Officially I can declare that today is the day I have finished my jobs for the year 2014. After the morning spent doing emails and organising music (I had rather optimistically planned to record The Sunday Alternative in addition to my main task but it didn’t happen) I cleared my head by taking Jack for a run around the park and making myself some breakfast, (when I returned home, the park doesn’t have a kitchen), then I set about my one job for the day. I finished recording the final part of the Charles Dickens Christmas audio books today and A Dickens Christmas Collection was available to download by the close of business this afternoon. That’s the beauty of working on a DIY basis; everything was ready in a day. Somehow I managed to get through it all with the minimum amount of trouble apart from an attack of childishness that caused me to giggle when I got to the following passage:

She had eyes like Fanny, and hair like Fanny, and dimples like Fanny’s.

I am 38 years old. Obviously the first source of my amusement was the name ‘Fanny’, it is such a school-level word and probably the first one a boy uses in describing a vagina years before he ever gets lucky enough to see one. Then of course because I found it so funny it became funnier the more I had to say it, especially the mental image of someone having eyes like Fanny, what a freakish woman that would be, popular but freakish. Having to say ‘hair like Fanny’ felt quite retro coming as I do from an era when fannies did indeed used to have hair on them, my generation saw the transition, or we would have done if it hadn’t happened overnight. Finally, dimples like Fanny just brought up all manner of weird facial embellishments. It took at least ten goes to record one simple paragraph. Maybe Charles Dickens knew that in years to come this name would take on a new meaning and that’s why he chose it. I don’t even want to think about Ye Olde Operation Yewtree telling him off for using “do you like Dickens” as a chat up line.

I am 38 years old.

It seemed like a long time ago that I recorded the first part of this collection, and as the MP3 files were dated June it confirmed that earlier in the year I was far more organised than I am now. Once I’d gone through the palaver of having to convert the MP3 files into WAV files (a somewhat pointless exercise considering that the listener will download it in MP3) I had a problem with one of the stories. A Christmas Tree is a far longer story than the others and therefore too big a file for Bandcamp to cope with, so the album is now a three track rather than the intended four. I couldn’t even upload it as a single track as opposed to as part of the album, so I will email it to anyone who makes a donation via the PayPal button of one pound or more. Given that the album is available for free with the option to pay any amount, it is good to be able to do something to directly reward the generosity of those who help the fund. Any money made by the sale of my audio books is used to create free online content including the weekly podcast, so it isn’t as if I’m using it to live the life of luxury. It would be nice if more regular payments were made as a result of the daily blog, perhaps making a monthly ‘payday’ donation. That way I could make plans for 2015 and work out what proposed projects I could afford to work on.

It is likely that I will be filming a pilot episode of what will hopefully be an ongoing project early in the New Year, thanks to a quick social media request I now have a band willing to take part. The episode will be uploaded to YouTube and used as the video on Indie GoGo as a crowd fund attempt. This pilot is on my list for 2015 but the series isn’t so I don’t have too much pressure on that score. I could in theory start filming the series at some point during the year if I get time but if not then it will simply go on my 2016 list, which as I turn 40 that year means that I will hopefully have finished the bulk of the list in order to make some serious decisions regarding my career. I’m getting my hands measured for Punch and Judy puppets already.

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