No problem

You may be forgiven for thinking that, for me, blogging has become a thing of the past; I mean to say, look at the date of the last one – pathetic! And I didn't keep a promise made last night to publish this during the course of the evening. I think I'm becoming rubbish. How can that possibly have happened? Anyway, as I was saying, there is a tiny light at the end of the tunnel – oh, wasn't I saying that? - well, sorry, I'm very tired, the phone made me get up at 8.30 this morning, which, as you will appreciate, is practically the middle of the night. You may or may not know, my line manager wife is on holiday in Tenerife with her Mum, both of them enjoying a well-earned break from their respective tribulations. I went to Blackpool last Saturday for the annual conference of the association I work for, returning on Wednesday evening. S left on the Monday, her absence thus overlapping mine. Nothing really untoward has happened since, other than me doing quite a lot of veering on the motorway, being so tired that I was frequently unable to focus on the road properly during the hours of darkness on the latter stages of my journey back from Blackpool, the mainstay kitchen assistant going down with a highly infectious skin complaint, preventing her from working with food and with no prospect of an imminent return, the cleaner catching a flu-type bug, resulting in pre-opening mopping, bog-unclogging etc. having to be undertaken by others (i.e. me and Matt), bar staff unable to do some shifts, the cellar door incident (there are two locks, a Yale and a mortice, we only use the Yale, and, after Matt had arrived at the pub on Sunday morning, I was feeding S's horse when I had a panicked phone call from him saying that a key had snapped in half and the front bit was left in the Yale; no phone call had been received from staff the previous night, allowing time for earlier remedial action being arranged, nor any informative note left; guess where the Sunday carvery vegetables and all the equipment was stored? I drove furiously to the pub; after being persuaded by Matt that trying to kick the door in was possibly not a good idea either for my back, foot, leg or the door's well-being, I managed to get hold of a locksmith who had done some work for us a while ago at home and he agreed to pay us a visit, which involved him driving some 12 miles from Bournemouth; when the barman who had worked the Saturday night shift arrived, I am afraid I berated him a bit but he said he had put the Yale lock on the catch and we could get in the cellar with the key to the mortice lock, which you may or may not feel we should have tried; well, with no prior warning, the panic engendered was perhaps justified; it may have cost less than £45 in more leisurely circumstances), a large saucepan of peas being placed on the hob on Sunday and the gas left unlit, the peas remaining in a semi-frozen state preventing their immediate availability to the pea-loving public of Hampshire (although there were other vegetables); other than that, it's been really quiet. Oh, I cooked the three joints of meat (hurrah!), and very grateful thanks to S's sister, who came and carved. I paid her in leftover meat.