Monday 14th March 2022

After an exciting week away, it was some relief to be back to normal and working from home.

Which meant getting up at half five, have coffee, put out bird seed, make a second coffee, all before starting word dead on time at five past seven, and straight away, there was a Windows update to download and install.

Outside it is spring. I mean, no doubt about it, warm enough later to sit outside and have lunch. The garden is a riot of colour, and the Imperialis are emerging well, though just seven spikes showing so far, but already the air is full of the their heady scent.

I have three days mails to catch up with, and then meetings to attend, all while thinking about my ongoing tasks, and then with another one my soon-to-be-x-boss has seen fit to give me.

Life with the cats is pretty settled now, there's enough sleeping places around the house for all four to find somewhere quiet, and arguments about going out the back door have ended, and soon it will be warm enough to have the front window open again.

In short, life is good.

I have fruit for breakfast, and another coffee, and apart from the war in eastern Europe and the Pandemic and Brexit, life seems pretty good.

I have a parcel to send a friend. Wayne and Tracie moved to the Lake District last month, and Trace has a thing for Danish candy, so I got her some last week, and just needed to send it to her. So, I labelled the box and popped it in a bag and walked into the village down and up Station Road where it cost all of five pounds to send.

I decide that I have worked hard, so give myself an half hour off, and walk back along Kingsdown Road, turning down The Dip to get back home, just so I could check on wildflowers growing along the road. Not that I see anything new, but the views are good, and the thrill of the hunt is strong.

It was muddy down the Dip, but passable, and a little while further on a Small Toertoiseshell landed in front of me, but I couldn't get close enough to grab a shot. But second species seen this year.

I was back home by twenty past eleven, time for a brew and a mince beef pie and half a tin of beans.

Makes a change from toast, I guess.

And then back to work, after sitting outside to eat lunch and drink my tea. The sparrows sat in a tree, watching me eat, so they could feel safe in gong back to eating seeds. I have never eaten a sparrow in my life, though Mulder has offered me plenty of dead ones.

The working day ends, I pack away the computer and look at what to do for dinner, which is sticky tofu stir fry that Jools had prepared the evening before.

So, simple.

I find myself lost on YouTube watching yet more train videos, but once Jools had got home, through the accident on the A20, I warm up the stir fry and cook the noodles.

And that was that.

The evening had football: Palace v Citeh, which ends in a 0-0 draw, but was compelling stuff. Citeh are a great team, but poor losers.

So it goes. So it goes.