Tuesday 18th April 2017

If going back to work on Mondays after a two day weekend was bad, going back on Tuesday after a four day weekend was worse. In fact I have lost my enthusiasm for the job, and need a long break from it, maybe I can come back refreshed in May when I have vacation, but for now I am just sick of it. So that was me in a bad mood when the alarm went off, even worse as I had been awake since four thinking of the tasks I had to do. It is already getting light outside, and the birds seem very happy indeed with dawn, me, less so.

I can smell coffee being made in the kitchen, and the aroma creeping up the stairs. I check with Scully if I should get up, she doesn't answer, but then she doesn't have a four hour meeting on skype in the afternoon. In fact, it could have been worse, I should really have traveled over for the meeting, spunking nearly a grand of the company's money to attend a meeting. Not that I even wanted to attend it, so I ask it be made into a Skype meeting, and it was, so no travel for me this week. Unless you count the Eurostar zip over to Leuven on Thursday.

So anyway, we drink coffee whilst looking at our respective computers; I was checking Flckr and JOols was doing suduku or something. Anyway, we are both doing what relaxes us I suppose. She is ready for work at ten past seven, but takes time to walk round the garden to check on what is growing before climbing into the car and leaving. Leaving me with just three cats, food and my work.

There was the usual avalanche of mails waiting for me, most of which I could move into the pending folder, along the with 1035 other mails that are also pending. What I needed then was single minded determination to review the document I have been trying to do for a week. Oh look, a butterfly. Oh look and interesting tweet. You get the picture.

I do struggle on to time for the meeting, then the four hour meeting can begin. I like meetings, I do, but you know, like at the LFB they should be limited to 45 minutes, or the point at which my brain starts to melt.

It ends at half four, leaving me time to take a shot of the dining room table with my computer and notebook in place. I would like a beer, I really would, but there is dinner to cook. And tonight it was a welcome return for the aubergine and pasta salad combo; always a winner. But if I want it to be done at a reasonable time, I will have to do all the preparation myself; peeling the aubergine, slicing them and then salting each slice, egg and breadcrumbing each slice, then cook the slices in batches.

I was just about done when Jools arrives home; she pours herself some cider and some wine for me.

Cheers.

And there was football on the radio; Leicester v Athetico, but sadly the Foxes lose. I write, edit shots and make more wine vaish through the evening, and we go to bed with a badger chomping away outside on the leftover birdseed in the front garden. Molly sits on the windowsill looking down on the badger.

Situation normal.