More of the Same

First Monday on January.

It's odd, I have woken every morning for the past couple of weeks and the hum of traffic outside has been down to a sporadic trickle instead the customary constant drone, occasionally for light relief you get the hiss of tyres on wet road on the rainy days, and just for good measure, there's blustery winds swirling past my window, four floors up.
So when I came to at 0650, the drone was in full effect, and the familiarity was both comforting and filled me with dread at having to face the prospect of work.

Even before Christmas, I spent Christmas Eve in a practically deserted office and then I think I only had 3 other days in the office in December, so it was a fairly gentle reintroduction to work.
Read a few e mails, send a few back, wait for the pass word resetter guys to get to work so they could begin the tedious task of unlocking me and 76 other idiot users whose memories are so shot by alcohol that they can't remember 7 letters and 2 numbers a fortnight after they last used them. Sheesh... Am I really worth my salary? Probably not.
Anyway, the day goes something like
Log in.
Kettle on
Complete first process
Make coffee (strong)
Respond to e mail
Make porridge
Complete second process
Call colleague
Wash up porridge as I make the call (hands free head set - YuuuS!)
Complete third process
Put washing machine on
Submit mileage and overtime sheets
Remember to take off my Outlook autoreply
Complete another process.

The only break in the routine? My um friend calls to say she is coming to join me for lunch. Last time she was here, there were two places set for dinner, mats, cutlery, glasses. Today there's three laptops, three phones, countless bits of paper and leads and cables and a mouse and a calculator.

I think our lunch of soup and bread will be at the breakfast bar in the kitchen.

I almost don't make it. I peg it to Asda at midday; need bread, and always wanting to look for bargains. The wind is behind me as I cycle; and is if to help even more, I get an artic to draft along behind, effortlessly dragged along in the slipstream at 25mph with no effort. I look like some Olympian, until the lorry hammers on the brakes as some eejit on a Micra pulls out in front of him; I lock the bike up at 27 mph, about 5 yards off the back of the trailer. Thankfully the wheel grips, the truck releases the brakes, then stops after another ten yards, and I lock up it again, stopping about a couple of feet from the back of the truck.

Hardly fatal, but would have been painful to clatter into the back of a truck cos the roads were a little greasy, because I'm a lazy slob who looks for an easy ride behind the truck.