12 August 2021
I think I said back on June 12 that that might be my last covid-style post for monthly diary (July being a holiday). But nope. In justice to the improving situation, I should note that I was in the office on Tuesday, and will be again next Tuesday, and so some kind of commuter routine re-establishes itself. However, for now…
The alarm goes at 7.15.
Ugh. I’ve largely recovered from my massive back problem in July but I still sleep with a pillow between my knees to stop my spine from squidging overnight. Which is great when you nod off but unless you are a completely immobile sleeper at some point you will need to shift that arrangement - and I am a side sleeper who moves once or twice a night minimum. Sometimes I barely surface, but often for one of those moves I wake properly and fail to sleep again for a bit. Such was last night. Bleary. Cup of tea and newspaper time.
However, I’m well enough for yoga again which is good for a zillion reasons. This morning it’s good because my friend A runs a class on Thursdays at 8am until next week when she is rethinking her approach - enough people are going back to offices that this isn’t quite working as a time. She will reschedule for an evening from September. Which is another of my lodestar moments from lockdown shifting, but does mean a little more flexibility in my week, I guess. It’s a lovely gentle class, good for waking up and improving your mood. It won’t make you fit but it will make you happy.
Which is good because I quickly have some toast and am logged into work by 9.15 after class, and there’s a lot to do. It’s early in an assessment round for my main role and much is the organising and arranging and (sometimes yes even) assessing. And Thursday morning is my meetings morning - a team catch up at 10 and a departmental one at 11 when our boss repeats the team catch up to the wider dept. And if I sound aggravated by that, yes I am but oh well. That’s not the only thing in the dept meeting - we hear from all the other teams, a few things where a cross-dept approach is needed.
And we talk about hybrid working. As you will know if you read the same papers I do, the government is getting antsy about civil servants working from home. We’re not being shoved back to the office, but equally we do now know our minimum standard office time will be 2 days pw and there is horsetrading to be done. For us, it’s about whether that is a tariff we have to make up if we miss our regular days due to site visits, which is a massive part of most of our jobs. There’s also stuff about emptying desks, clearing lockers and preparing for hotdesking at 40% our previous capacity. Woop. I guess we’ll get used to it. And I’m glad the minimum tariff isn’t higher.
Then a bit more assessment time and (topically) arranging some site visits. So glad these are returning, though I’m also glad that by coincidence there’s nothing that will require an overnight in this assessment round. I’m not quite up for that yet.
Lunch is early as I’m going out later - leftover freekeh salad with lots of extra fresh coriander and a peach. I love summer lunches. There’s cricket in the background, albeit spotty cricket; it’s not raining here but it keeps breaking out at Lord’s, drat it.
I log back in just before 1pm and I have new emails. One with a really long title that I barely register and open to read, “Thank you for your application for XXXXXX. We are sorry to say that….”
WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!
Project Doom is not funded. I am so, so relieved. I am sure there are ways that this can still bite me, but my main fear - that I’d suddenly have to fit a massive bit of project management into this busy time - is fixed. I text the boyf in glee, and then write sober “thank you for the feedback, we are disappointed but wish the successful projects all the best” emails to the funder and to our partners. One of my managers DMs me to say “You’re relieved, right?” Oh yes, at least someone knows the real situation…
Another hour-plus of assessment is also pleasing. You have to go in with an open mind, but I’d slightly expected this one to be a boring situation, and it’s actually rather neat and well managed. Not set the world alight glorious, but quietly effective. Good stuff. We’re visiting that one in person, which will be cheerful.
Now I am off on my “caring” routine. I put quotes as this is my parental shopping trip, which is no longer out of pure covid fear; we’re all double jabbed and dad is okay doing some of his own shopping. But my boss agrees it’s fine to go over there once a week in work hours, to give dad a break and check in on their situation; it’s much more effective than just calling, and gives me two points in the week to check in. I do still take shopping, to minimise their exposure, but it’s not quite such a critical thing. I walk into town, go to Morrisons, buy a load of herbs, fruit and tins (they must be on a veggie week, I reckon, as there’s usually meat or fish on the list for this shop), and lug it down to their house. I have the Drunk Women Solving Crime for company, hurrah - a fun episode with Esme from Sewing Bee, who is good value.
