The Importance of Timing

Given the weather, you're probably expecting me to have a general whinge about the weather. The snow, the ice, the buses that can manage to get over the hump-backed bridge into the village but won't risk the three-point turn near the pond at the official end of their route. The fact that it is warmer in my office than in my house and I have been *forced*, I tell you, for the sake of my fingers, to come and do some work. The people panic-buying fresh vegetables that they wouldn't normally touch with that overused barge-pole and won't know how to cook anyway. My woes regarding frostily-disguised potholes and my poor car.

But no. I will give you none of the above, because, frankly, you've probably read most of it elsewhere already. Possibly not the stuff about my car, but that is really more of interest to the garage in Bicester who are sorting it out again for me, having dealt with the pothole-induced slow puncture in December already.  Instead, I give you: working hours.

I acknowledge that this is possibly less amusing than poking fun at people responding to British weather (please note, not the same as climate, there's a reason we don't all have snowchains and that Heathrow has not got a full fleet of highly expensive snowploughs), but it is nonetheless interesting.

I have always known that I'm not really a morning person. Setting the alarm pains me and one of the biggest benefits of ceasing full-time employment has been the ability to wake up when I'm ready to wake up. Of course, it does mean that on the days when I *do* need to set an alarm, it's even harder to wake up, as my body is no longer in the habit of waking at 6 a.m. (Yes, there is such a time. Seven days a week, I discovered when working six days a week yet still waking bright and extremely early on a Sunday.)  I am full of admiration for people who post on Twitter at 9.30 a.m. that they're taking a coffee break after writing for two hours. Most of what I might write in that time is drivel, as anyone following my twitterfeed can tell you. My writing time really only gets going in the afternoon, preferably after a post-prandial cuppa. (It's currently 4.05 p.m. I rest my case, m'Lud.) But trying to do things like housework or exercise are completely impossible in the afternoon. I'm just too lethargic (from what, you may ask. I frequently do. Probably a tendency to anaemia and not enough chocolate.)

So I've taken to organising my days in two halves: mornings are for the treadmill, shopping runs, laundry, and then in the afternoon I contemplate my navel do some writing. Nothing terribly radical about that, I suspect. But given that we are finally realising that teenagers really don't function terribly efficiently at 9 in the morning, perhaps we should instead be asking them to do something different, requiring less intellectual effort. Tidying their rooms, perhaps? Well, it was just an idea...

So, have you found your ideal time to write? And have you been able to organise your day so that time-slot is available? And what do you do if you can't?

I'm not a grumpy old woman, honest...

There has been a slight delay in posting recently, for a variety of reasons.  Instead, I have for example been doing full-time teaching to cover for someone on jury duty (exhausting), going to a book launch for the lovely Liz Harris (exciting) and relocating my many things from the dining room table to my newly-refurbished office (exiting.  Also clutching at a straw).

So, moving swiftly on from the obvious omission of editing in that list, another village issue.  Each month, our village has a community newsletter, with news from some of the many groups that are run in the village, adverts from local services, details of forthcoming events (for example, a play by the Launton Village Players and a musical show by the Bicester Choral and Operatic Society [known more sensibly as BCOS]).  Most months there is also a page dedicated to 'the communique from the Grumpy Old Men of Launton.

They live up to their soubriquet.  Usually it's about parking or speeding, more recently the weather has come in for a fair old bashing, and this month they've been very grumpy about potholes.  It's an easy target these days.  Country roads in particular seem to disintegrate at the drop of a hat and the current fad for short-term solutions and simply filling a hole with tarmac only makes the overall surface worse.  We've all seen them and I wouldn't normally want to join in the tired chorus.

Except.  Except driving to school last week, I had to swerve slightly to avoid the small area in the middle of the junction in Marsh Gibbon that had been fenced off by traffic barriers.  Excellent, you may think, preparation for some repair work.  But the judder that I felt as I drove past it was less than excellent and I peered in my rear-view mirror, assuming I had run over something large.  Nothing there.  So on the return journey, I went even wider and even slower and saw, *next to* the cordoned-off area, an enormous pothole sufficiently deep to house the entire Monty Python team and extended family.

I was left wondering what had been the purpose of the temporary traffic island.  Has it been moved by some mischievous person on leaving the pub, so that it no longer surrounds the trench in the middle of the road?  Or is it in place for the purposes of a utility company that has nothing to do with the other hole so they certainly won't touch it for fear of litigation?  Answers on a postcard, please; just don't accidentally post it in a pothole.