Today, thanks to the dirty tricks of my computer, I lost  –  not once but TWICE  –  my morning’s work. The first time my laptop did a sudden, spontaneous, ready-or-not reboot without having the courtesy to auto-save my 500 words.  So I rewrote them. Perhaps they were even slightly improved. But I was so busy rattling away at the rewrite I overlooked the fact that the computer’s battery was almost….. Gone, gone. And no, auto-save hadn’t captured my brilliantly revised thoughts. So I have finally, at 4pm, regained the ground I occupied at 12 noon.

Was all this punishment for taking yesterday morning off to make piccalilli? Should authors with looming deadlines indulge in the domestic arts? I dunno. The pickles look pretty damned good though.

Two weeks to go. Head down. Repeat after me, ‘Auto-save, auto-save.’