Tuesday 8th June 2021

It's showtime.

In the end, I was up here to work, and the first day of the audit was today. I wasn't doing the audit, just there as moral support.

I had to find the habour and actually get in the site, or get to our entrance past security and COVID temperature test.

The hotel is on the edge of Hartlepool, and the trip to work was four miles down the coast, past rolling dunes, nature reserves and through the town of Seaton Carew which was rather like a mini Great Yarmouth. All the while on the horizon is the bulk of the nuclear power station and beside that, ten or so turbine towers standing nearly 100 metres in the air, wheich meant you could always find the site once you were withon five miles of it.

I woke up at five past five, messed around online, showered and got dressed, ready for breakfast at half six, when the Brewer's Fayre opened. I waited outside, talked to a draysman who was staying in the area all week. He lived in Northampton, but had a broad Yorkshire accent, rather like a nice Geoff Boycott.

I have some almost defrosted berries and natural yogurt followed by a bacon and sausage butty and a coffee.

So, set for the day, I loaded the car and set off down the coast, the towers of the turbines clearly visible. Seaton Carew was pretty deserted, so i cruie through that and then approach the power station. As is the way, sometimes, the postcode took me into the approach to the power station; it was venting steam and there was a low frequency hum. I'm sure that was normal. I drove into the car park, I could see our yard, but no clear way of getting into it.

I drive back out to the main road, then down quarter of a mile to the port entrance, and there was the sign to our offices. I signed in, drove down 50 yards to have my temperature taken, then allowed onto the site, passing by two huge oil rig accommodation blocks being scrapped. The odd thing is, that they were probably made in my hometown of Lowestoft at the then SLP yard, now long gone. The road past within yards of the blocks, and they were huge, towering above the car, and supports still covered in barnacles and other shellfish.

I drove past, and to our yard, finding a parking space and I see that our offices are also in an old oil rig block too, meaning there was a climb of two flights of stairs to the ground floor, then up another flight to the main floor where all the offices were. I sign in, and I am met by the site manager, who is pleased to see me and knew me from previous projects.

I have a safey brief and talk about the expectations to the H&S coordinator.

And suddenly it was time for the audit, we all log in from our desks and/or offices either on site of elesewhere in the UK or Denmark.

And so the dance began.

It was a terribly long day, I won't bore you, as I would be bored even writing about it, but I had to call the audit to a stop at twenty past five, it was an hour later in Denmark, and the audtor was horrified that he had failed to realise.

We wrap up and I leave site, having discovered there was a nature reserve between the site and the hotel.

I park beside a tee on a golf course, I get the camera out and walk over the fairway to the start of the reserve, my orchid-eyes peeled and looking for spikes.

I saw none.

I saw a fritillary butterfly, but couldn't get a photo, but got one of a Common Blue at rest in the long grass. There was lots of milkwort, some kind of vetch and a bit of Common Toadflax already in flower. Autumn is coming, apparently.

After just over an hour, and feeling despondent with the amount of litter people had left after a picnic or whatever. People reaally seem to hate nature despite wanting to be among it. I'll never understand.

I drove back to the hotel, dumped my bag and went to the pub next door and took a table outside as far from the dirty tabbers and using the QR code order garlic mushrooms followed by another bland burger. As there was no food on site at work, I hadn't eaten since breakfast, so were hungry.

It was OK.

Better was a surfer being towed, slowly, round the dock, and at intervals the board would rise into the air and the board and rider seemed to be floating. Round and round he went, sometimes falling off, sometimes getting it right.

I left him to it and walked back to my room to read some of the BIlly Bragg book on Skiffle, which I am trying to read beyond chapter two.