Tuesday 17th August 2021

It is now only just getting light at five in the morning. If I'm honest, its more like night than day now.

I lay in bed listening to the sounds of the young day, Steve next door getting in his car to drive to work, Jools gets up and I hear her feet on the wooden stairs, being surrounded by hungry cats.

I am finding it increasingly difficult to summond the energy for work, we wait for news on how, if at all, the news of the reorganisation will affect us.

I find it hard to be bothered.

I get up, and Jools had made the first coffee of the day, no sign of POppy, I think Mulder chased her out during the night. In fact, she would not return all day. It is becoming usual, but we still worry about her and the home we have provided where she is partly living in fear.

Sigh.

Jools hangs washing out before leaving, and I have logged on to work, where I am warned that if I don't finish my travel expenses, they will take my credit card away, which would mean not travelling again.

Tempting. I have to say.

This was the day when I was offered a new job. An agency had been bugging me for days, so I took their call, was I interested in the job as a quality manager on a project in German waters?

How much?

£650 a day!

Now, this seems like a King's ransome, but I know this is half the going rate, and after delving deeper, they only want to pay three days a week with five days worked, as they don't count travel as work.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

We talk and it is clear I know my eggs, and she bands names at me, some I know, some i don't. I tell her there are two people with the experience to do the job; my mentor or me. She knows Chris.

She'll get back to me when she knows more.

That could be up to four times what I earn now, or, put it this way, if they paid the going rate, eight times what I earn now.

We could retire in two years. If the job didn't kill me. And it might.

Its nice to play, and offer advice, which she was thankful for.

I go back to work.

No sign of Poppy.

It is another unsummer day. Cool, cloudy and breezy, I had to close the windows in the house, apart from the once Poppy jumps in and out of.

I put my jumper on too.

Still cold.

I make bread in the afternoon, but take a call during the second rise, so it becomes a monster, filling the baking tray. I put the oven on to finish it off, this was to go with Scotch Egg salad for dinner.

Not much else to report. We wash up, have the radio on, and during the evening I watch the German Super Cup final, Munich v Dortmund, a good game, fast and skillful. It passes the evening.

And so another day has slipped though my fat fingers.