Half-term. My sister and her family are coming up from London, so I was going to grant myself a week off, so I could fulfill my sisterly and aunt-ly (?) duties. However, since my word-count last week was precisely two hundred and thirty nine (and some of this may be lost in editing, if I ever get off my proverbial and do some editing), it would be hard to ‘ease off the gas’ much more. I have already used up my Leave-From-Writing Entitlement (right at the beginning of the holiday year, too).

Perhaps the problem lies in the way I have been defining ‘writing’. Yes, that will be it. Definitely. When I count writerly meetings and chinwags with my friends from the MA course, together with my long lunch with my former adult education tutor,and a LAPIDUS workshop in York (not to mention on-line social networking), I have clocked up a fair few productive hours this week. The point of flexible home working is that it can be very bendy indeed.

But at the end of the day, the boss wants to see something concrete in return for paying your expenses. Even if you are your own boss.

Which means that, to catch up with producing written evidence of all my mental cog-whirring, I have issued myself with a stern warning (I would have issued myself with a written warning, but I was too busy socialising and being inwardly creative) that I need to commit at least one more chapter of Blues to my virtual cloud before I am allowed to participate in the treats planned for our visitors.

And, as proper grown-ups used to be fond of saying, if I cheat, I will only be cheating myself. And that could get very confusing indeed. So I might as well just GET ON WITH IT (memo to self).