Quiet week ahead

I have very little work on this week. It's deliberate - I have far too much invested in watching Wimbledon during championship fortnight. I love grass-court tennis - in a previous, salaried job, I used to sneak into the boardroom in the afternoons if there was a particularly good match lined up, put the tv on and watch as much as I could get away with, then catch up on my work at other times.

As a freelance, I have to work as and when the jobs come in. I was actually expecting a book on some financial topic to arrive this week for copy-editing. I wasn't too upset when the commissioning ed told me there would be a delay as it meant more time for the tennis. And besides, I'm still recuperating from the last gruelling MS they tossed in my direction.

It's hot too - too hot to work efficiently. It's hard to concentrate when the mercury's nudging 30C and I have to keep leaving my desk in search of water. The only real solution is to lie down on the sofa in my shady living room and rest on the sofa. With the tv on...

All good excuses of course. But that's one of the luxuries of being self-employed - I can work when I feel like it.

I did do some work this morning. I finished off an editing job for a client then had a long chat on the phone with him after I'd sent the work over. The chat was useful - all part of building a good client relationship, and the upshot is yet more work will be coming my way.

In the meantime, I've just seen Murray get knocked out and I'm not in the mood to watch Federer pick off yet another easy victim. He's damn good but the matches are uninteresting because they are so predictable. I'd really like to see someone give a Federer a shock to the system, because then maybe, just maybe, the final really will be a nail-biting, edge-of-the-seat thriller.