An editor’s life
An editor’s life isn’t always romantic – even when you live in south-west France, as The Copy Collective’s editor, proof reader and dog lover Clare writes.
Sunday
1700 Dry cleaner brings Issia for two weeks while they go to Benin.
1900 Penny brings Buster and Dude for three weeks while she goes to England.
2130 Dog fight.
2230 Dude disappears. He is now blind and deaf, so I spend a fruitless hour searching, no point calling.
2330 Dude reappears between the house and pigeonnier, moon-gazing.
2335 Everyone goes to bed. Chianti is next door. Omega doesn’t like the crowd so she leaves too. Dude and Sausage curl up on eiderdowns, Enzi is on her beanbag and Buster, Issia and Cooee are on my bed.
Monday
0500 Everyone thinks they would like to go out. Issia runs off. I spend a fruitless hour searching and whistling for her.
0600 I pull on jeans under my nightdress, an anorak over it, find the car key and go to the dry cleaner’s to see if Issia has found her way there. Cannot turn out the car’s interior light. Windscreen fogs up. No dog. On the way back I pass a woman power-walking in the dark, stop and ask if she has seen a black dog on her walk. She says very crossly that she’s not taking exercise, she’s on her way to work. I offer to give her a lift, which makes her even more cross, but she asks what todo if she sees the dog. I say I don’t happen to have a visiting card on me and suggest she calls the vet. She strides off, another car stops and she gets into it.
0615 I stop in the supermarket car park at the bottom of my drive and see the pretty Moroccan fishmonger-now-promoted-to-supervisor and ask if she has seen the dog. She hasn’t, but has Mohamed’s telephone number and promises to call if she finds her. I get home and Issia comes out of the bushes to meet the car.
0620 I go back to bed and see there is an email from Yuki asking me to double the length of a paragraph and add more bulletin points. I do the paragraph and email her asking if the client could possibly let us know how many points they would like.
0720 An email from The Copy Collective asking me to edit some CVs, which are in Dropbox. I openDropbox in Safari and can’t change to Word to edit. I try not to panic. I call their IT person who is endlessly patient with my incompetence, but she thinks it might have been sent wrongly. I query the sender who is not amused. Desperate I click everything I can find and, lo and behold, Safari turns to Word.
0820 I start the CVs.
0920 I think I had better get up. Enzi pukes.
Things can only get better…