My folks are all right, in fact. Mum is much better in summer - more willing to go out, so more oriented to time and place than when stuck indoors in the same environment. She’s had speech therapy; next up are eye clinic, memory clinic and falls clinic (though the latter is signed off, nearly - they have juggled her meds which has been good). They are getting way more help than in lockdown (which isn’t just about lockdown, it’s getting mum properly into community support programmes). I view the garden, which is being dug over completely by a good local guy, thank goodness. It’s been far too much for mum to handle for years, and she has fallen in foxholes and such in the past year. Now it’s tamed and a nice flat bit of lawn plus bare earth where their veg patch was, which they are designing now as a seating area. Great to see them doing okay this time.
I am back home by 4.30, time for another hour plus of assessment and emails. I finish before 6, having come to a natural break, and do the prep for dinner - a raw tomato sauce for spaghetti which just needs chopping tomato and basil, dressing and leaving for a while. Good timings.
Covid numbers are still the weird stasis of recent weeks - 10% up on last week, but so far from the doubling we expected that it feels surreal. I can switch off a bit. I am pleased to find House of Games is back on after disruption. In fact, it’s on twice! It’s still my best break between work and “home” when working from home.
I give it about half an episode before reluctantly picking up job #2 marking to do while half-watching… and I can’t do it. Ugh. Turnitin has been glitching all week and now I can’t log in. I have the joy of out of hours tech support, which doesn’t fix it. Bleugh. I’m making a fiddly assignment, lots of technical bits, and I have been doing it gradually over the week - unlike essays, there’s so little variety between entries I can’t focus on it for that long. Also, tech support got me to clear my cache and now I’m out of all my logins.
Annoyed, I put the pasta water on, have a bath, and have dinner. The tomatoes are delicious, which is cheerful. I log back in to various things, and find I can now mark stuff as well. Modified yay. I do the minimum I was planning, to the accompaniment of cricket highlights and Vera. Now I can have some wine (hurrah) - Thursday is the first day of the week where booze is allowed, in my lockdown rules. I’m working tomorrow and not going wild, but it’s delicious wine and a glassful is very pleasing.
It's about 9pm and I’m going to post this as I think that’s about it for today. I shall finish this Vera (at 10), possibly with a little more wine. And then I shall go to bed.
The alarm goes at 7.15.
Ugh. I’ve largely recovered from my massive back problem in July but I still sleep with a pillow between my knees to stop my spine from squidging overnight. Which is great when you nod off but unless you are a completely immobile sleeper at some point you will need to shift that arrangement - and I am a side sleeper who moves once or twice a night minimum. Sometimes I barely surface, but often for one of those moves I wake properly and fail to sleep again for a bit. Such was last night. Bleary. Cup of tea and newspaper time.
However, I’m well enough for yoga again which is good for a zillion reasons. This morning it’s good because my friend A runs a class on Thursdays at 8am until next week when she is rethinking her approach - enough people are going back to offices that this isn’t quite working as a time. She will reschedule for an evening from September. Which is another of my lodestar moments from lockdown shifting, but does mean a little more flexibility in my week, I guess. It’s a lovely gentle class, good for waking up and improving your mood. It won’t make you fit but it will make you happy.
Which is good because I quickly have some toast and am logged into work by 9.15 after class, and there’s a lot to do. It’s early in an assessment round for my main role and much is the organising and arranging and (sometimes yes even) assessing. And Thursday morning is my meetings morning - a team catch up at 10 and a departmental one at 11 when our boss repeats the team catch up to the wider dept. And if I sound aggravated by that, yes I am but oh well. That’s not the only thing in the dept meeting - we hear from all the other teams, a few things where a cross-dept approach is needed.
And we talk about hybrid working. As you will know if you read the same papers I do, the government is getting antsy about civil servants working from home. We’re not being shoved back to the office, but equally we do now know our minimum standard office time will be 2 days pw and there is horsetrading to be done. For us, it’s about whether that is a tariff we have to make up if we miss our regular days due to site visits, which is a massive part of most of our jobs. There’s also stuff about emptying desks, clearing lockers and preparing for hotdesking at 40% our previous capacity. Woop. I guess we’ll get used to it. And I’m glad the minimum tariff isn’t higher.
