Saturday

Unexpectedly warm day, so I did a lot of washing - and hopefully a lot of drying. With the exception of dog walking, haven't left the house. Being Saturday - about half the day was spent looking for and removing dog hair for every corner of the house.

I was going to do some admin today - but I couldn't face it. I'll have to deal with that tomorrow.

As a letter from the local authority - they want my opinion about some proposed changes to the layout of a parking space area above the nearby local COOP. This seems to be basically - a bit of cross hatching painted on the tarmac. Not sure I can stimulate myself to engage with that one, but I suppose it puts paid to the silly rumour that the COOP will close. It won't.

In a similar vein, but on a very different scale - the old Observer building, situated next to my studio - has been bought by a Russian development company with lots of money who build shopping malls and office blocks. They want to turn it into a rather posh student accommodation block, restaurant and cinema. In the meantime - for the 12 months it will take to develop their plans, there looks like being a pop-up food hall and cafe on the ground floor. I'm perfectly comfortable with this. What I'm not keen on is the 'other' building next door - which backs onto my studio - and is about to be scaffolded for 18+ weeks and have a hoist lift installed outside my window whilst they convert the empty floors to flats. It's going to be a nightmare and we are looking at ways to make them pay our rents for the duration, as we will not be able to work much with all the noise.

Tomorrow, I'll be moving some furniture around - back to the original positions it was in a few weeks ago - I can't work around it all being in the wrong places. It's annoying.

The eBay auction finishes on my dentist's cabinet tomorrow - it's sold, apparently to someone with no eBay history whatsoever - really expecting that one to go wrong.

At this point, I've decided to put 'my money' on Andy Burnham as Labour Leader - I'm most comfortable with him. I may change my mind later on.

So - we are having an 'emergency budget' in the next few weeks... didn't we just have one??? What was wrong with it - and what's the emergency?? Is it something to do with trying to cram as many unpopular policies through as quickly as possible in the afterglow of the election, at a time when most people are distracted?? It's going to be brutal.

I've apparently picked up some more work from a client in Brighton but it sounds tentative and I need more information - they have become very mean payers recently so I'm not holding out much hope. I completed some work yesterday for a client and my presentation is a million times better than a similar document supplied by a 'top' agency who charged many thousands - but clients are happy to pay silly money for 'names'. It's not very good work, in my opinion - in fact it's really crap and looks like it was put together by an intern.

I think I've probably spent about £15 tis week - mostly milk and emergency dog food, unfortunately - at just the point when I'm running out of ready cash - I seem to be running out of everything. Toothpaste, toilet roll, deodorant, soap, bin bags, food basics, dog food, shoe polish, tea bags, washing powder... pretty much everything that keeps us ticking over day to day is running very low. No matter how hard I try to manage things and buy carefully in bulk - I always run out of everythingg at the same time. Except for chick peas... I have a lot of chick peas.

I'm re-reading this. It seemed like a good idea.