I've been allocated my first book by the RNIB.  "Nemesis - The Battle for Japan 1944-45" by Max Hastings.  Oddly relieved that I hadn't imagined the "yes we'd like you to work for us" conversation, and I won't deny that there was always a slight paranoia that perhaps they tell everybody that they want them, but just don't book 'em!  Not that I really believed that, you understand, but self-doubt was always a mainstay of my personality!

The book arrived in the post yesterday, and a sturdy tome it is, too.  A quick scan through suggests it's the sort of language throughout that I ought to be able to do well - properly-phrased, cleanly-written, and in sentences of sensible length, to allow for normal breathing.  I now have a little over a month to "prepare" the book.  Being a complete tyro at the job, I'm not sure where to start, but I guess actually reading the book wouldn't be a bad idea.  Make a note, perhaps, of any names of pronunciations I'm unsure of.  Annotate the text where necessary, for nightmare text lurking the other side of a page-turn.  Decide whether to attempt accents for the various places Sir Max quotes regional vernacular.

There's also the matter of travel and/or accommodation costs.  The RNIB are of course a charity, and don't pay full commercial rates for their readers.  Nor do they pay expenses.  The exercise, then, is not going to be a huge money-spinner for me, and I'm comfortable with that.  I see it as very useful experience in audiobook narration - if I ever have a desire to work for the likes of Naxos or Audible, then I'll need some sort of portfolio of existing audiobook work, and this should certainly help to provide that.
Travel to and from Peterborough by car would cost me around £15 return, and at the moment, this looks like being the cheapest option:  Simply to commute every day.  It's a lot of driving though, with an early start.  The train's not really an option - it's no quicker, and it costs around twice as much. What I'd really like would be to find somewhere cheap (very very very cheap!) to stay, in or near Peterborough.  In the summer months, I'd be tempted to just pop my little tent in the back of the car, and find a campsite. So long as there's somewhere to grab a shower, that should be fine.  It's only ever likely to be as much as a week of work every couple of months, so I don't mind roughing it a bit for short periods.  This end of the year though, when it's a bit nippy at night...  maybe not.

All quite exciting though.  As I say, it's never going to make me rich, but it's another string to my bow, and I will at least be earning money doing something vaguely creative!