Hi Everyone!

I haven’t posted about this except from a few of self-pitying tweets because moaning about stuff publicly isn’t very attractive or interesting. But as it seems to be taking me a while to recover, I thought I’d better let you know what’s happening.

At the start of June I had a nasty bout of gastro-enteritis. Nothing too dramatic or serious, but I was totally out of action for two weeks, I didn’t eat for a week of that and lost over 7 kg body weight. Fortunately I had the stored fat to cope 🙂 I took medical advice, all is well, I’m mostly recovered from the direct effects.

But it took a lot out of me, literally and figuratively, and there was a two week gap in my work schedule as well so I’m very behind.

It is taking a long time to build myself back up. My stamina in particular is lamentable right now. Ariel has been an absolute super-heroine in fielding a bunch of stuff I would normally have done, the most important being the longest and most complex custom bondage video shoot we’ve ever done which she stepped in to direct at the last moment, assisted by local camera-person and all around star Katie and our cast (Natalia Forrest and Zoe Page).

Yesterday I walked with Ariel and a visiting photographer through town to the castle, and by the time we got home I was wobbly and tired and needed a rest. It looks like it might take a while to get back to my normal mountain-walking form, since the castle walk is normally one I stride around in a lunch hour in the middle of a working day, not one that makes me have to go have a lie down afterwards.

Similarly, my endurance for shoot days, editing, and even just standing up is not what it was four weeks ago. Some days I’m managing two hours work, some days eight hours, but I’m currently incapable of the ten to twelve hour days I usually put in to catch up when I’ve got behind with stuff.

RE and Silk Soles updates are already done as far as end of July, but we have multiple multi-day shoots coming up and it might be a scramble to get August and September updates ready. We will – nothing has higher priority than keeping the RE and Silk Soles update schedule. I’ll hire extra helping hands to get through the shoots while I edit if need be, and the hell with the profit margin for the moment.

But some other stuff will have to go on the back burner while we prioritise the most important jobs that potentially impact the maximum number of our customers.

Specifically, emails and custom videos. Apart from the mega custom shoots, we were due to shoot a bunch of smaller videos, mostly with Ariel, in June and July. I’m very sorry but these will likely have to wait. I’ve not been feeling competent to rig, shoot and act in a film and do a good job (and indeed some days I’ve been so out of it that I’ve not even felt safe to rig bondage or drive a car at all). And if you are waiting for an email reply from me, please bear with me. It may be some weeks before I catch up.

So I’m sorry if I’ve gone quiet on you, or if we aren’t going to be able to deliver custom videos we hoped to shoot this month for a while. As I said, RE and Silk Soles updates are top priorities and I’m confident we’ll meet those obligations. And I’m definitely past the actual illness, it just may be a while before I’m fully recuperated. And in the meantime I’m not as productive as usual, so clearing the backlog may take several months.

Cheers, Hywel