![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Notes From A Small Village
Jul. 19th, 2020 03:08 pmApparently there's some sort of a lock down going on, but it's largely passed me by. At least until now, when I should be getting ready to take M to Austria for a birthday opera, and gearing up for the Edinburgh Festival. The lack of Festival isn't going to hit me the way it does the natives - it's been part of M's August for all of her adult life - but I will miss it. For me it's the late-night buzz around the Pleasance, and the hit and miss of seeing six shows in a day. Ah well, next year.
My company pivoted pretty quickly to home-working, as you'd hope it would, being a global IT firm with a good view of how things were playing out in Asia. One Monday in March we were asked to work from home on Friday, as a test, and we haven't been back since. The company are doing a phased return from August, but my team haven't been told to come back at all - I staged a raid on the office for my chair and two monitors, and I'm ensconced comfortably in our study. The only complaint I have is that it's a little dull in there, since there's thick brush outside the window. A wren was building a nest there earlier this summer, so it won't be getting cut back quite yet.
I'm fully aware of how lucky I am. No one in my close family has caught the virus, we have a detached cottage with room for all plus pets, and I've managed to keep working. So no complaints from me. The lack of sun is a bit of a bugger. I bought an extra week's holiday this year, which means I now have about six weeks to fit in between now and the end of the year. We have tickets to fly to Prague in September (a birthday gift to me) and I'm hopeful we'll be able to use them. I really wanted to do a drive to the South of France too, and maybe cross some more borders before they're closed to Brits, as we enjoy our freedom of movement, but it looks like that may be, literally, no-go. And that's something I won't be able to do next year.
But, on the whole, life is good. There's some pretty heavy duty pet-care going on just now, but again, that's inevitable when your spaniel is pushing 17.
Hey ho, and on with the motley...
My company pivoted pretty quickly to home-working, as you'd hope it would, being a global IT firm with a good view of how things were playing out in Asia. One Monday in March we were asked to work from home on Friday, as a test, and we haven't been back since. The company are doing a phased return from August, but my team haven't been told to come back at all - I staged a raid on the office for my chair and two monitors, and I'm ensconced comfortably in our study. The only complaint I have is that it's a little dull in there, since there's thick brush outside the window. A wren was building a nest there earlier this summer, so it won't be getting cut back quite yet.
I'm fully aware of how lucky I am. No one in my close family has caught the virus, we have a detached cottage with room for all plus pets, and I've managed to keep working. So no complaints from me. The lack of sun is a bit of a bugger. I bought an extra week's holiday this year, which means I now have about six weeks to fit in between now and the end of the year. We have tickets to fly to Prague in September (a birthday gift to me) and I'm hopeful we'll be able to use them. I really wanted to do a drive to the South of France too, and maybe cross some more borders before they're closed to Brits, as we enjoy our freedom of movement, but it looks like that may be, literally, no-go. And that's something I won't be able to do next year.
But, on the whole, life is good. There's some pretty heavy duty pet-care going on just now, but again, that's inevitable when your spaniel is pushing 17.
Hey ho, and on with the motley...
