Wednesday 2nd December 2020

Last week, at work, we received the results of the recent employee engagement survey, and it turned out we are a happy bunch. A small team with a great boss, line manager, who happenes to be a friend too.

We work hard, help each other, take tasks and offer advice. It is a great place to work.

It is perfect.

Or was.

I had to miss another of those emergency meetings that have cropped up since the merger happened. Well, I was doing an audit, so I thought another meeting of no news would be fine to skip.

But there was news.

There is reorganisation, we have a new boss, and the dpeartment is being split up.

All this I didn't know until I called a colleague over lunch break and he told me. We are sad, of course, that we are going to lose a lot of what we had, and lose our boss, who gives us free reign to investigate areas where we see weakness, or give advice on areas we have knowledge of.

In short, I have no idea what all this means. Hopefully the new boss will see what a happy and clever bunch we are let us carry on. That's what I hope, anyway.

So, Wednesday, I had a call from my old boss explaining it all.

Oh well, life and work goes on.

Wednesday is a rest day, and it is also Jools it is the first day of the five day weekend, though next week she has been asked to work three days, Wednesday as well.

Jools said she was going to go out walking all day, take the car and find somewhere in one of the walking guides and stomp about, so I would be left at home.

I would be in charge of the cats again.

After an audit, you have to write the report and input your findings into the database so someone can take action. This takes time and enthusuasm.

And I was right out.

Anyway, there were calls to catch up on, as people swapped more news with changes that are happening all over the company, so I could add our changes to that.

The morning drags on.

On my last walk on Monday, I had found that our local patch of Winter Heliotrope was in flower, so I wanted to make time to go and snap them on Wednesday as for the rest of the week the weather is supposed to be very grim, with wind and heavy rain.

So at eleven, I put on my coat and shoes, take my camera and macro lens and walks to the footpath, go up that to Collingwood and to the end when the country track starts, and in the corner, in front of a telephone junction box, are the flowers.

The plant is an alien species, and is aggressive, it does look and smel good. The ,ain problem is that it produced large amounts of heart-shaped leaves that cover the ground through the rest of the year, smothering our native plants. In some places a chemcial war is being waged against it. As bad as it is, there are worse species.

I arrive and take shots, and od the wal if Ivy down the lane, the patterns of the seedheads are really incredible.

And walk back.

I had been gone 20 minutes and no one noticed.

So I make cheese and corned beef toasties for lunch, and make a huge brew too. I eat staring at the work mail inbox, nothing came in.

Jools still had not come back.

I fed the cats.

I put the heating up a notch and knuckle down to finish the report and send it off before the end of the day.

Jools did return at half three, it was getting dark already and so I put the keetle on, because its what we do.

Dinner was to be courgette fritters, and into which I fail to add the seeds again. But di use an old sweet pepper which gave it come ooomph. And once all cooked, we st down to eat, drink wine/cider and make the food vanish.

After clearing up I make brews and I spend the evening following Norwich on Twitter and the BBC website. An injury crisis and tired legs meant that we were not really in the dame. We have no fit left back or striker, so we lost 3-1, a bad day, but hopefully players coming back from the weekend. And we're still top of the league.

Yay.