Blackadmin.

Today was one those days when admin conspired to get in the way of the writing I’d hoped to do.

Despite this disappointment, I managed to get a lot done, including the press release for this month’s Hitchin Mostly and the mailing list mail-out on our forthcoming dates with Mark Watson, Richard Herring, Hattie Hayridge, Angelos & Barry and the rest. I very nearly had to abandon everything this morning though, when my coffee grinder refused to work when I tried to facilitate my all-important first caffeine hit of the day. As a man who can barely function without a mug of coffee with his breakfast, I was a strange mix of sleepy and livid. All attempts to trick the machine into working came to no avail, leading to a trip to Caffè Nero and a hasty online reservation of a new grinder from Argos.

I’d actually intended on going to Caffè Nero today anyway to do my admin, as I thought it would make a change from doing it at home or in the office, so I could separate the two in my mind when I eventually went on to write instead. It seemed sensible anyway, as the Wi-Fi has been very unreliable in the office of late.

Sitting in at Hitchin Caffe Nero is not the home-from-home experience it used to be a few years back, when I’d regularly go there to write. While the people who work there are friendly, there’s not the same connection I had with the old staff when I went in most days. They’ve all moved on to different jobs now which is good for them, but it’s a shame to have lost touch; still, it was a good location to get on with the boring work that needed to be done while making up for my morning’s belated coffee intake. After I’d finished, I walked to Argos to pick up Grinder Mark II, before popping to the office and then running to catch a bus to Stevenage to meet my wife and her sister for a meal. As I stepped off the bus, a car sped past that made exactly the same noise as Bully in Bullseye; if only Bowen would do the decent thing and abide the rules-of-the-road.