Possession

Thursday 20th: A day of cold, grey rain, but the last day of my first week, Good Friday tomorrow of course. I discussed plans with my temporary colleagues, only they don’t make me feel like that. The only discordant note has been with one person whose chair I inadvertently sat on my first day when she wasn’t in. I noted this morning that she has stuck a post-it note with her name on the back of it, and doesn’t speak to me unless I speak to her. Oh well, it doesn’t bother me now like it might have done in past years.

I had a very nice day; checking and exercising my inner pedant in the morning, spending plenty of time online researching places to visit from the lists in the back of Shire books, to make sure they still existed. My eyes were beginning to feel a little bit fuzzy after a while though. In the afternoon, I enjoyed myself helping to choose pictures for a book on the traditional shop in Britain. So many gorgeous images that the author himself had taken. This was something I hadn’t entirely realised before, that authors are usually expected to provide their own pictures of their subject, other than in exceptional circumstances. That’s something I would find challenging.

There were well over 100 images, and we looked through each one, surveying, judging, deciding, and putting little pencil marks against their thumbnails on paper. Finally we had our choices and I was really pleased to feel that I’d made a small contribution to getting a book into print.
I also had a go at editing some back cover blurbs, something I prided myself on being quite good at, getting a piece of work to a strict number of words without losing the meaning. This was to fit them onto the newly designed book covers. It was very satisfying to see them up on the InDesign spreads.

Most of the staff were travelling to places after work, I was still unsure where I was going to spend Easter weekend, so put off my trip to wherever until tomorrow. So Thursday evening, I found myself meeting with friends of my host family, a lovely husband and wife, who lead a bible study group in the upstairs office of the house.
After staying up pretty late posting up another chapter of my epic fan fiction story, I was in bed late, regretfully, knowing there was probably no escaping my 6am start.