A Orange Egg

It seems ridiculous that even though I'm at home all day, I just can't get any writing done. I don't only mean writing on our current book (a crime story called Got It For A Song, for your information), but writing posts for this blog or my cancer one (http://karindixon.blogspot.co.uk) as well.

The problem, of course, is Facebook. And Twitter. And Snapchat. And emails. And Facebook. And Twitter. And Snapchat. And emails. And Facebook. And... You get the picture.

One day last week I got up at 9:00, made myself breakfast (a mug of English Breakfast tea and Mr W's homemade rye bread toast with marmite and homemade gooseberry jam, if you're interested), took it back up to bed and settled in for a good long writing spell. Three hours later, the cat started scratching to get out of the bedroom and I was still scrolling up and down my newsfeed clicking on every shared post just in case I hadn't already seen it.

Three hours! On bloody Facebook!

That was the point I knew I had to take control. Not only was my writing productivity suffering, but I  have a free Lovefilm offer till January 14th and I'm only on halfway through series 2 of the 8 series of Spooks...

And so, I consulted my resident Person With Good Ideas. "Easy-peasy. We can solve your conundrum easily and cheaply. Let's go."

So off we went. To a very lovely kitchen shop. Yep, you heard right, a kitchen shop was going to solve my social media addiction. Novel idea, but I was willing to give it a go. And this is what my Person With Good Ideas found: 

A Orange Egg

A Orange Egg is male (something about being too competitive if he was female, which is weird, but there you are). He is a delightful colour exactly the same as this plump tangerine and when I twist his little Orange Eggy head he ticks charmingly until he reaches my chosen time and then his whole little Orange Eggy body rings and shakes to tell me in his sweet Orange Eggy way that I must turn off the broadband.

We began our collaboration as writing partners this morning and it has been amazing. A Orange Egg says stop and I stop, without even a "Just a sec, A Orange, just need to do th...". Productivity has soared (viz, this post) and I have a whole evening free for Peter Firth, Keeley Hawes and Matthew McFadyen. Score!