I really don’t like Oscar Cainer. He writes this twaddle that really doesn’t mean anything, it’s so mealy-mouthed. Not a patch on his late Uncle Jonathan.

What has happened the last few days and what is my excuse for not writing? Today… slept in late, did my half hour of yoga and meditation, had breakfast… now it’s lunchtime and I’ve done bugger all. Every day the same.

It’s a nice day too. A friend came round to mow my lawn for me yesterday afternoon, and I thought: the garden’s a mess, now the fence is up I should get on with it and sort it out, but oh well… take the laptop and go to the Coffee Cup? That was sort of the plan. I really should go to the sea this afternoon instead of sitting around here, or if I’m going to stay in I should get on with some jobs.

You see, they say: ‘…don’t get caught up with all the “shoulds”…’, but seriously, if you keep on ignoring the ‘shoulds’ then everything goes to pot. Well, what would make me happy? Should (there I go again) I do something that will make me ‘happy’, and if so, what? I do neither. I sit here ruminating (that’s a good word. My therapist used it a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to describe these thinking patterns, and I thought: yes that’s it! Of course I’ve heard it before, but not used it lately, and now I’ve sort of latched on to it).

I rang the lady who does the kundalini yoga and meditation at the community centre – it’s literally just round the corner – been going to check it out for months and putting it off. She sounded really friendly and happy that I was interested. It might turn out to be a bit new-age and hippy-dippy, how do I feel about that? Well, I’m conflicted, aren’t I?

This came up with the therapist. When I was looking after the dogs, I went to see her in Guildford, where she works some of the time. I was sitting where I could see out of the window and I kept seeing magpies, so then I had to explain about why I say ‘Good morning sir, how’s your wife?’ when I see them. She was intrigued by this, and at the end of the session (and again since) she commented that I seem to be almost desperate to find something to believe in. Which is a not-unreasonable observation. But… and there I go, reading my horoscope every day and having tarot readings, while simultaneously thinking: ‘this is all such a load of bollocks!!!’

Yesterday I had reading group in the morning, that’s why I didn’t write then, I ran out of time. Haven’t even been posting my daily haiku, but that’s partly because the memory stick is in the laptop which is downstairs and I’m up here in the study. Sorry, just realised I wrote: ‘reading’ group, not ‘writing’ group, that’s really strange, I wonder why? But yesterday afternoon, after getting home and before Richard came to cut the grass, I set up a Twitter account for the group (and Instagram, though no idea what I’m going to do with that), and did a few things to the Facebook page, but now that has died a death again, I mean, I can’t get any enthusiasm for doing it.

I followed something from Twitter about ‘Nine Daily Habits You Should Get Rid of to Become a Better Writer’ and of course  I do them all – well, maybe not all (I don’t do 6), but 1, 2, 4, 8 and 9 are pretty much intrinsic to my personality and lifestyle – so clearly there is no hope for me.

1.       Not sticking to the writing plan – PLAN??? Moi? You must be joking.

2.       Giving in to procrastination and self-criticism – Ermmm… enough said.

3.      Thinking over some paragraphs or dialogues when you are not writing –  when they come to me I can’t always wait, I sort them out in my head and write later;

4.     Writing without enough sleep – definitely – it’s unavoidable, that’s how I live;

5.    Giving someone to read your unfinished book – I did that once and it set me back 4 years – these days I read bits out at group but I think that’s helpful;

6.    Limiting yourself with one place for writing – no, I do vary that;

7.    Dividing your time to 2 or more storylines at once – oh god, yes – currently there’s sorting out the sequel to ‘Single To Sirkeci’; maybe doing something about Prague; trying (not very hard) to think of stories for the two groups; and the great novel which is still on the back burner, where it’s been for about twelve years (or arguably twenty five);

8.    Isolating yourself from family and friends- ditto 4;

9.    Having bad nutrition and drinking too much coffee or energy drinks – also ditto 4.

No blogging this morning. I am now at Simon’s, ready for our narrow boat adventure tomorrow. It was a rainy, nasty drive, with road works on theA3 – or rather, no evidence of any actual work going on today, but one lane was closed either side of the roundabout that goes to Selbourne, and that was enough to mess the traffic up.

Southsea Soup meeting this morning, a new lady called Claire who seems to know a lot about marketing and is full of ideas, like giving people money to buy copies and then getting them to write reviews on Amazon. To me it seems that the flaw is that we have bought the books ourselves, but I kind of see what she’s getting at about the reviews.

It feels like it’s been quite a long day already – well, admittedly it is five thirty – almost dinner time.

Think I did okay with the packing, the only thing I’ve thought of (so far) that I haven’t brought is the Destination Portsmouth game. I even charged up the mini-wifi and found the card with the password on it. I got a sales call from Virgin yesterday asking if I wanted to buy one, and when I said I’d already got one she asked how much I was paying and I said £10.99 per month, she gave up and sounded quite sad because evidently she couldn’t compete with that. The stupid thing of course is that I’ve been paying that for almost three years and I never use it. So I thought, this would be an ideal opportunity. Even if we run out of data and have to pay more, well, I’ve been paying all that time for nothing, so it seems like I might as well use it.

I didn’t really think I was going to be able to find the password, I’d convinced myself it was a lost cause, but there was the box with the card in on the unit in the study, and I tested it and confirmed it worked.

I didn’t do much packing and preparation till the last minute again, I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to get started on this top-down crochet jumper (third attempt). I will crack that eventually. But as I found last week, it seems that leaving things to the last minute is actually less stressful than spreading the stress over several days – which is not what I would have predicted.

Reading the Why Buddhism Works book, this morning (when I couldn’t sleep) there was something really interesting about the relationship between feelings and thought. I will have to read that further.

I came up with a haiku before leaving home as well. I’ve actually got a few in hand now – two or three, anyway. One is quite dark so not sure whether I am going to share that one.

I mentioned at the Soup meeting about putting more on the Facebook page, like the idea I stole of getting people to add lines to a limerick. Trevor was quite scathing and said that no one had responded much to things he and Steve had put on there. I said that’s why we need to get some traffic, and he said, but nobody responds so there’s no point, and at least Claire and Freya backed me up. I mentioned about opening a twitter account and again he wasn’t enthusiastic but Freya was and she said Instagram as well, so as she uses Instagram a lot (being an artist, unlike me) I’ll do that as well. See if we can get some social media buzz going. And write some more stories as well, of course. That’s another matter.