MONDAY

The future’s bright.

Emailed the Realtor curating my US house, only to belatedly remember it was Labor Day Weekend and she was doubtless rushing from pillar to post showing houses.  (I haven’t learned all the American holidays yet.  It’s all part of understanding a new culture, and you can’t do that properly until you immerse yourself in it.)  I’m chomping at the bit because I’m excited about the future – and I haven’t felt like that for a long, long time.  The future’s always been a dark, mysterious place filled with fear and trepidation about how much worse life could potentially get – but it isn’t like that any more.  Now, it’s an opportunity to have some flippin’ FUN for a change. 

More boring admin, as if my house knows I’m preparing to leave it and is being petulantly unhelpful as a result.  My boiler has been breaking for about two years now.  The engineer who last tried to fix it told me it was beyond economical repair and I needed to get another one.  Rang insurance company to see what the chances were of getting a new boiler on my policy, but I can’t claim because it’s packing up as a result of old age (know how it feels), and they don’t cover wear and tear (crafty b*ggers).  As a result, I now have to nurse it until it finally blows up spectacularly and irreversibly – doubtless in the depths of winter – condemning me to days/weeks with no hot water or heating while I claim on my Home Emergency policy instead.  The same insurance company will end up paying to fix the thing one way or another, so why not now, before the inevitable happens?

That’s what I feel is most wrong with the Britain I’ve grown up in over the last forty years.  We’ve become increasingly reactive.  As a nation, we used to take charge, lead, and innovate, but now we sit back and wait for stuff to cock up, and then get a foreigner to do a cut-price fix because we’ve forgotten how.

TUESDAY

If life were a sitcom.

I live in a little courtyard of Listed houses in the rural Kent countryside.  One of the tiny cottages opposite is owned by a young couple.  My office window looks out over their garden and driveway.  I’m not sure if they’re rowing or playing, but she’s just shut him out the front in only his pants (Americans: I mean his underwear), and he’s hopping about on the doorstep trying to get her to let him back in.  If life were a sitcom, this would be the moment a busload of Girl Guides arrives collecting for Harvest Festival, or something equally delightful.  Sadly, nothing that remotely entertaining is happening.  As usual, no one is around…and I’m too chicken to knock on the window and give him a cheeky thumbs-up.  He probably doesn’t need to know I’ve seen him in his undies.

WEDNESDAY

By George, I think she’s got it!

Made the decision to stop doing displacement activity and hiding from the plot problems of Miss Calculation, and just get the outline DONE.  Forced myself to sit on the sofa and not move, no matter how hungry or desperate for a wee, until I’d fought my way through the morass of crud in my head.  Tried coming at the story from a different angle and…hey, presto!  Ten minutes effort, and I’d cracked it!  It will probably evolve as the book comes out of me, but I believe it’s enough; a decent starting point, finally putting me in a position to actually write with more than a vague notion of where I’m heading.  Felt unaccountably relieved.  I was disconcerted by my continuing inability to get ideas down on the page.  Put the outline aside and deliberately didn’t look at it again.  Instead, went on turbo trainer.  I’m not massively into cycling, but it’s a good way to work my legs and lower stomach without pounding my dodgy foot on an agonising run.  Despite nature’s ample padding and the addition of a rolled-up towel bungeed into place, the saddle’s like sitting on a razor blade.  Managed forty-five minutes and had to stop.  Legs fine; bits burning!  How do those Tour de France dudes do it?  No wonder they all grimace constantly.  It’s not the punishing pace up The Pyrenees, but their poor little privates screaming for mercy.

THURSDAY

Snotfest?

I’ve been fighting off a threatening cold since the end of August (because, of course, summer’s when everyone gets a cold, isn’t it?).  I’ve done the giant, festering cold sore, the uncontrollable sneezing fits, the sore throat, the headache, and have been waiting in grumpy anticipation for it to turn into a full-blown snotfest…but it’s being coy, creating a general sense of malaise without becoming anything significant I can have a good ol’ whinge about.  I’ve told myself I don’t feel rubbish, in order to maintain my usual momentum.  Went back on the Torture Trainer again.  I can’t decide whether it’s worse to have a throbbing foot or bruised bits.  At least if I vary my exercise regime, then only one part of my body hurts at a time.  I’m convinced if I wasn’t as active, and didn’t have the daily fresh air of two hours of dog walking, I would currently feel a lot more appalling than I do.  I don’t believe in popping pills to mask symptoms.  Eat the right food, breathe the right air, and adopt the right attitude to carry you through life’s low patches.  I’ll admit, it’s a work-in-progress…but I’m getting there.

FRIDAY

Mini mouse.

Found a baby mouse on this morning’s dog walk.  As usual, the dog bimbled cluelessly past.  I stopped to look at it, thinking, ‘Oh no, a little dead mouse’ – but it was alive!  It had fur, but its eyes were still closed.  It was on the pavement about three feet from the hedge, exposed and vulnerable where anyone could have stepped on it.  Picked it up and held it for a moment, in two minds what to do: put it back in the hedge, hoping Mum was close by, or put it in my pocket and take it home?  Searched the base of the nearby hedge, but could find no obvious evidence of a nest, Mummy mouse, or any other babies.  Neither could the dog, who is potentially more hopeless at looking than I am, but should theoretically have been able to sniff them out.

The mouse was helpless, and I felt useless.  Even if I took it home, I had no way of feeding it.  It would doubtless die.  However, if I put it back in the hedge, there was an outside chance Mum could find it, or it could crawl to the nest again. Being so young, it surely couldn’t have wriggled far?  I suppose it could have been dropped by a predator, but it looked uninjured.  I put it right in the bottom of the hedge as close as I could to the place I’d found it, piled a nest of leaves around it for some warmth and camouflage, and left it.  It was a wrench to do so, because it was at risk, but I couldn’t take it home.  There was nothing else I could do for it.  At least I left it in a safer place than the middle of the pavement.  I hate those decisions.  You hold helpless life in your hands, and have the power to influence what happens, for good or ill.  Some people reading this will think, ‘For God’s sake, Luv, it’s only a mouse’, but I don’t agree.  To me, it’s another species that has as much right to live and prosper on this planet as me, my dog, the birds I feed in my garden, the grass under our feet, the woods we walk through, or the spider racing across the living room floor as you watch tv.  Remove any of those (except, arguably, humans – who seem to do more harm than good) from our delicate balance, and we’re all screwed.  It’s already happening.  How many of us really care, and how many think it’s someone else’s problem?

Annie Holder writes pacey thrillers, twist-filled crime novels, and unconventional romances – set all over the world.

You can find out more about her books at www.annieholder.com, and follow her on Instagram www.instagram.com/alhwriter/