Working away on the orchestration of 1215, I am tucked away in a hidey-hole far away from prying eyes and ears, far enough even to have had to fiddle with the language settings on my WordPress account. Despite being almost totally unable to speak the local language, at least I have managed to log on to something or other.
The weather out here has been shocking and, best of all, there is no heating where we are staying. I have prodded various remote controls and thankfully one of the air conditioning units has seen fit to exude hot warm air when it is in the mood, although it does tend to beep and flash red lights every now and again. As long as the electricity stays on, therefore, we should be ok, and there are promises of having the warmth back in the house by the end of today.
It is quiet here, the sounds probably entirely unchanged from hundreds, even thousands of years ago, all of which means a good night’s sleep, especially in a room so dark as to feel positively tomb-like. Throw in a change of time zone and it means that body clocks are entirely up in the air, but, well, who’s to care?
I am planning to get a decent stint of work done every morning anyway, and hoping to have the bulk of the orchestration of 1215 ready to proof and double check by the time I am back in the work saddle. At the moment things are running ahead of schedule, still, and I am aiming to get even further ahead day by day, just to make sure that any unexpected obstacles do not pose too much of a problem.
It has been a while since I and my other half have had the opportunity to be truly on our own, having spent many of the past months involved in various turbulent things such as house moves and other matters, so I will happily put up with the lack of heating and the poor weather, ample trade-off, I think, for a little bit of calm and quiet.
It is not entirely calm and quiet, though, for my builder has still managed to contact me out here, advising me of the latest nasty surprise back home. I console myself by imagining that there surely cannot be much more for him to find, and then I think of something else. Seems to work.
Nicholas O'Neill 