I’ve decided that I hate my body clock. Or my body clock hates me – I’m not quite sure which, yet.

Last night, at about 7pm I was exhausted, and had totally hit the barrier. I was speaking to Herself, and must’ve sounded like a stunned monkey, really not with it at all. At that time, I was all set for an earlyish night, as it’d been a fairly hectic day.

That’s not what my body clock wanted though. Come ten pm, my brain went *ping!* and I was wide awake again. No caffeine, no sugar, nothing to stimulate it at all, but just *ping!*.

It didn’t slow down again ’til gone 1am. And I was awake again at about half six.

Bastard.

I forgot to post (due to spending time sorting out and cleaning up the PC I’ve been given for this assignment, so it now runs slightly quicker than the average tortoise) but I got in to the new contract on-time.

Not, however, for want of trying on the part of other road users. It just seems to have been one of those days where simple tasks like merging or changing lanes became a bit of a challenge for people, which led to one part of the journey taking nearly half an hour longer than it should have done.

The prime example of this was the section of the A11 that goes from dual-carriageway to single just after a roundabout. For some reason this morning it was block-full of bell-ends who couldn’t merge lanes. The queue went for a mile, then round the roundabout (exceptionally dodgy) and into the lane merge section. Once you’d got through that, it was plain sailing the rest of the way through the single-carriageway section, and the delay was just caused by fuckwit bastards who couldn’t cope with merging lanes. Unsurprisingly, the word “cunt” sprang forth from my lips on a couple of occasions.

The A14 and M11 were no better – on both, the outside lane came to emergency stops a couple of times for no good reason except people being incapable of the necessary multi-tasking required for a) indicating and b) changing lane.

But all told, I’d timed it so that the journey got me in to the office for 9:02am. Which wasn’t bad, considering the state of the driving that was going on around me…

Posts over the weekend were non-existstent because we were running round like blue-arsed flies. There was a party going on over at Herself’s Sister’s place.

So Friday involved putting up tents/marquees and setting up the basics, Saturday involved putting up another tent, and finishing off the set-up, then the party in the evening.

And of course Sunday meant we were stripping everything back down – although the overnight wind had helped a bit on that score, by knackering two of the five tents. Still, at least they didn’t blow away – which had been a concern earlier in the weekend, and meant that all the tents/marquees were gaffer-taped together. OK, it didn’t help when it came to something giving way and bending, but for keeping everything down on the ground and all linked together, it was blinding stuff.

Hectically busy then, but well worth it, and a good party was had by all, thankfully – even with the weather doing its level best to screw things up.

Even better, I got to take a lot of photos of people, which I’ll be putting up on the portfolio site at some point this week. After all, I may have some spare time during the evenings in which to process and upload them…

So yes, off I go to the new contract down in Basildon.

I’m sure I’ll update this at some point today, but it does depend on access in the office. If there’s none (and there really should be) then I’ll be online in the evening from the B&B.

Wish me luck!

It’s a bit late, but I noticed the other day that D4D ™ has just gone over the 700,000 word mark. That’s pretty scary really.

D4D™ has been going now just under five six years, so I’m averaging about 140,000 117,000 words a year, or 10,000 (roughly) per month. Not bad going at all.

However, more and more I wonder whether I’d be better pausing D4D™ for a while and to put that effort and routing into writing something a bit more formal. After all, it’s undeniable that I’ve established a fairly regular writing routine – so maybe I should try putting it to some “proper” use.

I don’t know yet, it’s still something I’m thinking about. But at the end of the day, churning out 10,000+ words a month of rubish isn’t a bad place to start…

[Edited] : Thanks BW for pointing out I’m an amnesiac twat, and it’s actually six years D4D™ has been going, not five. Figures have been recalculated as a result of my twuntdom.

From Monday, I’ll be working away from home during the week again – this time down in Basildon, Essex. It might be that the company allow me to work from home for the majority of the time after the first couple of weeks, but in the mean time, I’m going to be down in Basildon from Monday morning to Friday afternoon.

Yes, in theory I could do the commute on a daily basis – but that would be 200 miles per day all told, and would mean I was away from home for about 13 hours a day. Not ideal. So I’ll stay down there, and maximise the working hours during the time I’m there.

In addition, I should (with luck) be able to carry on and do some other work in the evenings, and/or get some of that writing out of the way as well.

All told, it should work out OK. Yes, I’d rather be based from home (or at least be working locally) but at the end of the day, if I have to work away from home in order to pay the bills then that’s the way it is.

It does mean that this week has been taken up with a fair amount of organising, getting paperwork sorted, booking a place to stay, checking out what the area’s like, what facilities are around, all that guff. But again, that’s just part of the way things are for this kind of contract.