The last few weeks

The Indie Author Online Festival  kicked off on Saturday, and my tiny piece came yesterday at 11am.

I never use Skype or Zoom, so I was nervous about the technology of using Streamyard, but it proved quite easy - except that my camera is obviously set to time out after 30 minutes.    It took me a little while to realise that all I had to do was click the mic/camera icon to reinstate it.

As for the content,  I think we should have done shorter snatches with more interplay between the personalities, but it seemed to go off quite well. I was surprised at the paucity of questions both in advance and during the hour we were live, because Regency is such a popular genre. In a way it is a pity that many people have gone back to work  this week - a pity only in the sense that our potential audience vanished!  I'm sure everyone is glad to go back to a life that is a good deal more normal than the last 9 weeks have been. 

Having said that, dog walking and a once weekly grocery shop has been the extent of my life lately, and it isn't that different from normal. The family is in Australia and we don't socialise all that much. Bill used to do the shopping at the supermarket 10 miles away, but somehow, I can't remember why, I got elected to do the shop at the local co-op half a mile away. I was there on the dot of opening 8am Wednesday morning and back home by 8.45! I think it might be difficult to persuade Bill back into the old way of him going to Tesco!

Walking Tim in the silence of lockdown was so different ~ only an occasional car, and birds singing.  Lots more walkers, joggers, cyclists than usual but they are pretty silent anyway. The air was brighter and much more pleasant. Of course we had the usual tearaways out in their ancient up car with its go-faster-stripes, streaking around the empty roads in defiance of the electronic sign at the roundabout at the bottom of the hill saying "Stay Home."

On the whole, for me,  the 9 weeks have gone pretty quickly.