Enough of the cold weather

Woke up to snow this morning, just like yesterday. This is fairly unusual for Surrey at this time of year. We haven’t had the heavy snowfall and drifting that people further north had but I’m sick of the cold. A couple of weeks ago the temperature ventured as high as 15C for a day or two and it felt like spring. Feels like we’re back in January right now and January was bad enough first time around.

Did two quizzes this week, both school fund-raisers. Went along to my niece’s school and won their quiz on Friday night. My niece and nephew came along which was great. They’ve not done a quiz before, they both answered important questions and it was really nice that they got to win first time out.

Last night I did a quiz with an old bandmate at his kids’ school. We were 2nd, one point short of the winners. Good night and an interesting quiz. I stayed over with them was up way too late drinking red wine.

Some more words got added to the sequel novel which is now over 7k words – long way to go.

St Patrick’s Day celebrated

My wife is from Galway so St Patrick’s Day is always celebrated with her extensive family. This year it was our turn to host so bacon & cabbage was cooked for 15. This was actually a little down on early estimates which put the likely guests at 17. A large undertaking then, necessitating the deployment of every respectable chair in the house and most of the crockery. The main course of bacon had to be cooked yesterday then reheated as we simply didn’t have hob space to cook it, the potatoes and veg.

It all came out well, including two servings of homemade icecream prepared by my 11y.o niece. Everyone turned up on time (approx), was fed and there isn’t much left. haven’t seen some of these folks since Christmas so it was good to catch up.

A fine St Patrick’s Day.

 

In other stuff – Southampton played really well and unexpectedly beat Liverpool, costing me money as I’d backed them to lose. My quiz team blew a winning score in the wipeout round on Thursday night – very frustrating. And some more words were added to the novel sequel, probably not enough, but it is still moving.

 

A better week

 

 

A fairly satisfactory week. I finished the short story I’ve been working on, and added some words to the sequel of my modern fantasy story that is currently out in the wicked world of acquiring editors. Ok, so the sequel doesn’t amount to much so far, but at least it is moving forward.

My quiz team won the Thursday night pub quiz with a very healthy score, but selected the wrong envelope and won a £20 meal voucher.

And Southampton got a point at Norwich. The highlights suggested they played well enough to take all three points, but as Norwich missed a last minute (and very suspect) penalty I’m grateful enough for the one. 

Inglorious defeat

I went to watch Southampton play QPR yesterday and am still struggling to put into words how frustrating and disappointing it was. The contrast to the Man City game could scarcely be greater; then Southampton were sharp, incisive and full of invention. Yesterday they weren’t. Too many misplaced passes and a general lack of cutting edge. QPR weren’t much better, but at least they took the two chances they generated.

In happier vein, congratulations to my T-Party colleague Gaie Sebold who has sold a Steampunk novel to Solaris on proposal.

And yes, I did write a bit last week.