Nic Dempsey

On Saturday, Ma and I went to the allotment to collect, it was -1C on Saturday morning, we didn’t intend to do anything else.

As usual, in the winter, when it’s cold and we don’t want to be on the plot for a long time, there was woodchip.

We had woodchipped the old half of the plot in September but never quite got it together to do the rest, so this was a godsend, as soil on the new part of the plot isn’t as healthy as it could be and while we top up the beds, the woodchip is what we’re using to condition the soil on the paths. So we got a chunk of the main path at the back covered.

We also tidied the brussels sprouts bed too but by 12:30pm, we were done!

Happy Monday!

So there’s a translation of the Book of Job, where God lays into Job for questioning Him. In most translations, Job is repentant in the face of God’s power and majesty. In this one Job replies “I have heard you and now my eye has seen you. That is why I am fed up.”

I love this. It reminds me that God wants relationship with all of us, all our good and bad, he did not create us to be automatons, obedient to His will. God created us for relationship, with Him and with each other and He gave us free will so we can choose that relationship.

I’ve spent considerable chunks of my time depressed, to get out of that hole, one of the things I did was remind myself to be grateful (example from 2015 here), it does work but it sucks to have to list all the good things when you feel terrible and useless, at some point in the recitation of things for which I am grateful, I feel ok with a ‘and yet Lord, I am fed up’.

This rather long explanation is a way of explaining that last week was a ‘and yet’ week.

Why? Well, November, the state of the world, and every little thing going wrong. On Monday, the IT at work stopped, on Tuesday, it was three hours with IT separate from the global IT issues at work, on Wednesday, the reservation I booked for Friday’s team meal was cancelled (we found out via an article in the Southampton Echo not from the restaurant!) and I had to scramble to find a new booking (I did it but not without having to contact 14 restaurants!), and the office move due to happen at the weekend, that I’d been working on was postponed for a week. Postponement has been a thing this week, on Thursday, it was announced that the new kitchen would not be in situ for Christmas as I had been told, but work will start in January instead (yes had I spent last week accommodating my mind to moving out for two weeks in December). My stress levels were such that I bought two bottles of gin and another cast iron pot in Lidl, but I managed to wrestle Thursday to a win with organisation (I have a very organised fridge with all veggies prepped!)

I was feeling confident about Friday, I was up at 5am, to get a bus at 6.10am to the station. Except that the bus didn’t turn up and that ticket machine at the station didn’t’ work and I didn’t get to Southampton until 8:53 and not at 8:35 as planned. Which threw my day into more of a scramble than intended.

Then the trains on the way home were broken. So on Friday I arrived home at 11-ish and it had been a day!

Worse things happen at sea and no one died but it was not my favourite week!

This week, I’m hoping for less mishaps, I’m in the office Monday and Tuesday, walking with Sue on Wednesday and who knows what else for the rest of the week. Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent so then it gets serious, and I need to clean the oven before then!

Have a good week!