And so I said, what the heck, it’s Saturday afternoon, I’ve worked all the morning, I’ll take a break, eat some ice cream and forget about the rest for 36 hours.
But then the usual fear comes – what if I waste my time and miss my deadlines…
I forced myself to take it easy – it won’t be a day that will make that much of a difference, and I can use this downtime to do some minor research.

So, while I was enjoying a bowl of excellent chocolate and cream ice cream I researched the vocal commands to dictate in Italian in Google Docs. Turns out that “Full stop, new line” is not “Punto e a capo” as per Italian usage, but it is “Punto, nuova riga” – a literal translation of the English.

Exciting, uh?

Then I decided to do some preliminary work on the new Contubernium story whose pitch was cautiously accepted a few days back. Nennius Britannicus will probably be back in the autumn, and I need some background checks.

And so I landed on Richard Alstor’s Soldier and Society in Roman Egypt, a 1995 “social history” of the military Roman presence in Egypt, published in 1995 and available for free in pdf format from here, via Academia.

An excellent little book, with lots of information.
So good, actually, that I will spend the rest of the day reading it.
Because after all it seems to be tailor made to work as reference for the Contubernium stories.
I’ll try not to think about the fact that by reading this book, in the end I’m still working on my story. So much for wanting to take the weekend off.