Friday 12th February 2021

I reread some of my old blog posts yesterday, and so I found out that the 9th was the twelvth anniversary of us moving into this house. It took eleven and a half years, but the house is now ours. All ours.

I can remember looking a tthe paperwork for the mortgate, several times greater amount that the mortgage for my old little house in Suffolk. Possibly more money than my Dad earned in his life, or close to it. Or something. And by signing the agreement, we would be liable for this huge debt, and accepting that there would be no chance of retiring before we were 65, as even then it was a twenty plus year mortgage, and the amount seemed so vast.

Doubly so when a mere three months later, my then new employer went bust, cancelled all our tax-free contracts and I was unemployed, and we still owed most of the mortgage. These were scary times, but we did keep up payments, and in the end, we did pay of the remainder in about half the time anticipated.

That is something that still amazes me, and means we are very lucky indeed. Whatever happens, we have this.

We have to decorate it, maybe get all new carpets. A new sofa that still bears the scratches of where Molly used it was a "wall of death" when she was a kitten. In the meantime, she grew up, I moved to Kent and moved into this house". Its still comfortable, though.

But here we are, happy in our house. Slings and arrows of outrageous fortune might be thrown at us, we will prevail.

Friday was the first day of Jools' three day weekend. I had one more day to do. But I had training from seven, or so I thought, so we were up very early. It was still dark and bitterly cold outside.

The sun rose in another spectacular manner, setting the clouds and sky on fire. I had to go for the meeting before the sun actuall rose, but it looked amazing.

Work was a three hour induction, sorry "onboarding" webinar, where all of us from the old offshore company were introduced to the old onshore company, that we all now work for. About half the 200 of us have been employed for seven years, so it was going back home. Only home was much bigger than it was before.

We had much to learn. But much was the same.

Straight after where the old team, part of the new team, tried to find a workround of the two IT systems we have to work with, and see if we can see into the new company's.

In order to do so, we had to download a Citrix receiver.

Then log into the new company, where IT had created a profile that created a virtual desktop, with a virtual version of MS Edge, in which we could open a virtual version of Chrome. I hope you're keeping up.

Then in a browser with two address bars, in using the lower one, if we typed in the place we wanted to go to, we could access some systems and processes, but not able to download any documents. Each one of us had slightly different access rights.

All this took 90 minutes, and left us all worn out.

Jools had gone shopping, came back laden with food, so we had breakfast while I worked, then at one, we had lunch.

I give in at two, as I had a physio appointment down the hill.

Outside it was bitterly cold. Sunny, but very windy, so the minus five degrees felt like minus ten or so. Or something. And although it had not showed, the day-old snow was drifting, and nearly blocked Station Road on the way to Martin.

I do get through, wait outside the surgery for ten minutes, then called inside, have my temperature taken, asked to wash my hands, then the session can begin.

My shoulder is a little better. I can sleep, but it still aches, so he pummels me, and makes it hurt more, so that it will be better in two days.

I hope.

I drive back home, back up the kill where the snow was still drifting still. I get past mainly because I was travelling fast enough and didn't have to brake or change direction.

Back home we have a brew, because its what we do.

Out of the front window I see a rare winter visitor, a Redwing, our smallest thrush species. I had seen many shots of them online, but not seen one in the flesh. And here was one just on the other side of the road.

I take shots.

Even better than that, Jools spotted one in the back garden, and it hopped ever closer to the house, ending up just a few feet from the back door.

I took more shots.

And soon after, we are hungry so have pizza and beer for dinner, while the sun set outside, and the wind still whistled over the tundra. We could see the snow, whipped up by the wind, drifting across the fields the other side of the Dip, while the field with bales had been stripped of snow, all blwn onto the lane leading to Westcliffe.

I put out food for the badger, just before it got dark. And that was that.

There was the online music quiz. I finish just outside the top ten, but my best showing.

A week of poor sleep saw me heading to bed before eight to read, and giving in and turning out the light at half eight.

More rock and roll.