Moving down

Within a month I'll be clearing my desk and moving to an identical desk four floors down. It's not a job move. It's the periodic office re-stack. (Without them the trash that builds up in the office would reach dangerous proportions. Hopefully, during the tidy up, I'll be able to pick up some cuff-links, a blazer and perhaps a wearable pair of shoes left behind by some predecessor or other.)

I will miss the view we have up here on the sixth floor, particularly on days like today.

Free coleslaw

I watched Michael Gove stroll into Pret a Manger today. Or should that be, I saw Michel Gove embraced by the all-consuming tentacles of Pret a Manger this morning? I digress...

I got a free portion of coleslaw at lunch today, when the dude on the till failed to realise that the shredded vegetables I had heaped upon my plate was not part of the fixed price "cheap-looking fish-cake and four crummy "new" potatoes" deal. The coleslaw was considerably tastier than the rest of the meal.

Could these two, seemingly random, pieces of great fortune be unrelated? Do they, in fact, signify some greater future ahead? I find it hard to ignore these signs, though divining what they signify is difficult.

It's been an interesting week or so. Last Monday I visited Port Talbot Steelworks. It is difficult to come up with objectives to describe the sheer scale of the thing. "Big" will have to do, I think. So big, in fact, that it's impossible to get an idea of exactly how big it is. You stand at one end of the rolling mill and see what you think what might be the other end of the rolling mill in the far distance, but your eyes simply aren't used to looking at things that big, and then you nearly get hit by 34 tonnes of red hot steel shooting along a set of rollers at implausible speed and have to stop peering into the distance and start obeying the safety instructions.

At the weekend I mixed sand and mud to form an appropriate substrate for our tortoise table. Prior to this the tortoises were living in straw which is not a proper substrate. They seem a lot happier to have sandy soil to root around in. I also built them a small humidity chamber to prevent pyramiding but it remains to be seen as to whether they want to spend any time in it. I need some sphagnum moss. Sphagnum. There's a good Scrabble word.

I must put sphagnum, and Michael Gove, and rolled steel, and coleslaw to the side for a week, however. These things must be parked, for the onset of sukkot means, for our family, the onset of birthday parties, and these need careful planning. All my mental energies (when not focused on Energy Innovation) must be directed to pass the parcel and where to source a piñata. 

If I blog again before Sunday remind me not to. That parcel needs wrapping.