A whole month has gone, and I didn’t make a single submission. I’m feeling lazy, but also thinking I made a good decision. I have a few things ready, but plenty of submission windows will be open in the next two months. I could send a submission to an editor who normally turns my submissions down, or I could send it to one where it stands a chance of being accepted. I know I really should keep trying, but it’s one of those cases where it feels good to take control. They say that people often cheer up once they make the decision to kill themselves, because they are back in control and, though this is not the same class of decision, it also feels good to take control of my own destiny.

It’s only a few months before that magazine will have another submission window, so I haven’t missed much. It’s just a pause before a greater effort.

The decluttering effort last night produced some result, though only a small one, but it did cheer me up. Tonight’s was not quite as useful, so I must ensure i get something done before it becomes just one more abortive start.

Snowman at Bakewell

Tonight I ordered Julia’s final present of the year, bought lottery tickets and ordered groceries online. Modern life has dragged me down so far that I actually see this as work.Sitting for an hour tapping keys on a keyboard is not work. I must repeat that a hundred times. However, as I know how to cut and paste it will not be the effort it used to be. A hundred modern lines are not the chore they were when I was eleven.

Tomorrow night ( which is actually tonight, as I slept through midnight in my chair) I will finalise the grocery shopping and plan the ordering of my pills for Christmas. The NHS is great for issuing free medication now I am over 60, but the Christmas Holidays is bound to to throw the system into chaos, as it often does. Unfortunately I need everything renewing around Christmas and I need to make sure I order them soon enough. I’ve been lucky the last few years, bit it can be a nightmare as you need to remember that if 24th and 25th fall at the weekend the Bank Holidays fall on the Monday and Tuesday of the following week, which then become non-working days for the purposes of ordering prescriptions.

This used to annoy me – fifty two weeks of the year I would work at the weekend, and through Bank Holidays as necessary, so that doctors and pharmacists and shop assistants could have eggs for breakfast 365 days of the year. Did they do the same for me?

Robin at Christmas

Did I ever tell you the story of what happened just before we changed the Sunday shop opening hours? I sat in a motorway service area and listened to a man lecturing his wife (and anyone within range of his loud and annoying voice) about how he wasn’t going to give up his Sundays, just because the government was going to allow supermarkets to open on Sundays. He seemed totally unaware of the irony of saying this on a Sunday, as people gave up their Sunday to provide him with fuel and food on his journey.

I have interspersed the unseasonal moaning with some jolly Christmas pictures.