Work-Time Continuum

I feel like I have fallen off the blogging planet. I turn my back for a few days and so much has happened. Tom has had issue. Andrea is on the brink of becoming the next Stubbs. And everybody else ( there are too many to mention individually but know that you are all equally loved and afflicted) have been so wonderfully prolific that I have spent the best part of 4 hours indulging in your delights.

Where have I been? What was I doing?

I want to surprise and delight you, maybe bring a tear to the odd beady eye ( you know who you are) and tell you that I was, indeed, whisked away by a witty, interesting, hygienic* cyber-turned-tonguetastic-top-of-the-foodchain chap.

The reality is far more distressing. Of the last 120 hours I have

• spent 55 in the office, despite which it is barely possible to see where I have been and completely impossible to see my desk
• 14 on my feet, in 2 seperate stints, both immediately after a 10-hour stretch at the office , on consecutive nights, behind the bar at the local football club
• 10 in my car going to or from one or other engagement
• 4 attending a charity AGM at which I had intended to resign but instead roped Darbster into joining the management committee whilst I serve my 5th term
• 2 sitting on a Housing committee
• 7 ( with my Dad) listening to assorted speakers with varying levels of attention on topics relating to our estuary, it's history, management, bio-diversity, but sadly not archeaology as the Prof had stayed up in the Orkneys
• 1 following a local fount of wildlife wisdom around a country park, it should have been 2 hours but my tolerance levels were low and I couldn't cope with some of my fellow attendees ( eg. pompous bearded twit: " What's that brown stripey bird? I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like that before. Is it rare?" -it was a Mallard)
• approximately 3 showering
• remarkably little time eating but try telling that to my bathroom scales
• 3 watering my plants and tubs ( with a watering can even though we have lashings and lashings of water up here in the North and no need for a hose-pipe ban)
• at least 2 each night tossing and turning in the heat, worrying about how I might best make an impression on my over-burdened desk the next day
• 1 in a bird hide ( with my dad this afternoon)
• 4 catching up on all your derry-doing
• leaving 6 hours for sleep

It would be just my luck for that clever, articulate, twinkly-eyed, guitar-playing, foot-rubbing, lightly tanned historian/ linguist/ chef to turn up right now when I am sporting Grandma's eyebags and a nightie of which she'd definitely have approved, come to think of it, she probably bought it for me together with the matching padded coat-hanger.

*my wish list is growing more realistic - it's only a matter of time before a compromise on the hygiene might also be required