A Typical Day in the Office?
Actually, not quite, because on Wednesday it was Simon’s Birthday! It was still dark and below freezing outside; one of the cats had left a ‘dead, furry offering’ on the stairs ready for you to step on as you walk half asleep down to the bathroom. Someone forgot to put the tumble drier on the night before so the bath towels were still wet; the light bulb had gone in the kitchen…”where the heck did we put the new bulbs we bought last week… or did we buy them?” Finally, we manage to get out the house; the car windscreen needs to be scraped, so another 5 minutes spent freezing to death. Drive off (the morning can’t get much worse) and we find that a lorry has caught fire on the dual carriage slip road so we have to find a detour. We then get to the ‘B’ road that we normally use, but this has been closed due to road works – another detour. Get to Exeter where there are yet more road works – these are now 2 weeks overdue for completion and temporary traffic lights are still in place, grrr, we’ve put up with them for 5 weeks now! Having crawled through the traffic (narrowly managing to avoid vehicles cutting you up in order to find what they perceive to be the quickest moving lane), we finally manage to get to the office but have to park at the end because we arrived later than normal. Get to the office, where are the keys? Ah, in the car…
We finally managed to settle down at our desks, feeling thoroughly exhausted before we’d even started! Ever had one of those days?
The phones started ringing straight away (Chloe to the rescue) and then a student arrived to sit an exam (extremely early) – we were all in our overcoats as we were still thawing out!
Next, we had three visitors booked in to see us in the office (well four actually, but we got the date wrong for the fourth person…) – we’d also forgotten to book out the AAT exam room for the meetings so there were stools and chairs crowded round the desks and all in all, it was an extremely busy day what with meetings, student exams and phones ringing every 5 minutes. Emma was on holiday and Jenna was on leave, so we were all rushed off our feet.
Our day brightened up however when Neil arrived in the office with a big, scrumptious, chocolate Birthday cake for Simon (that he had made himself no less!) Neil is a very keen cook and it was a truly splendid cake (as per the photo above!) The day didn’t quieten down until after 5.00pm, so we all had lunch breaks at our desks (thank goodness for Neil’s cake). A frazzled Chloe had to make a dash for her train whilst the rest of us started the ‘night shift’!
Phew, peace and quiet now (except phone calls from various relatives wishing Simon a Happy Birthday – including his sister from Australia; about to have breakfast in the sunshine (and heat!))
Oh dear, there’s some yowling going on outside – Boris has caught another mouse… he’ll no doubt be in the office soon for some milk to wash it down with.
