Today is another of those articles you can choose not to read, there’s going to be very little mention of books or anything to do with books and if you decide to drop off the radar for today I suggest you come back tomorrow to read a few words about The Great Gatsby – a little summary, the movie is fantastic.

Yesterday was one of those days when very little went right, partly due to external circumstances and partly due to lack of any planning on my part. The house was due for a scheduled power outage, we were warned weeks ago and I even remembered, it didn’t affect anyone else as they were going to be out of the house during the period and it shouldn’t have affected me much as I had a coffee morning planned, so much for the planning.

The power went off at 9:30am and I’d done very little, still thinking I had half an hour to write before my 10am webinar so I wasn’t writing. I could have continued writing as I have a laptop and logically, I could have created a hotspot using my phone (I chose the Samsung specifically as I knew it would create a hotspot) but for the tiny little fact that I used up most of my allowance at the beginning of the month and I’m not due to click over to the new month until the 17th. Totally ignoring little things like the laptop is getting on a bit and the battery doesn’t last terribly well, I rarely take it off the power so I can’t tell you how well it functions.

I set up my ‘office’ in the front of the house where I could open all the curtains and get two windows of adjacent light onto the things I was doing, did some study and then went to bed for a bit where I could read and keep warm. I’d completely forgotten the gas central heating needed the electricity for the fan to pump the air out of the ducts. When I finally got back out of bed I decided I’d have a shower as that would warm me up…wrong! The gas hot water seems to need a little electricity in order to put out hot water and I wasn’t going to have a cold shower when the house is only 16° C. Putting on lots of clothes I then wandered the house tidying, filing and opening old mail. Just as I’m about to sit down and eat something prior to doing some more study the power comes back on, it was fascinating sitting there listening to the house wake up.

I’d completely forgotten I could have used the gas stove to heat up some water for a hot cup of tea or a hot water bottle. I’d even forgotten to plan ahead and have a thermos of hot water available. The one thing that kept me tied to the house was an injection I had in my elbow the previous day. I did some damage to the tendon in my elbow back in January, I’ve had lots of treatment for it and finally caved in getting the referral for an MRI from my physio. I had the MRI a couple of weeks ago, even managing to fall asleep inside the machine waking up when the noise stopped. It appears I have a slight tear in the tendon and some inflammation, the injection was to deal with the inflammation and I was told to do only light duties for 48 hours afterwards…the 48 hours is up this afternoon and I’ll be celebrating by doing the weekly shopping, tomorrow I’ll do the housework I should have done on Tuesday. So, if I hadn’t had the injection I could have gone to Mum’s for a shower and I could have then gone onto my coffee date with Teena but I was trying to minimise the things I do with my arm and that includes driving. Instead of having a great day outside the extremely cold house I had a relatively relaxing day inside. I would have preferred to be out.

Rant over. See you tomorrow for The Great Gatsby.