May threw a curve ball, my mother who had been increasing ill deteriorated and passed away in the middle of May, leaving my mental state very varied is the best way to put it, I should have bought shares in a tissue company for the amount I used (still use) but the old adage of time and work is more true than I would like to think. The quickest local service in the west country as 3 weeks from passing to funeral and that was considered fast by most there. The day of the funeral I heard a retired colleague of mine up in Scotland also passed away and when I got home only 4 days later found out that was the funeral day! if nothing else I know which system I like more.
Emptying things out of the house that I wanted to keep, was traumatic but very necessary if we are selling, which my brother and I are. He has a house and I have a house and there isn't work in the village for either of us. In a perfect world I would keep it to holiday in, but at 16 hours of drive away it is too far, and the costs to buy from my brother just too much for its worth to us, but the house had been built for my Mum and Dad and had been 'ours' for 45 years, again hard. My small croft style house now has a wonderful chest of drawers from Paris, and once I have sorted the space a very nice reproduction desk with captains chair in place of an old door mounted in an alcove, and an old directors chair from my student days. Best of all my whole house echoes to a chiming clock of my fathers, he loved his clocks.
Work is also challenging, the computer software roll out went fine (some glitches but that is life) and my arm is now back to normal (just need to get the strength fully back) setting life up to run when I am away is proving fun! Making crib sheets of click here then do that has shown to be a really useful thing, allows folk to have a go. The build up to the new library marches on and the designer is up next week for consultations or more meet the designer sessions. morning in the school and afternoon in the public library, all in all exciting but exhausting.
Tomorrow we have an event in the school here that is a talk by Peter Lomas one of the founders of the Raspberry Pi which I am hoping to get to. Just the idea that they had and made to work is amazing, I am in awe. The new school buildings are coming along at a reasonable pace and timetables seem to be holding, with a small exception that may leave me with no desk for a few weeks, which I will cope with! More info hopefully once the designer has been and visited, and as we get closer to changing.
The conference gets closer and I doubt, with all the other pulls on my time, that I will blog before I go, so my next blog will be a summery of all the fun adventures I will have had by then, Amsterdam, Vienna and Venice as well as Brighton and the conference! I am then planning to go sailing and will be at the mercy of free wi-fi in the various marinas and stops, but I will also not be at my desk or my work place. Just the Caledonia canal, the Crinan canal and the west coast of Scotland.
I will finish with a picture I took from my nearest bridge Halkirk, taken of the river Thurso with fishermen, in the warm early May sunshine before the trees budded and the weeds started to take over. Have a good summer.
