Project 52 2019 week 5 – mini snowman

I think this week has probably been one of the most stressful of my working life. Never again (I hope) will we have 2 big meetings and an annual event on the same day. Here’s this week’s Project 52.

We haven’t really got up to much this year at weekends. The weather’s been miserable or I’ve just needed a break, or N hasn’t wanted to go anywhere.

On Monday, it was major TB testing on the farm. Usually they’re done in a day with only 1 vet onsite, but this week there were 4 and all the cattle were being done. They had to start again on Tuesday morning to finish them off. N was lucky to get his tennis private at lunchtime because the weather wasn’t brilliant.

Wednesday was a mad day at work. A speaker for the event the next day told us she couldn’t do the time on the agenda (I wish people would read invites, agendas, and listen to briefings in the months ahead of an event instead of waiting until the last minute). So we had to rejig her to a different slot and let other people know.

Thursday was the event. I had to drop N at my sister in law’s so she could take him to school, and my brother was picking him up from after school club. There was a worry all day about potential snow, and we knew our event would have a lot of people pull out to avoid travel chaos. Even without the snow it was a pain. I arrived at the station to find a points failure at the next station was causing delays and cancellations north and south. My train ended up being cancelled so I had to get back to the car and drive instead. The traffic into Birmingham was terrible and I had to park at the afternoon venue and walk to the morning meeting. I was an hour late, with other people arriving after me.

I missed lunch because I had to get out to the event. Thankfully that all turned out well and the snow didn’t appear until much later in the evening. Feedback for the event was good, and the canapes were generally delicious. We couldn’t reduce the numbers we’d catered for (we under cater anyway to avoid waste) even though we knew probably half wouldn’t stay because of travel worries, but we took some of the remaining wine already paid for to go back to work for socials, although the tupperware was unused because the spare canapes weren’t there to take. It was an easy journey home and I was back at 7. A long day and I’m glad it’s out of the way for another year. I don’t know how people do events every day.

We woke on Friday to snow. A few centimetres. But the roads were perfectly clear thanks to lots of gritting overnight. It’s not often we have gritted roads, but it seems the gritters did a great job. Some of the town schools shut which was amazing when the rural schools were pretty much all open including the secondary schools which bus in 70% of the students from villages. N went out before school to make a mini snowman, they enjoyed playing out in the snow during school breaks.

I worked from home in case there was more snow, and so I could easily get to his class assembly which was all about rivers. His tennis was cancelled though and the OH was on the last shoot and pub dinner of the season so we went for a cheeky Pizza Express.

Saturday was also a quiet one. Just a swimming lesson in the morning – most classes were really empty so it’s been great for the children in quiet classes.