A Week in the Life of Me

💌 I'll give you a clue: it was an ordeal

Dear Funsters,

I am writing to you from my favourite chair next to my favourite radiator in the house. It’s so cold in the kitchen that the olive oil froze in its bottle yesterday and it now lives in the lounge, next to this radiator. In fact, most of our possessions have been moved to sit by this radiator in an attempt to stop them freezing: the radiator must feel like the most popular kid in the canteen.

The week just gone by was fuller than Dolly Parton’s bra. Some highlights, in no particular order:

• Spending two hours on the phone to Royal Mail trying to locate a VERY IMPORTANT parcel (keys to my London flat to be put in the care of my neighbour) that I had paid a hefty sum to GUARANTEE would be delivered by 9am: Not only was it not delivered by 9am, it was not delivered AT ALL.

• Watching a lady eat a scone with a knife and fork, and dipping each piece into the accompanying jam like she was dipping chips into ketchup.

• Finishing Season two of Downton Abbey. I don’t think I could love Maggie Smith more. Planning to watch her entire back catalogue when I get a moments peace.

• Battling my way through South Kensington tube station to see a Quentin Blake exhibition, only to discover I was 11 days too early and the pictures hadn’t even been hung. I now see the inclusion of the word ‘Now’ in the exhibition title made me think it was indeed on NOW; it should have been titled Quentin Blake: Soon. The gallery was warm and had a cafe that stayed open till 9pm so I asked if I could wait until the exhibit opened – I would have been quite happy there for 11 days – but the lady at the front desk thought I was joking. I left, crestfallen.

• Going to my neighbour’s aid after receiving her distress call to say she was stuck in a wedding dress.

• Looking for a table to sit at in Foyles cafe, whilst gripping my tray on which was a pot-of-tea and a slice of raspberry polenta cake. I momentarily felt I was in an American high school canteen and that a cheerleader was about to call me a LOSER for having no friends and throw a Twinkie at me. I found a seat eventually; by then my tea was cold and I felt emotionally traumatised. I ate my polenta cake with a fork because that is acceptable, given it’s not a scone.

• Spending at least an hour each day searching for a half pan of neutral tint watercolour paint, which was on my desk one minute… gone the next. Gave up looking on Thursday and ordered another.

• Walking down coach C on the 21.32 train to Derby and passing a man who had wrapped himself in tin foil.

• Running into a pheasant as I was travelling at 50 mph down a country lane on my way to the station: it leapt with great gusto in front of my car and bounced off the bonnet into a nearby hedgerow. Survival Status: Unknown (the pheasant, not me).

• Deciding to recalibrate my shattered nervous system by having an extra hour or two in bed yesterday morning and leaving my alarm clock unset! An act of rebellion for me; I felt like a pupil of St. Trinians!

• Almost breaking a hip on the ice as I left the house due to a burst water pipe that has been shooting fountains of water out of the ground, in a continuous display, since December and wouldn’t look out of place in front of the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas. We are in Derbyshire though, not Vegas and the water is freezing as soon as it hits the tarmac and turning the road into a treacherous ice-rink.

• Being woken at 5.15am yesterday morning by the sound of a pneumatic drill and an industrial generator outside my bedroom window. For a second I thought I was having a very boring dream. Then I realised the boring dream was my waking reality. I’m a light sleeper at the best of times: Stefan only has to break the smallest amount of wind, a bottom whisper at best, and to my ears it sounds like Mount Vesuvius 2.0. I had no hope of sleeping through a pneumatic drill and an orange flashing light that was illuminating my bedroom like a brothel. And so, my extra hour in bed turned out to be an extra two hours out of bed. I gave up.

• My neighbour phoning to say that the postman had returned with the parcel and he was now in possession of the keys (hallelujah!) but my flat was a sauna: my recently vacated tenant had left the heating on at 25 degrees all Christmas. Excellent. Well done her.

• Spend 2 hours staring at my instagram page thinking I’d like to share more but crippled by doubts that I need a strategy and a consistent white balance. I oscillated between thinking I need a social media strategy to I might delete the app to just post something, no-one will see it anyway. I posted nothing, didn’t delete the app and have no strategy.

• Roughing out 9 full page illustrations for the next Swifts book in record time. I surprised even myself - the God of Ideas was looking at me favourably, or with pity. Either way, I’m grateful.

• Having a good old natter with mi compadres at the book launch of Sheena Dempsey’s fabulous new children’s series Pablo and Splash. A full-colour graphic novel featuring two time-travelling penguins - I read it in one sitting. I highly recommend.

• Unpicking three buttons from my coat to move them to the left by one inch, a job which should have taken a mere 15 minutes, only to lose one button and find it 92 minutes later in a fold of the blanket on the sofa. I gave up (again).

• Managing to fill several sketchbook pages and realising I like to draw - why don’t I do more of it?!

• Finishing The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. I had forgotten what a good book it is; although Edmund got off too lightly, IMO.

• Recording a ‘Day in the Life of an Illustrator…’ for a Waterstones Instagram take-over. I left most of the above out as it makes me look neurotic and as though I have no grasp on life, which I don’t, but that doesn’t need to be broadcast to an audience of thousands (algorithm permitting).

• Watching a dog video where the owner has crocheted hats for her dogs 4000 times. My favourite: Popcorn.

That pretty much captures the mood of the week gone by. I’m fully prepared for this week to either be the same, or potentially worse. Finally, seeing as the pages I drew in my sketchbook probably won’t end up on instagram due to lack of strategy or a consistent white balance, here are a few of them:

Dogs in snow.

Man eating fish.

Library mice.

Who let the birds out?

Bracing myself for the week ahead,

💛 Powell, Funster—In—Chief