It’s been a day of moderate effort and I’m hoping to pick up the pace a little in the coming days.

Success, in my case at least, isn’t built on skill, charm or inspiration, it’s built on work rate, and that’s what has been missing for the last few months. Yes, I’ve been busy moving house and writing for the Numismatic Society Facebook page, but I’ve also allowed myself to use it as an excuse for laziness. This was exposed with the last set of submissions. I was lucky to get away with that like I did. Finding and reanimating old poems, and writing some of them just minutes before the submission deadline is not a sustainable model.

But enough of that. It looks like I’ll have six out of nine accepted, possibly seven, so that’s good so far. I doubt my average will look that good by the end of the year.

Dunnock

I have searched through looking for extra places to submit work and found four more. Three have 100% records of rejecting me and I’ve never tried one of them. We will have to see how it goes. My average will undoubtedly plunge but I said 100 submissions was the target, so I must do eight or nine a month to get there.

Part of the problem is that several online journals are cutting back. Two that were monthly are now cut back to four and six times a year. I sympathise, as monthly must be hard work, but it does make it harder to find places for 100 submissions.

The squirrels, meanwhile, are finding it harder to access the bird food. They can still manage to get too it, but they can’t feed in a sustained manner as they tend to slip more they are now at full stretch. After they have fallen off a few times they tend to eat bread from the floor feeder then wander away. It’s about in balance, though I’m going to save up for some better feeders with anti-squirrel cages. We added a new species of bird to the record today, though nothing exciting – just a white dove from the small flock someone seems to keep round here. Still, it’s nice to break the monotony.

Robin on feeder

For tea we tried Quorn sausages as my sister came round to tea. They were quite good and when paired with onion gravy and mustard mash (plus sweetcorn and green beans) made a very acceptable substitute for meaty sausages. I may start using them on a regular basis as they are probably better for me than proper sausages. They are definitely no worse than the budget supermarket sausages available these days (which seem to get worse and worse). It looks like we will buy these regularly and only get meat sausages when we happen to be near a proper old-fashioned butcher.

A struggling squirrel