In many ways it’s been a hard week. I was definitely in the is tomorrow the weekend by the end of Tuesday camp and by the close of Wednesday I packed up at 16:45 with a migraine and went straight to bed. On Thursday I slowly came too, it’s still lingers a bit now, but I’m rather looking forward to the rest of today as I’m using one of my volunteering days to go and help plant a hedge on a Farm near me. More on that when I return.
It was a hard week on a number of fronts, some which I won’t go into because I really shouldn’t but are quite public and some which are personal and/or confidential so I definitely won’t. Many of these things are always there, it’s just that they are noticed more, that I notice them more. I wonder to be effective how many of them I can notice and how helpful they are – I could deploy my tried and tested method of sticking my head in the sand at least for some but it doesn’t really feel like an option.
All that said there were many highlights to the week, things that worked, tasks that got done, people that cared.
Monday was a highly productive day, I had a list and I got on with it and it felt great. Meetings in prep for the Defra Group EDI Team ExCo workshop and generally focused and on top of things.
Tuesday was the ExCo workshop and it felt nice to be back and supporting a team to do it. Also these rooms have a special place in my memory. Still no frosting. A story for another time.
(Ok so I’m not sure what I have done but below is a picture of a room with a sharpie and post-its followed by some pictures I took on my walk at lunch with Al who I’m arranging Together Day with. One with blossom – very odd. One with a lovely lake in a park – love that view, one with a cathedral that looks like it’s in Spain in the summer.)
On Tuesday evening we had the UKGovCamp organisers meet-up, as ever it was both fun and on track Amanda is wonderful at doing that, I have things to do – like organisering a burner phone (which I think I have sorted)
On Wednesday I ran this months FFCP Introduction session with Giles Turnbull remake of the slide, which are great. We ran our first session on lessons form previous schemes that was nice and then I attempted to run a group picture session for our Org Dynamics research but other people couldn’t access the whiteboard so we used gif’s in the chat instead. I ran another group research session on Thursday and did a User Research interview-lots to write up next week.
On Thursday I had a lovely chat with Carla which is really helpful. I’m instantly going to use something. But it was really nice to chat. I also spoke to Nour and James and managed to get out the email on the 16 Days of Activism which was hard, it’s not a nice topic but one we need to address. On Thursday I also schemed with Emi and Mike and talked about FFCP lighting talks.
There were many other interesting and lovely chats as ever and as I return home today there was merriment on a call I hopped in on.
Today I went to Woodoaks Farm which is near me and along with many others planted a hedge, children from the local school came. I really enjoyed it, it wasn’t a walk in the park but it felt worth it and it’s been raining this evening so hopefully the whips all bed in well.
In the first photo are some of the hedging plants, there were 10 different verities to extend the flower and berry seasons. The second photo is woodchip arriving and the third is a look back towards the farm buildings and tea hut.