Then a bit more assessment time and (topically) arranging some site visits. So glad these are returning, though I’m also glad that by coincidence there’s nothing that will require an overnight in this assessment round. I’m not quite up for that yet.
Lunch is early as I’m going out later - leftover freekeh salad with lots of extra fresh coriander and a peach. I love summer lunches. There’s cricket in the background, albeit spotty cricket; it’s not raining here but it keeps breaking out at Lord’s, drat it.
I log back in just before 1pm and I have new emails. One with a really long title that I barely register and open to read, “Thank you for your application for XXXXXX. We are sorry to say that….”
WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!
Project Doom is not funded. I am so, so relieved. I am sure there are ways that this can still bite me, but my main fear - that I’d suddenly have to fit a massive bit of project management into this busy time - is fixed. I text the boyf in glee, and then write sober “thank you for the feedback, we are disappointed but wish the successful projects all the best” emails to the funder and to our partners. One of my managers DMs me to say “You’re relieved, right?” Oh yes, at least someone knows the real situation…
Another hour-plus of assessment is also pleasing. You have to go in with an open mind, but I’d slightly expected this one to be a boring situation, and it’s actually rather neat and well managed. Not set the world alight glorious, but quietly effective. Good stuff. We’re visiting that one in person, which will be cheerful.
Now I am off on my “caring” routine. I put quotes as this is my parental shopping trip, which is no longer out of pure covid fear; we’re all double jabbed and dad is okay doing some of his own shopping. But my boss agrees it’s fine to go over there once a week in work hours, to give dad a break and check in on their situation; it’s much more effective than just calling, and gives me two points in the week to check in. I do still take shopping, to minimise their exposure, but it’s not quite such a critical thing. I walk into town, go to Morrisons, buy a load of herbs, fruit and tins (they must be on a veggie week, I reckon, as there’s usually meat or fish on the list for this shop), and lug it down to their house. I have the Drunk Women Solving Crime for company, hurrah - a fun episode with Esme from Sewing Bee, who is good value.
My folks are all right, in fact. Mum is much better in summer - more willing to go out, so more oriented to time and place than when stuck indoors in the same environment. She’s had speech therapy; next up are eye clinic, memory clinic and falls clinic (though the latter is signed off, nearly - they have juggled her meds which has been good). They are getting way more help than in lockdown (which isn’t just about lockdown, it’s getting mum properly into community support programmes). I view the garden, which is being dug over completely by a good local guy, thank goodness. It’s been far too much for mum to handle for years, and she has fallen in foxholes and such in the past year. Now it’s tamed and a nice flat bit of lawn plus bare earth where their veg patch was, which they are designing now as a seating area. Great to see them doing okay this time.
I am back home by 4.30, time for another hour plus of assessment and emails. I finish before 6, having come to a natural break, and do the prep for dinner - a raw tomato sauce for spaghetti which just needs chopping tomato and basil, dressing and leaving for a while. Good timings.
Covid numbers are still the weird stasis of recent weeks - 10% up on last week, but so far from the doubling we expected that it feels surreal. I can switch off a bit. I am pleased to find House of Games is back on after disruption. In fact, it’s on twice! It’s still my best break between work and “home” when working from home.
I give it about half an episode before reluctantly picking up job #2 marking to do while half-watching… and I can’t do it. Ugh. Turnitin has been glitching all week and now I can’t log in. I have the joy of out of hours tech support, which doesn’t fix it. Bleugh. I’m making a fiddly assignment, lots of technical bits, and I have been doing it gradually over the week - unlike essays, there’s so little variety between entries I can’t focus on it for that long. Also, tech support got me to clear my cache and now I’m out of all my logins.
Annoyed, I put the pasta water on, have a bath, and have dinner. The tomatoes are delicious, which is cheerful. I log back in to various things, and find I can now mark stuff as well. Modified yay. I do the minimum I was planning, to the accompaniment of cricket highlights and Vera. Now I can have some wine (hurrah) - Thursday is the first day of the week where booze is allowed, in my lockdown rules. I’m working tomorrow and not going wild, but it’s delicious wine and a glassful is very pleasing.
It's about 9pm and I’m going to post this as I think that’s about it for today. I shall finish this Vera (at 10), possibly with a little more wine. And then I shall go to bed.