I’ve had a remarkably busy working week, given that I spent 4 days of of it visiting friends on the NSW coast and in the Victorian bush. I worked on a couple of documents – a scientific paper and a short document for an international organisation. Both looked straightforward at first glance, but once I got stuck into them, I found lots of issues to grapple with. After 10 years of science editing I should have worked out by now that there is no such thing as a straightforward document; instead, there are just gradations of complexity. But perhaps my first assessment of the documents was based on wishful thinking. With temperatures in the high 30s and no air-conditioning, settling down to a day of editing has been difficult. Happily it’s much cooler today and I feel a lot more focused.