I’ve just been counting. I have 33 more days in which I will hve to go to work. Eight of them will be half days. I have always hated those half days, as it never feels worth going into work for half a day. It isn’t a bonus half day off, as the shop owner seems to think, it’s a day wasted by the intrusion of a half day at work. The worst thing about working in the shop has always been the rotas (he loves sitting in his office working out complicated things) and the fact that even a “full day” is only six hours long. I go to work to earn money. My ideal week would be four ten hour days and three days off. Or five ten hour days.

Instead, the best I manged was, was five six-hour days. I actually looked at fitting in a second job around that in the days I was more active but couldn’t find one that fitted.

It’s nearly seven in the evening now and the day seems to have passed with nothing much happening. The kids have both been in touch for Mother’s Day, as we now call Mothering Sunday. I always thought it ws the day when servants were given a day off to visit their mothers, all the stuff about “mother churches” is new to me. It’s good to learn new things, but it’s a shock to find that something you thought you knew isn’t true.

We are treating ourselves to beef today. It’s a joint that we bought for Christmas as a back up in case the turkey supply let us down. It didn’t. However, as we need freezer space we decided it was time to break out the beef. I expect that after a couple of meals and several days of sandwiches we will start to think of fish and vegetables again. We’ve drifted off our vegetarian influenced diet a bit. It’s not that we want meat, or that we don’t want vegetables, it’s just that I find it hard to cook, and to chop vegetables, whilst my hands are bad. Even the sweeping motion of buttering bread for sandwiches is hard work, though it is getting easier.

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