Post Holiday Blues

They have struck. Are striking. Will continue to strike. Jeez I love holidays. Other than birding the patch, ahem, they're the best thing ever. However yesterday's eleven hour day in the mines banished all thoughts, all memories, all recollections of what was a fabulous time away. It is amazing how quickly it fades. My boss described me today as being in post-holiday shock, and which looking at my three page to-do list (none of it involving relaxing or having a good time) I can well believe. Apparently I have been very quiet, a sure sign, she says, of stress. She is probably right, the last couple of days have been intense. The happy news is that as of that eleven hour day on Monday, I was once again a permanent employee. Pensions, holiday rights, healthcare, and an opt out from the 48 hour European Working Time Directive. Oh yes, I am back. This is no mean feat I will have you know. My chosen sector is not an easy one to get into, especially after time away. So despite my grumblings, I am quietly pleased to have managed to get back in. I am a conservative and sensible person, a full-time job is a must have, and I always felt slightly uncomfortable being a contractor.

I am of course back at the same institution that dispensed with me some four years ago. I had just started this blog, which I hope was unrelated. A short while later, the news came and I was one of those people you read about in the papers, stood outside a shiny building with a cardboard box in my arms. I faced the future with aplomb, of course, and threw myself into the job of becoming a full-time domestic goddess. I became amazing at this, by my reckoning. By Mrs L's reckoning, I just about scraped average some weeks. It did make for better blogging than when working of course, and in the two years I had away from a career I put in the groundwork to become a better photographer. So in 2009 you got a load of crap, which at the time I felt was stunning, whereas now you get this, which in a couple of years I may well also dismiss as total crap, but which currently, and humbly, I think is pretty good.

Such a beautiful gull

You also got domestic poetry. How long has is been since I was this creative? And of course, blue sky thinking, with clarity of thought that remains as true today as it was then. Re-reading some of these posts with yesterday's news in mind, it is clear that I am very weak and, at the time, somewhat unrealistic. Never go on the central line again? Ever?! Pah - I am a total idiot! And how much gardening did I do? Precisely none, and the garden only got sorted out when I returned to work and hired a gardener. Many of the things about birding were true though. So, there you have it, I am back.

Of course, I've been back for a long time. Back on the central line almost two years ago in fact. Nothing actually changed yesterday, it is purely symbolic. But it's still interesting to go back and read my incredibly naive posts from a time when my life was moving in exactly the opposite direction, and see what I felt about it then. Was it a peak, or a trough?! How will I ever know? Hah! I think I know well enough, and the fact remains that the two years I spent not working are right up there as amongst the two best years of my life. I probably didn't make the most of them, certainly not in terms of changing direction, but then I am very very lazy deep down. But I did have a fab time with my kids who at the time were small and appreciative of daddy being at home. Look how big they are now!!

Life moves on, and my holiday is over.

My new old home

I'm back at Canarius Wharfus Maximus. The very words are depressing. Canary Wharf, a place of shiny buildings and expensive suits. A place with pointless shops and more coffee and smoothie places than are needed in the whole of the UK. Three quid for a tall, skinny, soya caramel latte? Sign me up! In truth, I did not miss it at all. Neither the commute, nor the place. Give me Wanstead Flats any day. But this is irrelevant. I am back.

Home Sweet Home

Nothing has really changed. It is still a concrete jungle with a few pockets of habitat. The stories you read about Blyth's Reed Warblers hopping around in roses at the foot of tower may or may not be true, but take it from me, you struggle to find even a Robin on the estate. Search back through this blog for long enough and you'll find joyous posts about finding some Great Tits (take that Google engines!) and a Wren. Beyond Crow and Pigeon, I've not seen a passerine yet. The place is a desert. My gloom was momentarily lifted today when a Peregrine happened to fly past the very window I was sat at, a smallish male by the looks of it, but on the whole the place is bird free.

Not that I have to go birding anyway, as I am working my little cotton socks off, trying to get my childcare-dulled brain to comprehend securities lending and repo financing. It is a world away from plasticine and colouring-in fairies. It pays better though, which is why I'm doing it. Today, before I'd even had lunch, I had to go to a meeting in a different building. On the way I passed what is officially known as "habitat". Look, here it is.

