whew...

friday evening at last, its been an interesting week! one in which I have achieved very little in terms of what i am usually paid to do, but I have nonetheless been very busy!

I've become obsessed with collecting water, and we currently have plenty of bottled water to use over the weekend. I'm seriously looking forward to a long lie in tomorrow, reading my book in bed tomorrow morning, possibly doing a little shopping, looking into travel plans for Vietnam and drinking beer at the Cotswold beer festival tomorrow night.

although weather reports indicate that we will need to take our umbrellas and Macintosh's tomorrow evening.....

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 9/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

portaloos a plenty. have to go back to work tomorrow :-(

starting to whiff......

another day another challenge. Work has had to close due to no power or water, so most of the day was spent liaising with employees, inductioneees, interviewees etc etc explaining. It's likely that we'll be shut all week at this rate.

Spent the day sat on the sofa working and half watching daytime TV and all the news bulletins on the floods (god bless wireless). The water went off about 6pm this evening and it seems likely that it will be off for 7 days YIKES thats quite a long time.... I'm going to smell. Paul and I need to work out the nearest shower option....

Many of my colleagues live in Gloucester which puts these inconveniences in perspective.

with a litte help from my friends (and family)...

well it's been an interesting few days here in Gloucestershire. luckily we've been spared any damage to the house, although many people have not been so lucky and people less than a few streets away from us have suffered.

I was actually in a meeting outside of Nottingham on Friday oblivious to the chaos nd unable to access my phone, so when was somewhat suprised to have a voicemail from Paul left at 2pm telling me he'd had to abandon his car and walk home and that I may not want to try and get home that evening because it was unlikely to make it back. So, at his suggestion I called Sally and arranged to head for her house in Redditch as it seemed more reasonable and at least I would have a decent evening (and a glass of wine) with her rather than get stuck on the M5.

then, listening to the radio, it became clear that things were worse than they originally seemed, so I laid a plan of options - based on friends and family en-route that I could bail out at (Trevor and Nicola.... Rob and Fi... Karen and Craig....). Then I heard that it would take me probably near 3 hours to get along the M42 to to even the M40 junction so decided to abandon the option of going south, looked at the map and considered what friends I had in that part of the country! So... call into mad and rob and therefore spent a lovely evening with them catching up over an indian takeaway. God bless Sagga for providing a list of possible friends in need...

Sat morning I woke up early and at 5.45am decided to try and head off to hopefully miss any traffic. Got as far as Bromsgrove then all went pearshaped as the M5 was closed and I was forced to head north on the M42. So, as fate was clearly telling me something I went to sally's for a cuppa. Sally was due to take Laura and Adam down south that morning, to meet with mum halfway so mum could bring them to chetlenham for the week. so to save them from both getting stuck too, I offered to take the kids. We stocked up on "emergency" stuff, wellies, twix bars, macs (and Gameboy/Nintendo DS - obviously) and set off in optomism...! By this time the M5 was completely clsoed so we tried Evesham (no chance), then tried a few back roads, but all roads led to the Avon river, which wasn't having any of it, basically we were cut off from south fo the Avon. All the smaller routes across the Avon were completely impassable, with some swept away. We saw one car completely submerged and stopped in Bidford just to take a look at the gobsmaking views in front of us.

so we gave up, went back home to Redditch, watched a DVD, had some lunch then at 1.30pm tried again and headed for the M5 prepared to sit and wait it out on the motorway. Finally got home at 4pm, a mere 23 hours later than planned, but hey at least my waiting time was done in the warmth and dry.

Cheltenham has recovered suprisingly quickly, it now seems to be the areas with direct rivers on them that are still suffereing, Gloucester is now bearing itself for the banks to burst. As I write this we're being told that our water supply is about to run out and probably will remain off until Wedesday, so now the focus has shifted to people filling up their baths unecessarily and panic buying. Me, I'm just going to take the opportunity to smell....

wednesday. over half way. phew.

"I blame the sunday times"

.... these were the words of Mr Ellis at the Cornbury Music Festival as we entered the arena surrounded by middle aged, middle class 'festival go-ers'. These people had clearly all read articles about how going to "festivals" is now the done thing so are all giving it a go.... Cornbury style.

We had happily stood in the queue to get our wristbands listening to the couple in front discuss the failings of the ticketing/wristband process, and then watched the gentleman behind us alert a security official of the trip hazard that he had just spotted.

this was no Glastonbury! No sloping around in the mud , it was camp-chairs and marks M&S olives, Crosswords and Soduko between acts....

but hey - we had loads of fun anyway - even if we felt a little lowly without a deck-chair!

the weather blessed us, the music was excellent - especially the Feeling and Seth Lakeman and basically we forgot that we were grown ups for a few days.

Just what the doctor ordered .

whew - manic depression averted, just a bad day methinks.....

this evening i will be mostly attempting again the peach/raspberry cake that attempted a few weeks ago and failed miserably at, by both lacerating my finger and burning it on the outside and leaving it uncooked in the middle. Obviously I attempted to blame Paul for my errors (who else?) which didn't go down too well, so lets hope this attempt is more positive otherwise I may be dumped.....

I seem to spiralling into an oblivion of frustration and depression and I really don't know why. Life is good, nothing really to complain about, but I just can't seem to cheer up. It's so frustrating how work can start to take over your life and cloud all the good elements. at the end of the day your job isn't what you are, it's just an element of your life and in my case often a "role" that I play. but the more it sucks you in, and the more time you spend doing it, the more danger there is of it starting to define what you are and how you feel about everything within your life. It seems very hard to achieve a good balance of wanting to be good at your job, and giving your all to it, yet maintaining the energy and enthusiasm for the real stuff outside of the 9-5. (ah, if only it were 9-5!).

just reread that - it's not as bad as it sounds honest! It's sad how so many of my friends also seem to be in this work overload situation. Maybe we're all just at that stage in life/career where it seems to take off, or maybe we're just a bunch of sucessful corporate genuises or maybe it's the way that the world seems to be going, but either way I fear many of us are heading for burn out....

still - the good news is that we didn't get drowed out in the Malvern challenge and I managed to make it round the 5K racecourse yesterday raising over £300 for cancer research. Didn't get a time-check as I was too busy trying to breath at the end to remember to watch the clock but I guestimate around 30 mins which aint too bad.

so in my ongoing quest to maintain running (and give me something other than work to focus on) I have now set myself a goal of a 10K in September. anyone fancy joining me?????????