Thursday 16th September 2021

We've nearly done it. Made it to the weekend.

Funnily enough, I am so caught up at work, I worry I have missed something important. Doubly so as my colleagues are travelling across Europe, auditing as the go, while I am in our dining room, staring at my laptop waiting for mails to come in.

Poised like a cobra waiting to strike. A fot cobra anyway.

For Jools it is her last day before her week off, while I have Friday to get through. And as Andy is back, she doesn't have to leave quite so early, so she departs when it was nearly light.

I have a second coffee and make breakfast as i get to start the day with four hours of meetings. Which wasn't nice. But I shouldn't complain, as every day was like this in construction.

A 90 minute meeting on ongoing improvements and looking to the future. I'll be glad to have one to be honest. And then a handover meeting to a colleague in China of the audits I have been doing.

Phew.

At eleven, I stop for lunch, warm some fritters up on the old oil in the frying pan. Despite being friend, they are mostly fibre. Apart from the cheese and flour. Still no wine, although I should be OK. Maybe not at lunch, though?

At one I put on my boots and go for a walk to clear my head. I am hopeful of seeing another rare butterfly, but time is running out.

I go tot he end of our street, and turn up Station Road, and walk up until I get to te last track across the fields, then stumble along to Windy Ridge. though not many butterflies to be seen, mostly Speckled Woods, but a Peacock flies by, settles for a nanosecond before flying off again.

Down the hill and back along where my eyes follow a dragonfly until it settles, and I creep up to snap it, or her, as it hung from a dead leaf.

It was a Migrant Hawker, a female, and looks in good condition. I get real sloce and snap away.

A lady on a horse waits for me to finish, then we watch in awe as the dragon takes to the air, her wings a blur of rainbow colours.

We both coo our appreciation.

I walk back home, she and the horse go ahead, the horse dropping horse eggs for me to step over.

I didn't mind, just good to be out, and warm enough to feel like summer. Although the wind did build in the afternoon and there was a chill in the air.

I pack away the computer and am done for the day, just six hours to go and I will be off for nine days.

Sweet.

We have an easy dinner: buttered crumpets to start followed by slice of limoncello and grappa tart, which we had to try for quality control purposes. It passed so we can take it to Jen for her and John to try on Friday.

Darkness comes before eight now, a slightly fuller moon, maybe tree days from being full rises,, yellow, in the south and we listen to the radio as another day fades.