When I went outside for breakfast this morning - which was after Helen had exercised, of course - it was a decidedly cool day, completely overcast and fresh, but just comfortable enough for breakfast al fresco, and a perfect temperature for labouring on the land.
However, after yesterday's mammoth strimming session, I was aching all over, so was pleased to have a day of office work planned.
I joined Helen in the office after tapping out a lengthy message to my friend Dodge back in Abingdon, and there we both stayed at our respective desks all morning - and despite both feeling quite peckish from around 11am, we didn't break for lunch until about 1.30pm. When we did finally surface from our computers and head onto the patio with our lunch, we found it was like a completely different day outside: intense heat, sunny with a thick haze. It was beautiful, but the wrong day to be wearing black (I don't know if my choice of clothing was a subconscious throw back to my conference days) and we made a hasty retreat (once we had finished lunch) back to the relative cool of the office!
We broke from work again briefly at around 3.45pm to stretch our legs along the neatly trimmed driveway to see if there was any post. Today, there was! Not much to get excited about though - a couple of bank statements courtesy of Barclays (who insist on addressing their correspondence to me at 'Bia Mammianese' instead of 'via Mammianese'), and a brown envelope each from Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs... informing us that they wouldn't be sending us our S1 forms after all (despite the chap on the phone telling me that they would, and that the S1 is absolutely what we needed to apply for). Hmm. Well, we're not too phased at this point as from everything we've learned, we think getting into the healthcare system is the easy part now that residency is pretty much sorted (although saying that, we're still awaiting our visit from the police to trigger the rest of the process). Of course, I might have spoken too soon on that front and I'm not quite sure where I'm getting this confidence/optimism from, but being pessimistic seems like a silly approach at the moment.
So after our stroll along the drive, we headed back indoors to finish our day's work. Helen spent much of the day wrangling with some pretty offensive-looking bar charts and has been huffing, puffing and growling, which I can only assume helps. I, on the other hand, have had an easier time of it and can happily announce that I've pretty much finished all of the Virus Bulletin pre-production design work, with 12 days to spare - which must be some kind of record, I certainly can't remember the last time that happened, and in fact previous years I've had some very late nights and early mornings fitting it in around plastering work, so this year I guess I can be thankful for our change in lifestyle.
I managed to escape the office at around 5.20pm, while Helen soldiered on for a little over an hour longer. She eventually gave up though, and joined me for the last 20 minutes of sunshine on the patio. While we sat there one of our resident deers popped its head up on the 4th terrace up from the house. It seemed quite unperturbed by our presence and carried on putting its head down to eat, then looking back up again to check we were still there. It scarpered before we could fetch the camera (of course), but seemed quite relaxed about our presence in general.
The sun dipping behind the hill and the temperature dropping accordingly was our cue to do the rounds of plant/vegetable watering and retire indoors for dinner.
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