"Habitat"


It looks like someone has actually gone to Habitat, the shop, and bought some of those ridiculous bamboo stems of different heights in white china pots that were so fashionable several years ago, atatched them to a discarded doormat, and then chucked the whole lot over the side of the dock. I'm no ecologist, but what exactly is the point? Maybe they're in fact very very small Phragmites, and I'm as good at botany as I am ecology, and in six months time they'll be crawling with Sedgies. Time will tell. Today they held nothing, a few desultory Mallards avoiding them at the far edge. Highlights today on my walk were two Coots and a Moorhen.
Take that Shetland!

Not enough hours in the day

Imagine for a moment that I have a wick coming out of the top of my head. I am a candle, and I am alight. My hair is gently being singed, my scalp getting hotter. There is also a wick coming out of my left foot. That too is alight, and causing some discomfort. I am a candle burning at both ends. Put without stupid references to candles, there is not enough time in the day. Last night I went to bed at 1am, the night before that, also 1am. With paid employment now taking up the vast majority of my normal waking hours, all the stuff that I used to do during the day while the kids were at school is getting pushed to either end, and I’m still not getting it all done.

This is exactly how I remember it before, but then that was without the comparative luxury of knowing that one didn’t have to live in complete chaos. Back then, living in a bombsite seemed normal. When I lost my job in 2009, I turned my not inconsiderable energy and drive to running the house and looking after the kids, with possibly a small amount of local birding thrown in. Now that I am back at work, I see everything I strived to sort out disintegrating, and disintegrating fast. This is naturally extremely irritating. My response has been to attempt to squeeze some of what I used to do during the day into the mornings and evenings.

Last night for instance I did a pile of cleaning in the kitchen, and this morning saw me hanging up washing, cleaning up the kitchen – again, moving the vacuum cleaner whose upturned plug I had trodden on several times in the last few days, and helping the kids with the arduous task of putting away socks. It didn’t help that I got up late, but that was because I had only gone to bed a matter of hours previously after all the stuff I had needed to do last night. And this is with help!! At the moment, I am not responsible for either the school run or feeding anyone. That thankless task is being done by a succession of exhausted relatives, without whom we would be up a certain creek missing a certain paddle, and we are very grateful.

Tomorrow, I’m in charge again. I’ve had over a week in the office now, sorting myself out and working out what exactly it is that I need to do, but with that bedding-in out of the way, I’m going to attempt to work from home. I won’t have time during the day to do much of what I used to, but I think that just by being present when the children are around I can perhaps keep a lid on quite how much devastation they can cause. Or that is the plan anyway. In reality I’m going to be hiding myself away and hoping that they don’t kill each other.

We always knew that this period would be difficult, and of course it didn’t help that I went to both Shetland and Norfolk in quick succession, but that’s October for you, and I'm already planning next year. We’re both working full-time, we have three kids at school, including one on a daft half-day schedule (which thankfully comes to an end quite soon), and the house does not clean itself, nor the clothes wash themselves. Neither does food cook itself, nor transport itself from the shop to our kitchen. And more is the pity, for soon something will have to give. I’m thinking specifically of the word “cleaner” at this point. Though it pains me to pay someone else to clean my house, it may have to happen. It would be one less thing to worry about, and would of course help the economy. The Lithuanian economy primarily.

Then there is the small matter of local birding, the thing that above all keeps me sane and balanced. Can you guess how much I’ve done in the last two weeks? Exactly. Right now, I’d need help finding my way to Wanstead Flats.  I’ve not been out once. Not that there has been much to see, the odd Ring Ouzel, a few Skylarks and a large Sparrowhawk ;-) , but that’s not the point. I just enjoy being out there, and that has been sacrificed. I’m not happy about it, but there is nothing I can do at the moment. The good times are over it seems.....

Unless.....have a Shrike! They always cheer me up, and they may cheer you up too having just read my big whinge. This juvenile Woodchat Shrike at Lowestoft in Suffolk was extremely approachable, though with many other birders there, and a recent article in Birdwatch Mag about photographers, I didn't want to push my luck. We popped in to pay it homage on the way back from birdless Norfolk last weekend, and it cheered us up no end, as did a Glossy Ibis just down the road at Minsmere, site of some of my finest smash and grab raids. And I finally connected with the Semipalmated Sandpiper in Essex as well, although my mate Lee, er I mean Bradders, thinks we're stringing it as he didn't see it earlier in the afternoon. I of course would never doubt any of my mates' sightings..... no no no, never.