Wednesday and I am up early to move my car so that my partner can go to work. Its the first time in ages that she has physically gone to work and not just popped downstairs to the office. So after a toast breakfast I am free to prepare for the training session I am leading in the afternoon, to pack for my trip to London and to do all the chores I need to do in order to be away with a clear conscience. Its a slow start but I get underway with the training preparation. A friend calls me. We have not spoken for a while and it is a real pleasure to talk with her. She is still battling long COVID but her daughter has got better enough to return to school. We have a long conversation about income and the perils f shopping and how we shop around for the best deals on food and how we navigate the tricky choices between own brand foods and name brands. Some are tolerable others are not so brand names become luxuries to be bought only when special offers apply. Lockdown, COVID and the current inflation has taught us much or at least accentuated what we were doing already to provide for our families. I continue my morning of chores and preparation. Lunch is simply soup and anxiety as the training slot approaches. I organise my travel back pack, I’m going light today but need to check I have clean underwear, my meds and a present for a colleague. It do quite well but when I get to London later I discover I have no hair brush, which for a man with a luxuriant pony tail is a critical oversight.

At 2pm I am hooked up to my laptop starting a training session. Its an Enabling Environment session in which we are revising the standards of Boundaries and Development. I split the session into two 50 minute sessions so that we all get a break and I have time to check the new slides go up properly. The session goes okay, I have a chatty sort of style and tend towards a supervision type interaction where I just encourage people to share their experiences and ideas. It seems to work okay. My major gripe is how much I hate Teams. I just do not like the format. I get to the end and with some relief sign off.

Now my adventure starts. But before I can get going I get parcels delivered. More hedgehog food, picture frames and best of all a surprise chocolate cake from Bettys. It is a gift from a friend and old colleague to ease the current strains and stresses. It is a lovely gift adn just the lift I needed. It will be a treat fro my return from London on Thursday. I order an Uber. My first time. I use my newly down loaded app and to my surprise and relief the techno works. So I am ferried to the station in luxury. My electronic phone ticket gets me onto the platform and I get an earlier train than I booked so I arrive in London at 6:30. I brave the tube and clamber out at my station to find my way to the hotel. Its a short walk but already I am back to not liking London especially now it has rampant psychopathic cyclists zipping about and worst of all silent, illegal electric scooters. Its just one big hazard. I get to hotel, check in, make my room and phone my colleague who is in a hotel a few minutes away. I walk to his hotel and we pop across the road to an Italian restaurant. A small, very Italian restaurant, London classy sort of place. We eat a really nice meal of freshly made pasta and sweet goodies as we chat work, history and of course football as Liverpool are beating Villareal tonight. My c0llleague walks back almost all the way to my hotel with me before we part way and I return to put myself to bed. Its been a long day and I am tired but its been a real pleasure to eat out with a colleague for the first time in years. I write the blog in the morning before I go for breakfast. Go me!