Monday 9th August 2021

Monday.

And the rain did fall. Again.

Not to worry, as I had eight hours stuck at the dining room table listening to an audit.

Living the dream.

And Jools was heading north with Jen and Sylv meaning I would be home alone, as alone as you can be with four cats. But you get the idea.

Jen was to collect Jools at eight for the long trip north to Manchester, and I had to be at work at seven, so there was some overlap, but I was in a call as Jools finished packing and made ready to leave.

Jen came at five to eight, I went to say goodbye to Sylv. And to Jen though she would be coming back down with Jools on Wednesday.

So, from eight, I was alone, and preparing for the audit.

I am an auditor, I do audits, I facilitate audits, I make notes on audits. It pays the bills.

And at nine, I dial in and through the day we battled with tecnology and reality as we worked our way through the agenda.

I have to be honest that sitting on my bum for eight hours, listening to a question and answer session may not be how I saw my life panning out once I had sat my exams back when dnosaurs roamed the earth, but it pays the bills, and apparently I seem to know what I'm talking about from time to time.

Whis is nice.

We have a break for lunch, but I had got half a pork pie, some coleslaw and sun-dried tomatoes with mini mozzerallas for lunch, which I ate, muted, as the others talked.

THe days shows that remote auditing cannot replace those at site, due to poor connectiosn, the sessions with one auditor took twice as long as they should as hi lives in the countryside, and the wifi at the site failed, so they were using a single mobile phone as a hub. I can say it was worse in the RAF where, on one occasion, we had to resort to having a runner between HQ and the airstrip as the local network failed. A man on a motorbike with sealed orders.

Anyway, its not like I could do anything else, as we had over four hours of heavy rain. I did snap it at one point as it hammered down in unprecidented amounts yet again.

We finish at half four, I was about done, if I'm honest, as I had to remind the auditors that there was an agenda to follow and folk had to leave at half four to catch a ferry. I could have had a wee dram at that point, but instead have a coffee and prepare dinner; defrosted ragu sauce and pasta. All done in 20 minutes, washed down with cherry juice.

Instead of writing or surfing the net, I watch an hour of Only Connect and find I have six episodes of Sky at Night to catch up on, so watch three episodes, then write the daily blog, put out the badger food, and that was another day done.