bruised and battered

Like I said the other day, when it rains, it pours. I've had an exhausting week with deadlines coming out of my ears. Hopefully it will abate for the weekend after I've finished this last job today. It'll all start again on Monday, no doubt, but we are heading up to Yorkshire this weekend.

Imagine this: I start work at 7am on Wednesday morning. I work through the day with barely a break from the computer. My computer gets hot - it always complains when I give it a whipping, probably because it's old and tired and doesn't like me any more for making it work so hard for four years. Later, I've worked all day on a bunch of images and am just about to upload them at 10.30pm, ready for a deadline first thing the next morning. I have scanned in all my drawings for the next bunch of images, deadline midday the next day. Then, just as I'm saving the last file, my computer starts to make a weird noise. Not the usual fuck-off-I'm-too-hot-give-me-a-bloody-break fan whirring, but a croaky little rumble. Oh no. Then I get the wheel of death in cheery rainbow colours (I mean for GOD'S sake, Apple, that bastard wheel appears like someone announcing that they have cancer whilst dressed up as a kitten). And then nothing. Nothing works. So after a while I turn it off by pressing the power button. I leave it to cool. Then will it start up again? Heck no. It's not playing ball, it's not bothered, it's gone on a bloody sabbatical. Cue MASSIVE, hand-shaking panic, phone-calls to my lovely agent Charlie at midnight, trying to start up in safe mode etc. etc. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I went into London at the crack of dawn on Thursday after four hours of barely sleeping to try and retrieve the files at my agent's studio, with the help of their computer people. Thankfully we got the files off and I worked my arse off to meet the last deadline, but my hard drive is fried and needs to be replaced, so I'm computerless until the end of next week.

So forgive me if posting is sporadic for a while. My poor old machine is in hospital having its vital organs rearranged. Have a good weekend!