I started work yesterday on revising last year’s conference paper to go in the hard copy volume, something I should have done months ago. It wasn’t a great paper anyway, not up to my usual standard, just a fairly straightforward account of the European project I was involved in, not very academic. At one point I told the editor just to leave it out because it wasn’t worth it and I didn’t have time. I was supposed to relate it to the other papers in the same section. About three weeks ago she sent me a copy of my paper, with the reviewer’s comments, and the other three papers I needed to relate it to and asked for a reply within the month.
I finally had a look at it yesterday. The thing is, weekends are the time when Laura is busy because Andy is at home. Then during the week she gets lonely and wants to come round and so I get distracted and can’t get on with stuff. So it makes sense to do stuff I need to concentrate on at the weekend.
So I had a look at it. And I did some online searches and had a few ideas, I could see how to make some links with the other papers in the section, hope I don’t have to go back and rewrite the whole thing though. The trouble is, I can’t half do a job, I have to get it right, otherwise I’d rather not do it at all. It’s the same with housework. I can live in a pig sty, but once I get started I have to keep going till it’s perfect, so I end up leaving it and ignore it all.
I had an email from Hubby, saying: ‘Toni came round, she’s had a letter from the auditors, she can’t answer it and she doesn’t think Bill [the new Parish Clerk] will be able to either, so I’ll give it to Laura when she comes round and she can pass it on to you. They need a reply by 17th June’. Great. So here I go again, doing work I won’t get paid for when I should be hunting for jobs that I would get paid for.
Laura rang up from Ikea, I forgot she said she would. She and Andy had gone to Milton Keynes to go to Mothercare and pick up some stuff from ASDA that they’d ordered on line, so they were popping into Ikea and she’d asked if there was anything I wanted. I said, maybe picture frames but I wasn’t sure about the prices, so she said she would ring up and tell me. I asked her to get the black one for my Eiffel Tower poster and one for the small square poster to match my other Parish posters, and a cheaper one for the L’Empire des Lumieres poster that Simon got me for my birthday.
I went out about 2 for a walk in the sunshine, down to the river and across it and back to the bistro where I had a cup of tea. I miss the garden. I just want somewhere to sit in the sun with a cup of tea and a magazine sometimes.
Then I came home and went back to writing until about 6:30, by which point my brains were fried and I gave up to cook dinner.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the meringues. I used an egg yolk for the cheesecake on Saturday, so I had a white left over, and what can you do with an odd egg white? So when I came back from my walk I made meringues. It’s years since I’ve made them in a conventional oven (as opposed to the Aga, which was perfect for them). I thought about doing them in the microwave, but when I found the recipe I realised you use about 5 times as much sugar as you do for baked ones and it makes tons, and I didn’t really want that many, so I did normal baked ones and I’ll smash them up with whipped cream and some more strawberries and have Eton mess.