Of mice and men

ARRIVED home from work at 11 last night and finally slinked into bed around midnight after saving a tiny mouse from my cats who'd brought him in from the garden. Chased them off but the mouse gave me the slip. Having worked eight nine-hour shifts at the Mirror in the last nine days I was utterly knackered so the last thing I needed was to be woken up several times (three? five?) in the night by my youngest son Connor crying about God knows what. I then had to get up again to chase the cats away from the mouse who they'd managed to corner in the hall for a second time.

This time I successfully captured the terrified creature and put him in an old comic box in the study. All this before six o'clock this morning. At seven I rose to the sound of Connor having total hysterics about bugger all (that boy ain't right, as Hank Hill would say). One severe bollocking followed before we bathed the boys and long-suffering Jen carted them off to nursery on her way to work.

In my woozy, in-desperare-need-of-sleep state I'd completely forgotten the mouse... until he appeared a couple of minutes ago on my computer keyboard just as I was about to start typing this. I've just returned him to the garden (well, next door's garden) where he shall hopefully live out the rest of his mousey days free from feline molestation.

Anyhoo, today's the first day of my two-week "holiday" from the day job. I'm putting "holiday" in inverted commas as there won't be a lot of holidaying going on. Rather, I'm going to be smashing my way through the rest of the Tim Skinner script, bashing out a story for Accent UK's Robots anthology and making sure I'm up to date with the lettering for Nat and Ryan's Carson City project.

In between all that I'm going to see Prince in London (the first gig I'll have attended since seeing, erm, Elton John in Las Vegas in 2004) and hoping to catch up with friends on a couple of nights, too.

Because of my North Wales break and tough fortnight at the day job, I haven't written a single line of comic script in three weeks. I'm feeling a little rusty and I'll probably spend most of today trying to get back into some sort of writing rhythm (as well as mucking about on the 'net and reading comics, obviously).

Now then, TO WORK!