Finally - nearly mid-May and my chilli seeds are sprouting, along with some red basil seeds I also sowed. The cool temperatures, the dry conditions and the really rather unpleasant April have all contributed to making this a challenging growing season. I hope that these come to some good - they are certainly staying well away from chickens!
As we have rain today off and on, I am really trying hard not to complain about the weather, but it is hard not to. And that is also the go to conversation topic for the British in any case - I did a phone interview for work this afternoon and we had a good 5 minutes on the difference between the weather here and the weather there. It creates a sort of empathy. We didn't do the new conversation starter - have you had your vaccination yet? It wasn't appropriate, but as part of the interview we did discuss the challenges that Covid has brought to working life.
My correspondent and I compared the conditions in which we were undertaking the interview - he was sitting in his bedroom and still wasn't used to that as a workspace, even after a year. I was in my "office", which has been my workspace at home for 16 years now, and very much my comfort zone. What he missed was seeing people around him in the large offices of his organisation - people he didn't work with directly but would see at the water cooler, or walk past their desk and say "hi". For those used to that volume of human interaction on a daily basis, and who liked it, this last 14 months must have been a nightmare.
For me, there has been little change to the work routine except that I used to travel and visit people and places at least once every three months. My last such trip was the 2nd to 6th March last year, and was rounded off by visiting family. My fake filofax (how dated am I?) bookmark is stuck at that point, as I've not needed a roaming diary since. I can't see me doing a trip before September, which is a little sad.
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