You get to see all the good stuff with me ;-)

Hey, if I get to go to the sewage works, I don't see why you shouldn't all come too!!

I visited the local works which receives our waste waters with a couple of colleagues, really just as a fact finding exercise and to increase our appreciation of the impact our waste streams could have on the works. They pump out up to 270 litres/second of cleaned water into the local river (of which an absolute maximum of 15 l/s is ours)
The place wasn't as smelly as I thought it might be, although there was a certain whiff in some areas, particularly where all the "solids" were being screened out. However, the clinker pits (above) were fascinating. The pieces of "clinker" (which is blast furnace slag and is a bit like pumice) has microbes growing all over the surfaces and it's these microbes that munch anything <ahem> "organic" in the water. What I didn't realise was that these pits support entire ecosystems of snails, worms and spiders along with the bacterial slimy stuff. There were little birds riding the rotating water spreaders, obviously looking for a tasty morsel for breakfast :)

By the time the water left the plant for the river, it was sweet smelling and clear. Very impressive!

In other news, worklife will be decidedly unsettled over the next couple of months as we had a memo out today for the formation of an "employee consultation group" as the company has had a particularly rough couple of months. This could indicate (more) redundancies in the near future, or a shortened working week or any other number of permutations... or nothing at all and merely a safety measure in very difficult times... hopefully a little more clarity in the coming week or so.