The Last Sunflower

Today was an abrupt and somewhat painful return to work after our week off. We let the kids just play around the MBH rather than go to their holiday club, on the understanding that they hid from the sun and didn't get burnt like last time. Meanwhile, we did some menial jobs while waiting for the man from ERDF to come and say YES to our temporary electricity supply.... obviously when he arrived he said a very firm NON. The situation was rescued by our electrician who found another way, and I'm happy to report at the end of the day we do have a temporary supply. What this means in our case is that we have a socket, in an electricity meter, about 30 metres from our front door. Not ideal. With our longest extension cable we can now use a drill, providing it is needed really quite close to the front door...

The rest of the day was spent drywalling and buying a new door (with a failure really on both fronts as we only managed to attach a tiny strip of plasterboard, and failed to buy a door. Very frustrating day. In a quiet moment, I did a little time and motion study on our workrate and discovered the following pattern:

- 10 minutes discussing the task. This consists of operative A (who we'll call Mr B) saying what's going to happen while operative B (who we'll call the lovely and very smart SooB - SooB for short) points out problems X and Y.

- 15 minutes looking for tool A

- 1 minute carrying out the first part of the task. Problem X is encountered, to Mr B's surprise, necessitating tool B.

- 15 minutes looking for tool B.

- 5 minutes swearing while problem Y becomes increasingly apparent.

- 10 minutes standing around complaining about the heat. Mr B asks shamefacedly whether problems X and Y were something SooB had pointed out while he wasn't listening. There is a smugness in the room.

- 10 minutes rearranging the task to SooB's liking.

- 25 minutes looking shocked at problem Z. Caused entirely by SooB's lack of foresight. Smugness evaporates.

Problem Z remains to be finally sorted tomorrow. Tomorrow the kids will be in kids' club (on a trip to a waterpark) from 7am to 7pm. So, plenty of time to get through all the A-Z problems, and some more besides. Hopefully.

Did I mention how hot it is. So over the heat now. On the plus side, the tomatoes are looking fabulous.

As you might have spotted from the photo, our neighbour has started harvesting his sunflowers. 10 days early, and probably not a great crop. It seems it has been a good summer for flies, not farmers.