OK, no more ranting, I’ve been comprehensively lectured on being nice by my wife, I’ve filled up on tea and I’ve just bought the bacon for my breakfast sandwiches so I’m in a mellow place. I’m far from booking my place at the Pollyanna School of Business Management but I can now type without shouting at the screen.

It’s also, accidentally, well over a day since my last post, which is good for calming down.

We had 62 kids making pizza yesterday (amongst other things), which isn’t easy. It called on all my depths of calmness, particularly as the final group seemed to contain the most irritating children of the day. At that point you have to remember that they are only young, and that to say what you really want to say to them would probably result in another complaint from the parents…

After we waved them off and had a welcome cup of tea I reflected on a day spent standing uncomfortably close to four fan ovens blasting out 200 degrees C. Maybe I should have kept my thoughts to myself and not told my wife and another colleague that their day spent out in the open air prodding bees and flowers was easy compared to my day with washing up and timings and an edible end result to produce. At least the resulting atmosphere allows me to use the welcome word “frosty”.

Then the explosions occurred.

The first one was quite small, more of a bang, and the electricity went off.

The electricity returned and we were just saying “I wonder what…” when the big one happened. My wife nearly fell off her chair and the poultry started making a commotion. It occurs to me that I’ve lived all these years and I don’t actually know the word for the noise a flock of agitated chickens makes. Then again, there are lots of words I don’t know, though I can’t tell you how many, as I don’t know them.

Outside on the lane the box on one of the poles was producing sparks like a Roman candle.

Generator and jump leads – high tech!

And that was why I had no electricity to blog until I got home. When I did get home I had to go shopping for the Wednesday evening visitors, a process made more complex by the failure of the freezers in my local supermarket. Then I had to eat ice cream. It was only at that point that I was able to power up the netbook before falling asleep in my chair.

So that is why the blog is late and I have calmed down since that last one.