I go checking out the reports,
Digging up the dirt.
You get to meet all sorts
In this line of work.
Treachery and treason,
There’s always an excuse for it,
And when I find the reason,
I still can’t get used to it.
Sunday
Woken reasonably early by a little girl who wanted to go downstairs to see if the Easter Bunny had been. We kept her upstairs for a while until her brother was awake, and then despite my protestations that they had enough chocolate and sweets anyway, they had fun looking for eggs around the house and finding most, but not all, of them.
Sleeper Jr. asked “Dad, will you cut my hair?”, and armed with clippers and scissors I managed to make not too much of a hash of it. It’s definitely a don’t-give-up-your-day-job scenario though. Another day of glorious weather. Slightly too glorious, really – by the time I had enough time to go out to exercise, it was really rather warm, so I postponed it until another day. At some point in the morning a broom handle appeared over the fence, balanced from it a bucket containing chocolate for the kids and a card for us, wishing us a Happy Easter. Exchange of gifts, social-distancing style! I made sure that everyone said thank you the next time we saw them out in the garden.
Easter Sunday dinner was roast beef, which turned out really well despite cooking it conventionally. Usually with beef especially I go all pretentious and cook it sous-vide. Something must be using up all our energy, because I could have sworn I’d cooked too much and it all got eaten. Dessert was creme egg ice creams, because if you can’t have ridiculous food on Easter Day, when can you?
Kids in bed, we watched the new Red Dwarf. I’ve been watching the show since I was a young teen, and I’ve loved some of it and found much of the later stuff to be dross. Found myself most unimpressed with an early scene which I thought to be rather unfunny and at the expense of certain minorities. Fortunately the rest was at least acceptable. Thirty years on that’s all anyone can expect, I guess.
Monday
Final day off work; having postponed my bike ride the day before, I was rather disgruntled to discover that the temperature had dropped by about ten degrees and there was a pretty strong, gusty wind. Headed out on the same route as on Friday, extending it a little further, and despite the hard work in one direction, felt pretty good at the end of it.
Lunch: Hot dogs. I hadn’t realised quite how enormous the sausages I’d ordered were. The label on the jar said “No roll big enough” and it wasn’t wrong. Spent the afternoon trying, and mostly succeeding, at keeping the kids away from screens, probably helped by the fact that the sun had come out and the wind died down. Had a few choice words for the kids, who keep kicking their football over the fence into next door’s garden. Even though they have been perfectly reasonable about sending it back over, I don’t want to be paying for new greenhouse windows or pot plants.
Cooked a stir fry for dinner that almost ended up without meat; some deep-seated carnivorous instinct persuaded me to at least throw a thinly sliced chicken breast in there. Finished off with an apple crumble made by J; delicious. In the evening I made her cut my hair. Didn’t go too terribly.
Tuesday
Urgh. Back at work, to a full day of meetings, including three interviews and a catch up with D. And none of the candidates were any good. Took a full hour for lunch, or close to it, to sit, eat sandwiches, and moan at the kids for playing with their food before the interviews. Two were with a nearshore outsourcing company, and there was a really weird vibe to them; they seemed to think joining our team was a done deal. Nope. The other was a final interview with a candidate who’d sent us code that wouldn’t even compile.
Apart from work, the day was fairly chilled out. Got the kids playing Just Dance 2020 on the Switch, which seems to be keeping them both reasonably occupied and happy, although I’m beginning to regret the purchase thanks to the constant re-playing of Baby Shark. The potatoes are starting to come up in the garden; added more compost over them.
Also received an email from the place we had a holiday booked for in May, Coombe Mill, a fantastic family-owned farm who have a number of holiday cabins on site. Due to the ongoing situation they’re gradually letting people re-book for later in the year or next instead of losing their holiday; they’re a small business and not in a position to just magically refund everyone’s money. I really feel for them; these are the sorts of businesses that are really hurting at the moment. I had taken out cancellation insurance just in case, at a cost of less than 0.5% of the booking. Seems like some people weren’t so sensible, and are now crying blue murder on social media as they’ve been asked to re-book or claim on their (apparently nonexistent) insurance. I don’t envy the position they must be in, but to me it looks like they’re doing a fantastic job of balancing their fiscal needs with their customer relations. Because they don’t expect lockdown to be lifted by the start of our trip, it’s our turn to choose a new date; we’ll hopefully be going away in August instead.
Finished the day with a low-key FaceTime meet up; got to bed at a sensible hour. Tomorrow I might actually get some work done.
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