The big news at Lester Towers is that we have some new ducks!
We lost Mr Duck last weekend–he’d been ailing for a while–and Mrs Duck was distraught, calling and calling for him. So yesterday Mr AL went down the lane and did a socially distanced pick-up of a new pair, a lady and a gentleman. They are in house and Mrs Duck is here in the little pond having a nice swim, whilst they are in the house behind her. You can hear her chuntering on to herself if you turn up the volume.
Apart from that, this week has been hard. Talking Child is still having a conniption fit about home schooling. She is wandering round with a beanie pulled down so far over her eyes it’s touching her nose, grumbling that education is pointless as it’s just the government turning out good little citizens that won’t argue with it and anyway we’re all going to die of covid.
I am finding this quite wearing.
We have hopefully beaten her into shape today (not literally) and are all spending five hours a day sat around the dining table working together rather than retreating to our respective corners with headphones. As I type we are running over kinds of computer hardware.
I am stuttering along with the Chicken Story. It can’t quite decide whether it’s set at Valentine’s or Christmas, although it’s definitely winter. On a good day I usually write about twelve hundred words and I’m hoping to have it finished by the end of next week, depending on life chaos.
In the meantime I’m helping Mr AL with his marketing (you can buy his first-in-series, Dark, for 99c/KU: his tagline is basically it’s hobbits in space if that’s your kind of thing) and I’m just fiddling with the distribution of Inheritance of Shadows to try and make it easier for people to find on Amazon, and making some pretty pictures for social media.
We had a visit from the children’s hospice earlier this week to provide us with some respite, and Mr AL and I went for a walk by ourselves, the first time we’ve been out of the house together by ourselves for weeks. Littlest is still throwing things on the floor the moment you turn your back on her and it’s exhausting. This week our carer has been poorly so we haven’t had any respite at all apart from that. On the one hand it’s quite nice not having people coming into the house every day; but on the other, being ‘on duty’ 24/7 is utterly draining.
It’s sunny today and I’m looking forward to the weekend–apparently we are playing Carcassone and having pizza.