Thursday 24th June 2021

Thursday.

Day two of the great IT clusterfuck, and I log on and find that nothing is working. Not Outlook, not Teams, not having access to my department's folders. Maybe they just fired my ass and failed to tell me?

Jools has been told that she has been working too many hours, and that obs aren't getting done. So, should she work less or work more?

Moden life's troubles.

It was to be a glorious day; lots of sunshine, light winds, although it was to turn cooler and cloudy later with rain overnight. It turned out there was just one cloud on the horizon; no football until Saturday!

How is this possible? We have had football almost every day for a year, and now we are supposed to last two who days without people falling over for no reason? How will we cope?

I don't know how I had the strength to go on to be honest, but I do.

I have breakfast and then a meeting with the ever-shrinking band of colleagues from the old company. We have a collective moaning session, it doesn't change anything, but helps saying stuff and swearing.

I restart the computer a number or times, nothing works.

So, at ten I went for a walk.

Not far, just along over the fields, heading down the diagonal path to check on the poppy field I had been told about, only to find out it had been harvested.

Too late, the hero.

Elsewhere fields were full of a mix of old crops and wildflowers, including huge amounts of Pineappleweed and Field Pansy.

I snap them all.

Back on the path I find several groups of Fumitories; not sure if they're the rare Dense Flowered or Common Ramping species. I will try to find out, though easily missed.

The butterfly glade is now so overgrown wth brambles and teasles that there is no entering it, which means that the butterflies will go unchased, which is fine, but it will soon turn to woodland and be lost.

So it goes, so it goes.

I walk up to Windy Ridge, down past the farm which is all a sea of mud thanks to the unseasonal rain we have had this spring. And no sign of it drying up really. Normally by now the chalk and mud had dried to be as hard a concrete, but not this year. So plants and flowers are thriving.

Up at Windy Ridge I snap a Meadow Brown and Holly Blue, both just paused to bask, though both flew off after I rattled of a couple of shots. Though on the way down back home I came across a Small Tortoiseshell feeding on a spear thistle, too hungry to be bothered by me. I took dozens of shots.

Back home, restart the laptop, and nothing works still.

I have my phone, so if there are urgent matters, I can be contacted.

I have lunch.

And then settle down after restarting the laptop again. I try to open a mail and Outlook freezes for the nth time that day.

And outside the sunshine wanes, a breeze builds and it gets chilly.

By six it was trying to rain, and felt like March again. I cook breaded aubergine dor dinner, being the Cgairman of the Aubergine Marketing Board, I have keep up appearances don'tcha know?

And after clearing up, we listen to the wireless, have a coffee, and relax, and with no football, I could go to bed at the sensible time of nine, with it still being almost fully light outside.