Saturday 9th April 2016

Friday

Despite being home, and working from the comfort of the dining room table, I had a whole stack of work to do; reports to write, reports to read, meetings to host and then minutes of them to write up too. Phew.

I lay in bed until quarter past six, I can hear Jools feeding the cats in the kitchen downstairs, then the coffee pot being prepared. OK, time to get up now.

The sun had risen in the far east, just about visible from the bathroom; so the long, long shadows stretch over the gardens at the back of our row of houses. Just one day to go and then it will be the weekend.

Downstairs the coffee is ready, it does the job and wakes me up. I would like to chill for the day, but with meetings starting at eight, I have no time. So, once Jools has left, I power up the computer and get to work, checking mails, then finding my notes from the visit two day's before, and start typing.

Outside, the sun shines regularly from behind big fluffy clouds, but I have yet more work to do. Meeting; notes; meeting; phone call. And so on and on. For lunch I warm up some left over chilli, and that takes the edge of things. I do wander around the garden with a camera snapping nature at work, as the garden is a riot of colour from the bulbs and plants we planted last autumn, and the air is full of insects, on the hunt for a sweet meal.

The working day ends with back to back meetings for three hours, and meetings means taking minutes then typing them up and sending them out.

Jools now finishes work at two on a Friday, but can now go and run chores before coming home, meaning there is less to do come Saturday, very handy indeed at the start of the orchid season.

I have marinated a couple of pork steaks in various herbs and spices, which seems to smell very nice indeed. Shallow frying them just makes them smell even more delicious. Served with some boiled corn and bulgar wheat, it is a simple but tasty mean, which we toast with the whole of the weekend ahead of us.

But what is this? No Don this week due to football, Women's football at that, so we listen to Iggy Pop on the radio, play hits and misses from the 1950s, shouldn't work, but does. I round the day off with a documentary about the Bay City Rollers; yes you read that right. A great story with a sad ending, as the band broke up with all hating each other, and them all being owed the millions and millions they earned overseas. As a bonus, I have Bye Bye Baby and Shang a Lang in my head until I fall asleep.