Stunned to Silence

My absence from the blogosphere hasn’t gone un-noticed. I do apologise.

I’ve had a couple of people mention it to me directly (thanks Mum), one separately to Amanda, and my ‘long-lost’ Uncle from Portugal even e-mailed me to enquire about my lack of updates. It can be very easily explained, I’ve only gone and got a full-time job!

It was all a bit of an accident.

I was casually minding my own business, picking up the odd short mapping contract, working quietly from home and keeping my head down, biding my time until Amanda had put enough money into savings to enable us to put our English house on the market, pack up our belongings, and head for Galicia.

Then I saw a job advertised, maternity cover for a fixed term of 11 months, and it dovetailed brilliantly with our plans. I applied, not really expecting that any public sector organisation would want to employ a ‘stuck in their ways’ veteran GIS consultant, and sent it off into the ether never expecting to hear about it again.

I got called for interview, and tried to avoid it by being in Galicia on their chosen date. They were persistent and a week after my last return from paradise, I was asked to sit a practical examination of my mapping skills and grilled by two very nice interviewers.

Then, to my total surprise, they went and offered me the job.

It was too good an offer to turn down, exactly the kind of thing I do, and with a job description which could have been written for me. So a month ago I found myself dusting off the suit, sorting out some suitable ties (non-Disney), polishing my shoes and aquainting myself with the pleasures of packing my lunch into one of the tupperware boxes which had lived in our kitchen cupboards for a long time, but which had previously held no interest or significance.

I’d forgotten how tiring it is to concentrate for eight hours a day and five days a week. I’ve been shattered for the last four weeks, thank goodness I am just sitting behind a desk rather than doing some real manual work. Weekends have become important rest days rather than just being like normal days, when the only difference was that Amanda was at home.

I have a mountain of non-work, work (house related, rugby league related, golf club related) piling up on my study desk and demanding to be done…if I can ever find time when I am neither working or asleep.

Now I have a formal holiday card, and have to plan ahead, we’ve booked three trips to the house over the coming months. All are long weekends in October, January and March when I will go with the best intention of getting jobs done and come home having achieved very little, as I slip into Spanish Time.

But I’m sure I’ll enjoy our trips, probably more than the last few times we’ve visited, as there will be the added bonus that I am not in a jacket and tie…and not spending an hour a day on the transport of the proletariat…the bus!

Hopefully the upcoming visits will also provide me with plenty of topics to blog about.

 

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