Working from Home
The day started like any other in recent timesthe children didn't get out of bed, then complained that we hadn't woken them up (I think they'll find we did, repeatedly). They then ran here, there, and everywhere finding ties, shoes, bags, PE kit, and whatever else while I made breakfast and packed lunches.
After a slog through town on the mountain bike against the wind, I made a coffee, sat down at my desk, checked my email, and started making plans to do this, that, and the other.
Then the power cut out. When the power goes out at work, the claxon attached to the burglar alarm starts going off. It sounds like it should shout “Attention, this building is reversing” every so often, but it doesn't.
After perhaps half an hour sitting around chatting with co-workers the power returned. The servers had just come back online, and the internet connection had just come back up when the power went again.
This pattern repeated every ten or fifteen minutes throughout the morning. At first it was frustrating, but as time went on it became quite entertainingwith a small cheer going up around the offices every time the power dropped out again. Luckily most of us use laptops, so no work was lost, but anything requiring an internet connection was dead in the water. Unfortunately that meant anything customer related.
When the power dropped out for the umpteenth time at lunchtime, I rolled backwards away from my desk on my decrepit office chair, and announced to nobody in particular “Rightthat's itI'm working from home”. It started an exodus of sortswith a chorus of “Me too” around the room.
So here I sit in the study at home, keeping an eye on e-mail, doing all the housekeeping tasks I would otherwise kick to the kerb. I'm going to be in Euston, London next week, and on the coast the week after that, so there's no point starting anything significant. I've already run out of chores around the house toowhen I got off the bike I immediately cleared the washing up, tidied things away, and put the washing machine and dryer on.
A blog post. Maybe I'll write a blog post. Ohthis is one, isn't it