The battery in the office clock ran flat. After about a week of our having no idea what the time was, my colleague decided to see whether he could obtain a replacement. His email request was replied to, explaining that he had to fill in a form (probably in triplicate), provide a cost centre, and get it approved. The battery (a pair of them, as it happened – apparently the requisitioning process couldn’t supply a single battery) would cost around £1.50. Five working days later, a package arrived with the required battery. This was four days after I'd brought in a spare battery from home and the clock had been returned to working order.

The clip that holds my Id badge onto the lanyard broke. For the couple of hours before I went to get a replacement, I was paranoid that I would be challenged for not displaying my badge. Despite that fact that a lot of the time when I walk around the site my badge is hidden beneath my coat.

About six weeks ago I kicked off an administration process in connection with some work I'd just about finished. I’d completely forgotten about this, until Friday when I was told that I'd initiated a "normal" process rather than a "standard" process, and that the related work couldn’t continue until this was corrected. I pointed out that a) in my vocabulary, "normal" and "standard" mean the same thing; and b) it was academic as the underlying work had already been completed.

Odds and ends from outside work

Saturday we had a fairly lazy day. We popped over to visit the Moonlighting Editor in the morning, and see their new kitchen. CGF said “Wow that’s really impressive” when we walked in – but I’m not sure whether she was referring to the new kitchen, or the sight of teenage son wiping out the cupboards. It is a really nice kitchen – makes me think it’s something I should get round to doing. But I need to get round to getting a new bathroom first. That’s on the list for this year(ish).

In the afternoon CGF had some marking to do, and I had some notes to write up from the previous weekend’s training course. We had a walk around Eastleigh later in the afternoon. I bought a couple of beer tankards and some plant pot things to start off some veg in. Haven’t got the veg seeds yet – or, indeed, decided what to grow. Come to that, I haven’t even dug over the garden.

We had intended to watch a DVD in the evening, but somehow ran out of time – but I did watch a few Aardman Classics with CGF Sprog 3.

Sunday I was teaching most of the day. Well, I could have finished soon after 3 but the other trainer waffled on for far longer than I deemed to be strictly necessary so it was gone 4 by the time I got out. In the evening we popped out to see some other people. When we arrived a film was playing on the TV. A fairly inconsequential scene, but we both immediately recognised it as Top Gun, even though we haven’t seen it for 30 years (and, I have to say, I haven’t really missed it). And no, it wasn’t “talk to me, Goose” (which may or may not be an accurate quote).

The weekend before last I was away on a training weekend. A long training weekend, with a lot of information crammed in to the two days. The first page of the training programme took us only up to 1030 on Saturday morning. But it was all useful and interesting stuff, and well put together with no session lasting longer than about 45 minutes. The topics that did take longer were split into two or three separate sessions through the weekend, which seemed to work well.

After dinner on Saturday a few of us retired to the bar – but no one was actually bothered about getting a drink. After a few minutes we felt it must be getting late as we were really tired – it was only just after 9!

I’d taken the precaution of taking a couple of bottles of beer with me, as I knew the hotel would only sell fizzy stuff at inflated prices. Forgot the bottle opener, though. I tried levering it in the door jamb, but that started to buckle alarmingly; ditto the door latch. Eventually, with a little perseverance and only a few scratches, I managed to prise the cap off with a tea spoon. Little Sister subsequently suggested that I could have used a counter. It took me a couple of days to realise that she meant a counter as in a bar, not as in tiddly-winks.

Even harder to open were the bags that the plastic tumblers came in. I broke both tumblers before I could get them open – so drank my beer out of a coffee mug.

Note to self – next time, take cans.

And finally

To explain the title of this post. A few weeks ago, CGF Sprog 3 asked me if I knew any piano pieces she could learn, as she needed another homework-procrastination excuse wanted to improve her piano-playing skills. I suggested the Black and White Rag, in the expectation that she would soon give up and we would get some peace (it's probably a bit beyond her grade 2 or 3 standard). But all credit to her – she found a tutorial on YouTube and started self-teaching. After a lot of practice she can now make a reasonable (and, to my untrained ear, creditable) stab at the first phrase (I think is the technical term). Maybe slightly slow, but all the notes seem to be in the right order. She said that she wanted to teach me how to play it; I suggested that I start on something a little simpler – such as Three Blind Mice.

Yes, this is what I associate the tune with: