Days off (snow, goats, ice age fish) and a surge of productivity

53. Saturday 28 March 2026

I edited on Wednesday morning before my friend Catherine arrived at Lockerbie station, on Friday late afternoon after I’d dropped her off and for a few hours today. I would have reached page 130 of 207 on Wednesday were it not that I ended up adding a new thread based on what occurred to me was an obvious question the amateur sleuths needed to ask (and answer). That seemed a good place to stop, roughly page 127.

                Yesterday, I didn’t work for long but I did (hopefully) sew the seeds for the new thread of enquiry, which felt as useful as having done my daily ten-page goal.

                Today, completely coincidentally, I had some fairly straightforward edits, as a result of which I’m now on page 153, three-quarters through. I stopped at another “big” section, one in which I need to add another plotline. It’s both a good and bad place to end because it’s always hard finishing with a trouble spot when you feel you’ve reached achievement saturation. Similarly, it isn’t great for getting into a day’s work when you have to start with a trouble spot. So tomorrow, I will aim low and just try to get that point made.

                As for the remaining quarter, I know there are some major, important sections that need rewriting. However, I intend to work on them during this edit but allow myself to leave them for the next edit, which will be lesser but similar to this version.

In other news, I have made two more sourdough loaves since Tuesday, today's being one of the rare occasions when the ear has worked. Catherine was suitably impressed with the bread and had a breakfast of sourdough toast, butter and marmalade both mornings. I do feel ridiculously proud of my sourdough, like no one has ever baked sourdough at home before!

                We had a few walks, including one of the best walks in the whole world (up the side of Grey Mare’s Tail waterfall and up to Loch Skeen - 500m above sea level and home to a rare ice age fish). The walk was even better for there being a dusting of snow on the hilltops and that there were a few (very insignificant) flurries of snowy hail and it was cold and windy (we were appropriately-dressed for the weather) and did an excellent job of clearing my head. I’d been a bit stressed and anxious about “having to” stop editing and worried I’d lose momentum. As it happened, and as I kind of expected, the break was just what I needed. We had plenty of time to chat and had coffee in the midst of a forest (flask, obvs!) and lunch by St Mary’s Loch. There were even bursts of sunshine over the three days. And we saw wild goats!

                While it may not seem it at the time, having a complete break from writing or editing is often a very good idea.

                To continue with snippets of weather reports over the past few days, I opened the curtains at about 05:30 this morning and was shocked to see a few centimetres of snow. It’s gone now but over today there has been sun, wind, hail, snow, rain and almost-stillness.