As I start to write this it is 6:30 am. I looking out on a morning that certainly looks very autumnal, and conducting an experiment into how much coffee it is going to take to wake me up. The "one-cup hypothesis" has failed but I have high hopes on the two.
This has been the first normal - five day working week for a while with a couple of late work ones thrown in. Plus a couple of late non-work ones. OK, it would be easier to say I haven't got to bed at a sensible hour since Sunday.
I've changed my morning routine a little. As anyone who goes anywhere in the morning will be aware, kids are back to school. And most of them seem to be getting my train. I've tended to get the same train for about the last 3 and a half years. At the beginning there were maybe four or five kids getting the train to the private schools out South of Croydon. Now it is maybe 30 from Balham, with another 30 or so already on the train from the stops before.
This shows something about the area - it's one that is impossible for normal people to buy a house in (if you can afford £18k per year out of taxed income for each of your kids to go to school - which is a salary cost of nearly £70k just on education if you are going to send both Oliver and Sophia, then you are not "normal people"). But this isn't (today) a moan about the increased bankerisation of Balham. It's simply a comment that I've changed to a slower train where I have my choice of seats, and a pleasant-enough ten minute to the office at the end of it.
And it looks like another busy week ahead. I'm doing the Verdi Requiem with Crouch End Festival Chorus and the gig is Saturday 13th. So a rehearsal for that first thing tomorrow. Ukulele to restore the balance Sunday, and then I am off to Guernsey (working) for a couple of days next week, back to host a work drinks party - deep joy - Thursday and then two days of Verdi before the gig. So I think tonight and Monday is it in terms of free time for a while. And obviously I need to go to the gym on those to counter the excesses of all the other things. It's good to be busy but right now (at 6:47am) with coffee number 2 failing to make much of an inroad yet) I'm thinking maybe not this busy.
It has all felt rather easy in the nice summer weather. Easy to get out and about, just looking out the window makes you smile. I normally really like autumn, but I do wonder how that is going to be, when it gets cold and dark by the time I am home from work. Maybe I'm a little anxious about that right now.
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Right - two hours on, in the office and just posting this I saw the following story.
And in sad closing news, the BBC reported that the space sex geckos have died. I'm sure all our hearts go out to the plucky little fellows. I hope that, following their inevitable dissection and prodding about, that they will be given the send-off so deserved by such pioneers.
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