suddenly at about 16:20. I’ve no idea when I fell asleep, and I certainly felt no indication whatsoever beforehand that I was about to drop off.
So I carried on until all of the proofreading was done and then I went back to check it over again, just to make sure.
By now, I could smell food coming from the kitchen. Tea was about to be served. My friend had made fried potato slices with onion and ratatouille. That was really nice, especially when followed by tinned apricots and vegan ice cream from Noz.
So back in here, I’ll finish off my notes, do the stats and the backup, etc., and then go to bed. And if the wind drops, I might even be able to go to sleep tonight.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about proof readers and artificial intelligence … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked one chatbot once to come up with a witty advertisement for a firm offering specialised services to authors, etc.
The advert it came up with was "(xxx) and co., specialised services to authors. We do poofreading, speling and tpying."
