Lucky with my friends.

I'm extremely lucky with my friends.

As soon as the printers said I'd have to get the book to them by Friday, the cavalry came over the hill. The friend who's been checking my translation kicked into high gear. the friend who'd polishing the Spanish worked right through the bank holiday - about 12 hours, I think. And the friend who's doing the layout almost kept pace with the other two.  OK, so I'm paying people and doing return favours, but this was way more than they'd signed up for.  Two of them said very similar things: "Well this book's your big dream, isn't it?".

Yes, it's my dream.  And they worked like it was theirs.

On Tuesday, when most people were back at work, I contacted the Tourist Board to ask how many books they wanted for Fitur (which would affect the amount I had t pay the printers in advance).  And I was told that her boss had changed his mind over the break, and he wasn't going to do a presentation on astrotourism, so he didn't want books there.

In one was this was marvellous.  I could take a break.  In another it was extremely embarrassing. People had worked like stink to help me.

It was so embarrassing that I briefly considered not telling people. But I wasn't going to lie to these people, even by omission. So I took a deep breath and picked up the phone.  And explained, ending with, "But I really do appreciate everything you've done just the same as if I still had the deadline."

Every time I got a long, loud silence.

Well, I say long.  I think it was about 5 seconds each time. Believe me, that's a long silence for a phone conversation, and longer when you're on tenterhooks.

And every time, the silence was followed by, "Don't worry about it."

I think the 5 seconds was the time it took to for my friends to work out that I didn't do it on purpose.

Yeah.  I'm very, very lucky with my friends.