What a day

Funny how I always get an uncomfortable feeling around seven on Monday morning when I get to this place. It has been my weekly home for the last 27 years and will be for the next two and half (I suppose) until I go to the happy pensioners hunting grounds. Today was a particularly stress Monday. It was raining all day which does dampen the spirits, and it seemed that the wonderful customers had run out of tools over the week-end. On top of it one of the colleagues was off for the afternoon and the afternoon is always the worst. The computer also decided to take a pause now and again which didn't actually help with getting the work done. I eventually managed to crawl out of the place at 05.45 this evening. The work was done, but I gave up answering phones this afternoon and luckily one of my colleagues took them over for me. I told him to tell them I had had a heart attack, fell over a cable from the computer, or crashed the car at lunch time, just to put them off a bit. I do tend to have a black humour now and again.

At least it is a short week. Europe closes down this week on Thursday for Ascension day. Actually Europe without Great Britain is closing down. We have the holiday every year. As I have over one hundred extra hours, I will be taking Friday off as well, at last two days plus the week-end away from the stress of it all. My son informed today that he will also be taking a long week-end and hopping home from Brussels for the holidays. He will be going back next Monday, so it looks like a family gathering over the holidays. It is quite handy he is coming, being a legal person he can advise me how to kill my neighbours on the top floor and get away with it.

Otherwise my new lawn is coming along nicely. Funny nearly all the neighbours have stopped me or my husband and told us how lovely the garden now looks and how the gardeners did a wonderful job on it. I have planted some anemone bulbs and a couple of flowering objects. Strange that my neighbours living upstairs havn't told us how much they appreciate our new garden. I mean we really did it for them. My cats don't like the new lawn so much. Funny really but they avoid it when they go out into that part of the garden. I think it is very considerate of them as the gardener said we should avoid walking over it for the next two weeks.

And now to go and stick some photos of footballers in my Panini album. There are 545 pictures all together and I only need 120. I have not worked out how much it has cost up to now, but you get 5 photos for one franc. Obviously as time goes on you get doubles, but we have organised ourselves at work and more and more are joining. It started with me and two younger girls in the department. We now have an apprentice and a purchasing clerk in the team as well. We take our doubles to work and exchange them. If you don't have enough to exchange, then we just pay the 20 cents for the ones that we would like extra. One of the younger girls in my department said she had to take 18 pictures from my doubles, but I told her that is ok as I had just taken 17 of hers. Before you think we don't work, this was all done within 10 minutes during the coffee break. As most of the international players are to be found in the english teams it is as if the English team would also be there, although they are not. Here one of my photos from the Liverpool v Chelsea match. I particularly like this one. I think the player in question recovered, but he seemed to have had some sort of painful injury at the time of taking the photo. I was not at the match personally, but watching it on the tv.