Monday 14th June 2021

And here we go, back to working from home.

There are pluses and bonuses in working from home, and I enjoyed being away, but the five or six hour drives each way are spapping for sure. The thought of being home, though, with the kettle and cats at close call, and able to listen to radio or a podcast or two is also good. In fact, I think that I am now out of practice with travel, ten months since my last trip, and that was five months after the one previous to that. Working from home is the new normal, and one which gives me hours more a week at home, time for photography, cooking, blogging or whatever.

I was awake at ten to five. It was broad daylight and was already warm. Cats were fighting, so I get up, as does Jools and she feeds the cats and makes coffee.

She is going to have to go to work early to catch up as they're so busy, so she is rushing around getting ready and was gone.

I make another coffee, put on a new edition of A Word in Your Ear and settle down to listen to tales of rock from decades ago.

I had a task to complete before the end of work, so hoped I could get on with it, but rumours had been going round of a Windows update. I log on, and sure enough there was an update. I close everything down and accept the update. I make another coffee and breakfast, and by the time I sat back down, it was done. So, I log on, make a call and all was going well when another update was allowed, I saw I had 20 seconds before it shut down whether I wanted it to or not.

Two hours later it was done, just in time for a meeting, pushing back the start of the data analysis even further. Last time this took three days, I had five hours.

The meeting is fine, we all complain.

And then down to the analysis. There is a new template, which has macros so that the data trawling is easy and the results do themeselves.

Which is nice.

Meaning at half three I was done and I could send the report in.

That meant I had time to go for a walk before preparing dinner.

It has been a while since I did a local walk, so after work yesterday I went out, well up for an argument with the rude and nosy neighbour I met last time, but of him there was no sign.

The path over the field was almost totally overgrown, meaning that a new path along the edge of the field had been created by the dogwalkers.

Going out at four wasn't too bright, as it was the warmest part of the day, so wasn't pleasant, and there were no butterflies to be seen, or one I could get near to.

So, I headed back, having taken an hour and some new flowers had been snapped and will be posted in due course.

I had made bread during the day to go with the insalata, so with the bread done, it was a case of just slicing the tomatoes and cheese, seasoning and adding vinegar, oil and basil. As before, there is no beer, no wine, just squash.

Through the afternoon I had multi-tasked with doing work whilst watching Scotland lose their first game in the Euros, that there was a stunning goal to seal the win just made it funnier. Men in kilts sat with their heads in hands. They play England next.

I watch the Spain v Slovakia game at eight; Spain had over 90% possession and yet failed to score.

So it goes, so it goes.