Anyway having looked at my diary I find I was in Birmingham for a supervision last Monday. I was in a state of panic going as I had forgot to print out the papers. I tend to do this in work. I had two options, one was to print them out in work before I went and the other was to go down there and print them out. I decided that in this case the extra hassle of getting into work did not outweigh the hassle of using an unfamiliar printing system. So I went into work. Just as well I did as both the rooms, I use for computing when I am there, were shut. This only meant therefore I did not get to check my email, rather than have to panic about finding a room and then sussing how the printing works. The other thing I normally do is a bit of a literature search. Checking if there is any papers I should be reading but I have learnt a trick so I can do that at home without going through a complicated set of menus. I took my umbrella and just as I was setting off for the station home it decided to rain. So my umbrella was truly wet. I am also learning that 5:00 p.m. train is very nice thank you. The people who are at a business meeting in Birmingham all get the 4:30 pm train and the people who work in Birmingham all get the 5:30 p.m. train so I get this one in between and there is usually lots of space on it!
At work we have had the results of the Voluntary Severance Scheme. It has not quite got the number of redundancies the University wants but when the fact that older staff were disproportionately represented in the scheme it might do. CICS has been quite heavily hit and what we are loosing is some people with a wealth of knowledge. I am quite sure that managers are going to find things don't happen and wonder why, then realise that the staff that did them have gone and no one has been delegated to do them. The good thing to come out of this from my perspective is that two of the staff who are leaving have decided to set up a walking group that goes for walks once a month and asked me whether I'd like to join. It was just as I was starting to get restless over walking again and wanting to be out doing it, so the timing is perfect for me.
Then Billy Anne made one her bi-annual visits to Sheffield. She said would I organise a days walking before she came, then she said would I organise it for the Sunday 16th August. Well St Andrew's Chesterfield was already holding a walk on that day, so I saw no reason to organise a second. So at 11:30 ish we headed out to Chesterfield to meet up with others on the walk. I made a mistake of thinking that because the roundabout which we turn off from the A68 was a messy last week, it would not be this week (the work on the new Tescos store is going very rapidly, which was the cause of the problem, and I just was over optimistic). The queues were worse, stretching all but twenty yards to the next roundabout. If it had been twenty yards longer we would have taken an alternative route. So we had a long wait and were later than planned at getting there.
We went the scenic route after us following Alec out of the carpark and me then realising he was probably heading home. So back to my map reading as the SatNav was failing to give me Clumber Park (arrgh). We got there, via Coal Aston which is definitely not on the route and then skirted Worksop. Fortunately I was better at navigating around the grounds and we got to the car park that they were meeting in and joined them for lunch. Then we divided into two groups, one group sat around by the cars and otherwise entertained themselves; the rest went for a walk around the lake. Well almost I don't think we got into Hardwicke village but crossed on a bridge before that. The pace was a gentle amble, the sun shone, there was an ice-cream van half way around and then swans and grebes on the lake. At one stage trying to get pictures of swans I crouched down and my left ankle which was bearing my weight decided it did not like this so plonk me down with undue ceremony. No injury apparent at the time but I woke with a stiff back the next day. John, Tricia and David's son thought it was hilarious which it probably was but only he would tell me. We ran Dorothy and Audrey home so were not dependent on my map reading skill and had a commentary and tour all the way. Including arguments about where the former military training college was and being told to stop on top of a narrow bridge to admire somebody's garden (which was delightful) Pictures of the walk are up on Flickr. .
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