Live to work, or work to live?

Much as I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with my job, I think I certainly fall into the latter category.

One of the nice things about my shift pattern is that I work six days on, four days off. That may sound like a lot, but consider that the first day begins as soon as I knock-off at 07:00hrs and is mostly slept away in bed.

Four days off however does afford plenty of time to spend with the girlfriend. Although she’s happy to see me, the first day doesn’t exactly have much in-depth conversation short of me mumbling and complaining about sleep, or lack thereof.

Four days also affords plenty of time to plan stuff.

On this set of rest days we’ve managed to fit in a fair few things, despite her having to work 3 out of the 4 days.

Thursday in particular was excellent. Girlfriend maintains good communication and friendship with her ex-husband, who having met him a few times, I must concede is a very sound bloke. Indeed, one part of my brain is always thinking “Y’know, this is awkward;” every time we meet “He used to be married to my girlfriend.” But all the same I can’t fault him. I especially can’t fault a bloke who maintains good steady contact with girlfriend’s, his, son either.

So girlfriend’s ex-husband, who works as an engineer at a local RAF base, kindly extended the invitation to me to accompany them when the base’s annual friends & family day came around this year.

An excellent day was had by girlfriend, her lad, ex and I – perusing the stalls and watching an excellent flying display. Me being the quite the aircraft enthusiast reverted to a mental age younger than her son’s when the Typhoon slammed on its afterburners and the Vulcan cruised gracefully overhead. And as for The Red Arrows, they never fail to disappoint.

We managed to do some catching up at the cinema also and saw ‘The Dark Night’ and ‘WALL-E’. Two excellent films that show filmmakers at the top of their game in two very different ways. I could hark on about how truly brilliant both flicks are, but you should simply abandon any preconceptions you may have about either and go see. You won’t regret it.

An ice-cream here, a coffee there, but we did also go out for dinner here. Yum.

For the first time in a while I actually feel refreshed, mentally and physically, and ready to go back to work.

Let’s see how long that lasts.

Spring just sprung

What a difference a day makes.

Or what a difference a change in weather patterns and putting the clocks one hour forward makes.

A few days ago we were all shivering through overnight frosts and occasional snow flurries, this at the end of March still! Today there's a mild wind, the sun's out, the birds are in full song and the spring bloom has arrived en-masse. I even looked out the window to see two frisky pigeons going at in a flurry of feathers. Yikes.

It's amazing what the arrival of Spring, however delayed, does to people's moods also. Immediately you notice the change walking around any or our towns and cities, and I'm not just talking about the shedding of the layers either.

Buoyed by the change in atmosphere outside I spent most of the day tinkering with my car out on the drive. Now I'm not the most mechanically minded person in the world but you'd be surprised what you can do with a bit of patience and a Haynes manual.

Lighter evenings should mean you can go out for a walk after tea as well. Although if the local authorities have their way that isn't going to be the case. A major gas pipeline is being installed a few miles south of the village. Essentially trenches are being dug cross-country before they lay and seal a 2m circumference pipe sections. Apparently this footpath closure is going to be in force for six months. The local council has seen fit to close rights-of-way (paths and tracks) for almost a mile-and-a-half in either direction.

That's just plain daft.

We had another similar massive pipeline built near here a few years back and that didn't cause half the disruption this one seems to be. It took a matter of weeks. Not six bloody months!

Maybe it's all the ambulance-chasers the council is scared of.

"Have you been injured in a trip or fall recently?"

"Er, yeah, I wandered blindly into a 2m trench the other day because I didn't happen to see the machinery, mounds and gangs of workmen digging away as I approached."

As if.

Villagers aren't stupid (though, yes, we do still have our resident idiots). We see the works going on every day. We know what it entails, and we know where & when to steer well clear. But we also walk these paths daily, and that's part of the reason we love living here. Take that away and we might as well all sell our souls and decamp to the towns. To throw a mile-square cordon around the area is unbelievable; at a stroke that cuts off access to most rights-of-way south of the village. I can think of a dozen different places they could have put up a cordon and still kept their site sealed with a comfortable enough buffer zone.

Anyway, bugger the closure. Most walkers I've spoken to are just going to walk the paths until they make it physically impossible to do so.

Sign?

Sign, you say?

What sign?

I didn't see one.

Did you?

Cold snap

Spring?

Not yet it ain't.

The second vicious cold front in as many weeks is blanketing a fair part of the UK in snow. Of course it having been winter 'n all this is catching us by surprise (as it does every year seemingly) - cue headlines of Icy Apocalypse, Britain grinds to a halt etc all because a snowflake fell somewhere near Fleet Street.

People; we're on the same latitude as Siberia and Northern Canada - get used to it.

Meanwhile global warming continues to merrily screw things about. Whilst most of the north is knee-deep in the white stuff, the south east is facing the prospect of a hosepipe ban as two successively dry winters (yes you heard that right) have left reservoir levels at all-time lows. As previously stated, my sympathy hardly overfloweth, but it does seem to be further proof that we're all going to environmental hell in a unsustainable handbasket.