2) No time to put my feet up – I forgot I had also (and equally rashly) promised to deliver the next piece of work by the end of next week – which is Thursday owing to a day off on Friday.

3) I also had a request to provide some information on another application – information that was quite detailed and would take a long time to prepare (to be fair, I don’t think the requestor realised the complexity of what was being asked for. Hopefully my 24-page document will enlighten him). When I explained that my priority for the week was elsewhere but I would supply his information if I could he responded with “that’s OK, I’ll set up a meeting”. Crack on, mate. Set up all the meetings you want – but it’s not going to reduce the time I need or increase the time I have.

4) The Meeting request was followed by a document: “we won’t have time to cover it all in the meeting”. So why not make the document shorter or the meeting longer?

5) Stopped for fuel on my way home one evening, and bought milk at the same time. I did hesitate briefly over the price - £1.20 for two pints – but decided I CBA’d to go to co-op later so 31 pence was what 20 minutes of my time was worth. Wasn’t till I got home that I realised that it wasn’t even two pints – it was a litre. Double rip-off. [for US readers I should point out that although a litre is pretty close to your quart it is considerably less than a UK quart).

6) Eastleigh parkrun was cancelled this morning, owing to a waterlogged course, so we travelled to Southampton. Super-speedy run, 24’ 03’’, breaking my previous time there by over a minute (though that had been my second parkrun of the day, on New Year’s Day).

7) After the run, we went to the café for coffee. Low staff numbers meant slow service, but we got a drink eventually. While waiting in the queue I read the job advert which advised that applicants “must be able to work extra shifts to suit the demons of the business”.

8) I’ve probably mentioned the Ruby Theorem (or hypothesis or observation or conjecture) of traffic delays before (though I seem to change its name every time I mention it). It states that when there is a traffic incident (breakdown or accident) on a section of road, there will be a second incident on the same section of road within a few days.
The application of the theorem is fairly loose. A “few days” can be up to a fortnight; a “section of road” is whatever I want it to be – typically between navigational landmarks, or major junctions, or just the bit of road I travel along. Generally, it applies only to major roads but sometimes it occurs on minor roads. Such as Smalltown last week. A road junction was blocked by a broken-down bus on Friday afternoon (luckily it was the day my car had been serviced in Basinghole so I didn’t have to exit the town by that route). Driving back home Sunday evening a breakdown truck and several police cars indicated the scene of another accident just 400 yards further down the road.

9) There is a UK-wide shortage of vegetables, and some supermarkets are limiting sales of iceberg lettuce to three per customer. Because of the bizarre psychology of consumers this will probably execrate the shortage: customers will buy up to the limit even if they don’t want that many. The shortage is caused by bad weather in Europe – so it is all good practice for when we leave the single market and can’t get European veg at all.