Happy Monday!

I love Bank Holidays in part because I think a four day working week should be the future of work, in May we get two of them which makes me happy.

This May, I also have time off work because we’re going to Newcastle just before the next one. Yes again. Look I’m a creature of habit, I like that part of the world, I’m going with Ma because we like the same things. I was listening to A Point of View, yesterday on Radio 4 and was perplexed when Megan Nolan, said that Washington DC wasn’t fun because it had too many museums and not enough fun. I loved DC in part because it had so many museums, what’s not fun about museum? A couple of days in the North East, looking at old buildings, the sea and some art is perfect, if I can shoe horn some bookshops and gardening, it will be heaven on earth.

And I need a break because while things have improved, I am still feeling that I’m in the words of one of my lovely colleagues ‘running a flat’. It’s only May but it feels like it’s been an exhausting year.

Before I get to the holiday, I need to do some allotment things, tidy my house, be in a work quiz, try and do that 13 mile walk again (actually that’s the last work thing I do before my holiday!) and generally be a grown up. Which is always harder than I think!

So there was nothing particularly amazing about last week, I was tired and crampy (more peri menopause drama), work was work, the local elections happened (London mostly rejected Susan Hall’s racist framing of London of a hive of knife crime and muggings – although there are 800k or so of them I’m worried about!), Championship Football finished (to much joy amongst the non-Chelsea supporting members of the family QPR won their last two games and finished eighteenth – not the best performance over a season but they are at least staying in the same league). Chelsea beat West Ham yesterday (5-0) and are 7th in the Premiership, gunning for European football next season.

There is such privilege in an ordinary week of life. I think one of the reasons that 2024 so far has felt so exhausting is the knowledge of how many people in the country and the world are experiencing so much horror. I was struck this week by the rising numbers of visible homeless people, if there is are so many people on the streets, that must mean that the numbers of people sofa surfing and living in hostels and b&b’s is rising. Things are awful for a lot of people in this country and worse in Sudan, Ukraine and Palestine. It’s hard to be energised when everything feels hopeless. So I’m going to celebrate my quite ordinary week of nothing much happening.

This week is more of the same. I’m going to the plot today, to weed my little socks off and bring the garden waste bin home. I’ve got enough work at work to be going on with, and the weekend brings an allotment work morning and Grace.

Have a good week!