The Easter holiday being upon us, Jess has gone back to Lancashire for a few days to reacquaint herself with family and friends. Being far too busy with vital illustrating duties to give myself half the week off - not least because I’ve already scheduled the other half of the week off, for reasons we’ll come to later - I deposited her at her family’s homestead and returned to York, and so here I am all Jessless and alone.

So far I’ve been busy working all day, but that’s all done now and I have an evening of relaxation and excitement to look forward to, though I’m not entirely sure yet what form that will take. I’ve gotten out of the habit of amusing myself. Spending every waking moment playing on the internet doesn’t seem to do it any more, somehow. Good lord, how I’ve changed.

Still, there are donkeys to be drawn, part one of The Colour of Magic downloaded and currently burning to a DVD, and a shop down the road that sells pizzas, so I think I’ll manage to fend off any signs of ennui. And of course the rest of this blog to write, which I suppose better fill you in on what I’ll be doing later in the week since I said it would up there ^. Though now that I come to do it I can’t imagine it will be of the slightest interest to you.

On Wednesday I shall be tootling over to Lancashire to retrieve Jess, then tootling back here to meet the dog which was originally scheduled to come and see us over the weekend just gone, before her owner remembered it was Easter and she was going to be too busy eating chocolate (the owner, not the dog, one hopes. It kills ‘em, you know). Then on Thursday we’re going to engage in a bit more tootling, this time down to Leicecesecestershire, by way of breaking up the journey we’re going to finish on Friday when we tootle even further south to wherever el10t lives these days for a weekend of deep and meaningful discussions about donkeys prior to the triumphant return of a puzzly member of that species.

So that’s what I’m going to be up to all week. It’s a jam packed schedule, so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me again for a while. Not that that would be remotely surprising to anyone these days, of course.

I wonder what time the pizza shop opens.

I couldn’t face the shame of going an entire month without blogging, so I’d better try to squeeze one out before it’s too late.

Life has been rolling along in its usual merry way, depositing thrilling adventures in its path. We went to Fountains Abbey where we had a lovely day and took some nice pictures of deer, but I dropped my camera and now it doesn’t work and consequently won’t let me get them off it. I had a go at fixing it myself, which wasn’t entirely successful, but I did manage to make it worse, so at least the person who ultimately does repair it will have an interesting challenge. Anyone know any camera repairers in York?

And no doubt we’ve done lots of other exciting things, but I’ve forgotten all of them.

The big news, though, is that we might be getting a dog! Having established that our landlady will let us have one as long as it doesn’t tear up the carpets or eat the neighbour’s chickens, Jess set about doing lots of research and finally found a doggie that looks suitable. It’s coming to visit us at the weekend, and if all goes well, might move in before too long. I hope all does go well - Jess will be dreadfully disappointed if it doesn’t work out. I’ll have to ply her with vast quantities of chocolate to cheer her up, which at least works well timing-wise since it coincides with Easter so we will have vast quantities of chocolate.

And then there’s PuzzleDonkey, which I’ve been spending an unhealthy amount of time fiddling with. That’s the real reason it’s a month since I last blogged - or washed, slept or did any work, now I come to think of it. I suppose I should go and do some of those things really.

I’ll just draw a quick donkey first.