Tag Archives: office

A Corvid Sort of Day – I Said Corvid . . .

12 Replies

Today I spent a lot of time staring out of the window of my office. It’s really just a spare bedroom with a table and computer, but “office” sounds better. I don’t know how builders get away with calling these rooms bedrooms – I don’t even need to extend my arms fully to touch both sides. It’s a single monastic cell of a room, somewhere to put an unwelcome visitor who will be happy to leave after a couple of nights of claustrophobia.

It looks out onto a cheerless narrow strip of garden, with a fence that needs painting. The neighbour was nailing new roof felt onto a small garden store he has crammed between his garage and the fence. It was alarming to see a head pop up over the fence,a nd socially awkward. We haven’t introduced ourselves yet and we both avoided looking at each other.  I doubt it will happen again, but may adjust my blind to make myself less visible.

Magpie

Anyway, before that happened, I had ten minutes watching a magpie on his garage roof. It appeared to be sorting through moss looking for food. I must look it up and see if anyone else has seen this. I’m surprised there is anything in the moss, to be honest. I’m also a little offended that we have plenty fo bird food and it wasn’t even making an attempt to eat it. They don’t even seem to want to explore the possibilities of the floor feeder, which has included old scone, apple cores, seeds and suet over the last few days.

The squirrel, meanwhile, has been up to all sorts of trick to raid the seeds. It has eaten from the floor feeder, making us hope it will leave the seeds alone, but it always seems to try for the seeds again.

Julia saw a Jay in nearby trees yesterday. I like Jays. Before Mum and Dad moved to this bungalow they had a house a couple of miles away and had as many as three Jays feeding in the garden at one time. We actually turned up to do the RSPB Bird Count one weekend and found three Jays in the garden. (We used to do the count in their garden as they got better birds than we did. We nearly had a sparrowhawk one year, but it perched next door and refused to come to our garden so Julia wouldn’t let me count it.

My bird photography still needs work, so these are pictures I have used before.

A mischief of Magpies

 

A Disastrous Day

39 Replies

The day started with me waking early and leaping from my bed, full of joy and ready for action. I’m not sure why, and I should have suspected it was too good to be true.

Breakfast was good – cold sausage sandwiches with brown sauce. Not to everyone’s taste, I know, but I like them.

The journey to work was fair and I managed to park outside the shop, though some idiot had parked so badly they had managed to use two spaces. I’ll skate over the next few hours. The shop was hot and airless, we’re having a few problems on eBay and I have a co-worker with the acquisitive habits of a pack rat. If I put anything down on the desk – pen, tape, ruler, stamps or scissors – it mysteriously disappears and reappears in his work space. It’s an annoyingly inefficient way of working.

This all paled into insignificance after the horror that was “doing the laundry”.  I managed to get out of doing it yesterday but Julia cornered me tonight and we ended up in the launderette. It was hot. Someone had three driers going. And the woman who looks after it came in halfway through kept moving us so she could clean.

This was bad enough, but when we started to unload the machine at the end we found we’d ruined two of my pens by putting them through the hot wash.

I was devastated. They cost me 99p each. However, I’m a happy-go-lucky sort of bloke and am trying not to let it upset me too much.

Julia, on the other hand, is taking it quite badly.

It seems that black spots on white work blouses and brown linen tops are Bad Things. Very Bad Things.

I am not popular.

I’ve used a picture of Tim Hunkin’s dog from Southwold Pier – if he had a house we’d be sharing it tonight.

 

Time Moves On

23 Replies

Julia’s phone has been going all day. The large polytunnel in the gardens proved unable to resist the wind last night and the ancient, brittle sheeting disintegrated. Despite being off ill, she has had a constant stream of texts, photographs and requests for decisions.

To call in a team of experts would cost £500 over and above the cost of the plastic. At the moment she is waiting for an answer from the Young Farmers’ Club. to see if they are able to help.

In the shop we assembled a couple of office chairs. They are now pushed up to the desk in the middle room, waiting for a dedicated ebay team. However, it will probably end up with me and Eddie. One of the customers is currently refurbishing a computer for me and then he’s going to set a printer up a wireless network. This might seem normal to you, but it’s close to being miraculous to me, as none of my previous jobs have involved using a computer. I had my own for doing ebay, but I’ve never worked for someone else, or with someone else, using a computer.

This, I suppose, is the 21st century.

After that I had to remove a coin collection from plastic pages. Over the years the pages had sealed the coins in, so I ended up cutting them out with scissors.  It’s a tedious job, but there was a Maundy fourpence in it, amongst the silver threepenny bits, so it felt worthwhile.

It’s even more tedious than sorting out the two plastic boxes of mixed cupro-nickel coins. Half-crowns, florins, shillings and sixpences plus large-sized 10 and 5 pence coins. I’m so used to the small 10p and 5p that the old-fashioned large ones come as a bit of a surprise. Thinking of it, I should have taken pictures to illustrate this. I may do that tomorrow.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Newark, Notts

In the afternoon I was off, so I took a quick trip to Newark to see my mate on the market. He was one of three stallholders who had braved the wind and rain, and they had all spread out to make the market look fuller. There were seven trees down on the way, with two teams still working on clearing them. It’s been quite windy round here. Fortunately all the roads had been cleared so there were no delays.

That’s about it. Julia is continuing her slow recovery, but while I was out this morning she inspected the garden for storm damage and, whilst struggling to keep her balance, managed to topple over.  She does that. As soon as I’m distracted she tries to do too much and sets herself back. Fortunately she hasn’t hurt herself, but I’m thinking of rigging the house with CCTV so I can prevent a repeat.

I didn’t get many photos today, just a few silhouettes of Newark and some sky.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

A dry view of Newark