Where on Earth have you been Stevenson? You piss-poor excuse for a scribe. I hear you cry. Or not, you’ve probably just got fed up with waiting for me to pull my chubby, stubby finger out and given up. It’s been quite some time since I last blogged and I’m just as unhappy at the situation as you are; believe me.

But before you go off on me like a Prosecco cork (I can’t afford champagne) please give me a chance to redeem myself or, at the very least, offer some explanation as to my whereabouts for over a month now.

Let me break it down into sections for you. I think that would be easiest all round.

1. We’ve moved home. Whilst not a particularly valid excuse for not blogging it does offer some insight to what I’ve been up to and, as most of you will agree, it’s a very stressful and time consuming job which requires a great deal of both mental and physical energy. Which brings me nicely to my next point.

2. I’m seriously lacking in both of those energies. My brain is immensely foggy at the moment to the point where I wake up in the morning and panic that I’ve ben kidnapped in the night only for the realisation that I’m in my new bedroom to kick in after a few seconds. Added to this is the fact that my body can’t take much more. I seriously think it can’t. It’s at breaking point and I mean bedridden breaking point. It’s now just a matter of when.

3. My lovely wife has gout in her right foot and is in a lot of pain and therefore unable to do any of the more manual tasks involved with a home move. I’ve been caring for my carer and been extremely worried about her. We spent a whole evening in A&E one Saturday in August. Five hours we were there with Ange in the most awful discomfort. Very stressful indeed.

4. We had a holiday a few weeks back. A much needed and well deserved break to the charming seaside village of Crail near St Andrews, Scotland. I spent the first 24 hours of the holiday in that muddled place somewhere between sleep and waking as my whole being gave a collected sigh of relief.

5. This is an odd one but I’m actually struggling to put words together in a coherent way. Either on paper or verbally. The only thing that I’ve been able to do with any degree of success is my podcast which I’m determined to do every week without fail. The novel I’m working on hasn’t seen a shot fired in anger since… well, that’s just it, I can’t remember because I’ve lost my little pocket diary with all that information in. But it was the back end of July.

Anyway, that’s my 5 point excuse. In a nutshell, we’ve moved home and I am…

EX!

HAUS!

TED!

I’m tired, worn out, spent, shattered, weary, depleted, drained, fatigued, on my last legs and oh so bloody knackered.

So, apologies for the huge gap (no I’m not talking about my front teeth) but I’m going to try a little bit harder. Even if it’s just a paragraph or two here and there. The thing is, I do enjoy blogging. Been at it for years. In fact, the final episode of Stevenson Speaks, my video series, will be about my blog, so you might want to tune in to that. And, I’ve even set myself a little challenge. I’m going to try and do a follow up blog tomorrow; just to see how it goes. Watch this space!