I have to say, my November challenge has been really half-hearted. I have made as little effort as possible. It is simply the result of a very busy non-stop life. As the sole teacher and primary parent, I really don’t get any time to myself.

I wake up at 6am, get myself groggily to the gym where I workout with a coffee. Plain black coffee made with a bit of evaporated milk from a can. It’s delicious. By the second exercise my mind is fully awake and by the end of the workout I am sweaty and my heart is pumping hard. I listen to audiobooks during my workout – last week it was Jane Eyre, this week it’s A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. It’s a little outdated now, but still mesmerising and fully captivating. The world is a wondrous vast place with a vast history, and Bryson looks at the historical (and present) world through a thorough scientific lens.

I get home at 7:30-8am, and my husband leaves for work, and it’s just me and the kids for the rest of the day. During which I fit in all their extra-curriculars, their regular schooling, their physical activity, the housework, sorting their meals out, my own work, and then whatever little time is left (usually none) something for myself. Usually it’s nothing. Sometimes it’s a chapter or a page of a regular book. Right now that is Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce. It’s such a lark of a story. Brilliantly written, unexpected and novel, and with some dry humour weaved into its structure.

But we’re approaching the halfway mark of NanoWrimo/NanoPoblano, and I would really like to write something tangible. Fictional. Real. So I will spend the next half of the month on that. What that will look like, I don’t know. I am just going to sit down and write, and whatever comes out of that will be that.

Adieu!