smirk

Although my boss¹ seemed to have conveniently forgotten about it when decreeing last week what progress he required to have been made by the time I finished today, today was mostly a day of meeting-type events rather than actual work even if the first one was mostly useful, plotting the current first-week-of-the-month processes which should eventually result in the allocation of some time to simplify them with the eventual result of being able to take holidays spanning the month end. The afternoon was more of an intra-departmental introduction session with the vague aim of allowing everyone to see exactly which of the people in our vague area of the building are in the same department and what they do. It could have achieved the same results in about half an hour without forcing us to spend twenty minutes standing about in an extremely warm ante-room prior to everything starting, especially when we had important things to do before leaving for holiday. Boss³ was keen to stress what he termed the 'social aspect' of the occasion as if it was part of our job description to schmooze. When fellow departmental colleagues include the shouty twat whose presence near my old desk caused me to specifically request a desk as far from him as possible when we moved floors in February I feel no great compulsion to stand anywhere close to where he might be speaking. At least I was far from the only person not attending the bad-music-augmented post-event schmooze when it finished and it only took me fifty minutes to finish enough to be able to leave with a clearish conscience.

After an arduous journey involving a five-hour wait at East Midlands airport after my mother forced him to leave "in plenty of time" only for the public transport taking him there to work seamlessly and without delay. There are perhaps more exciting places to be trapped for five hours but he had a book and enough money to buy a coffee or two so seemed happy. Nicky had eventually rescinded her threat to attempt to drive out to the airport to pick him up despite the presence of plentiful and efficient public transport able to carry fathers from airports to city centres at low cost, permitting him to arrive on the bus. Though it is simply unnecessary to drive out to the airport to pick people up or drop them off on the grounds of public transport availability alone the final justification was aided by the fact that we still had to fit the curtains to the room in which he'll be staying in order to prevent him being woken at pre-retired-person waking-time by daylight and undampened traffic noise. He might still be woken up by the mouse which has started scuttling about at night since the skirting boards were removed for the replastering but has had to sleep through squirrels nesting in the loft above his bedroom at home so should be able to cope with one very small mouse as long as it doesn't start chewing anything too resonant.