The relocation of the drawing office to newly acquired space downstairs, following the departure of the organisation previously renting that space, had originally been planned to take place on either Mon 17th or Tue 18th, which was why, before I left on Thur 13th, I moved my handful of personal effects downstairs and locked them safely away.

But when I arrived at the office this morning it was immediately apparent that no such relocation had taken place in my absence. And so it was that I had the luxury of carting my own PC, three screens, keyboard, headset, mouse and mouse-pad downstairs myself and setting them up just as I like them. The seating arrangement had been changed in my absence from the one previously agreed, and I am not in the slightest put out by that.

In our previous location our immediate neighbours were the logistics team, quite the noisiest bunch on the entire open-plan office floor. For those of us concentrating hard on 3D models of the contours at both the surface and the base of landfill sites in order to calculate accurate drill depths without risking puncturing the lining of the sump, the hysterical chatter of our neighbours often made it impossible to work. Our new space is shared with quieter folk, and the drawing office is supremely grateful for that.

Our new neighbours, on the other hand, are finding the monastic silence unaccustomedly soporific. They work quite quietly themselves, but weren't distracted by the haulage team to quite the degree that we were.

The drawing office desk tree was the last item to be brought down, apart from the huge plotter, we aren't entirely sure when that will join us, and so until it does, we return upstairs to collect prints and fold them, hearing the inane jabber of our former neighbours.

It won't take long to settle in.