On Wednesday I felt compelled to apologise most of the day for problems that were not of my making. I was on our other campus for candidate exams and apologised that the room we were in was in a state of being half painted. I kept the door open as long as I could to dispel the stink of paint. I then apologised that a server we needed was down. This wasn’t our server so it was completely out of my control but candidates had to complete a paper exam rather than a computer based one. I was given ‘duff’ information so a candidate completed the wrong exam. I couldn’t apologise enough however he was very gracious about it all. There was no hot food on offer, and the building was stiflingly hot. And they genuinely wonder why staff and students don’t like this ‘state of the art, eco-friendly, hot bed of innovation?’ What a laugh!

After a day spent in a hot stuffy building, I then had to walk about half a mile to a bus stop. When the building first went up, the bus used to stop right outside. Now they don’t. It was very sunny, very hot, and the bus was no better. By the time I got home I was hot and bothered and quickly freshened up and changed clothes. My son, bless him, had emptied the washing machine, hung the laundry out to dry and brought it in again once dry, and had put the oven on for dinner. He also mentioned that there was an ‘anomaly’ in our garden. He showed me a white bird that he said had been there for about 3 hours and wouldn’t budge, even when he was standing near it to get the washing off the line. It didn’t look like a wild bird, so I popped two streets down to a man that I knew kept pigeons to see if he was missing one. He wasn’t but he came back to my house anyway to have a look at the bird. Apparently it was a racing pigeon, and he showed me a phone number that was ‘printed’ on its wing. He checked the number on some special device, and showed me that the bird belonged to a friend of his that as luck would have it, he was seeing later that day. I let him take the bird; I didn’t want it either way. Hopefully it will have recovered from whatever was wrong with it though I doubt sitting in my garden for 3 hours in yesterday’s heat will have done it much good.

At the time of writing, it’s only Thursday morning and I can’t believe how slow this week has been. Work has been ticking over nicely, but it’s been slow. We’re forecast some rain for Friday and I really hope we get it. The last band of rain missed us entirely and we barely had enough rain to make the pavement damp. My plants have been wilting and I’ve had to water them which is a real chore I can tell you. My hose leaks like a sieve. I’m on a water meter so using a leaky hose is out of the question so I have to make do with a watering can or bucket. The water butt is almost empty, hence my desire for the rain. Fingers crossed…

The weekend will soon be upon us and it’s been a long time coming. Have a great one.

As an aside, I do think it strange when people drop by one's page yet don't even say Hi. It's like looking in someone's window and not acknowledging that they're there. Strange...