Catch Up

Sometimes life just gets too busy, or the urge to write stuff down dissipates for a while; next thing I know I haven’t blogged for ages.

Life is always busy at this time of year as Greenbelt approaches, but for the last week and a bit the festival workload has not exactly been helped by weather conditions. Some of that is unavoidable, checking what, if any, impact the floods will have on the operation of the festival in a month’s time and double checking that our wet weather contingency plans are up to scratch, but some is definitely not exactly what I need right now.

Concerned texts, calls and emails from friends hoping everything is going to be ok, are lovely and supportive. However, texts, calls and emails from everyone and their dog who happens to have my personal contact details asking specific questions about how they will personally be impacted if the weather does this that or the other, or whether I can personally sort out such-and-such for them is not exactly what I need right now.

I’m endeavouring to try and reply graciously, and remember that this stuff is important to them and they don’t have any comprehension that they might not be the only party contacting me in this manner…

The day job has also been pretty busy, with a number of tricky project issues landing on my doorstep. Ninety per cent of the time I like this aspect of the Technica1 Le@der role, you tend to see the more interesting, challenging aspects of our work as people come for advice, but every now and again I miss the opportunity to have a thick day, a day when you’re not on top of your game and you don’t have to force your brain cells to whirr into problem solving action.

Work also took me over to Bradford for a while, running more training and it was good to catch up with folk in the office, grab a Mumtaz curry (fine) and see how the city has changed since the last time I stayed over there (regeneration is still a work in progress I’d say).

At the end of the last day I managed to meet up with N (lives and works not far from Bradford) and B (in Bradford for a meeting) for a drink, before heading back across the Pennines.

Only a couple of days later I headed back east across the hills to catch up with IMc. A strange day (best not to talk about the abortive attempt to go to the cinema eh?), but overall good and it’s nice to be on friendly terms with an ex (even if the boundaries can get a bit blurry at time).

P&S came up on the Sunday and an excellent afternoon and evening was spent on ‘the secret project’. I could tell you more, but I’d have to kill you. Not that I’m per se adverse to that course of action you understand, but I am very busy…

Thursday was book group and Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. An excellent read although I haven’t quite finished it yet.

In need of some time, at home, in my own space I revelled in a weekend with no commitments. Earning serious brownie points (not sure where you can cash them in though) for some serious housework and cupboard clearing upstairs, I decided my sanity needed a festival free weekend (well excluding the part of cupboard clearing that involved sorting festival gubbins) so I sat out in the garden sunshine with the final Harry Potter.

A fine old yarn and several plot holes later, I closed the back cover, just in time to hear from the Dog Collar and Rabbit Corpse household, back from Greece.

Over an evening of takeaway curry, slide shows of the holiday pics and show and tell of all the girl’s shopping, we catch up. Good to have them home.