Ok, so, I am on vacation.

At 0930 I get a call redirected to me from our postroom, saying that there’s a parcel which has been mailed to me, newly arrived. I ask them to deliver it to my admin Sue who makes the sun rise every morning and prevents the galaxy from falling apart.

A few hours later, shopping in b&q, I get a call from Simon from my team, who is outside my house and has dropped by en-route home to deliver the parcel on spec.

He leaves it on the back step.

I get home and open the parcel to find a box set of Sutherland and Pavarotti singing La Traviata, from Aaron in the USA, who is a total opera geek and is acting as a mentor in my appreciation of the art. He has sent me the opera as a gift so that i may learn, with a note saying a pleasure deferred is a pleasure denied.

I will try to do him justice, though not tonight for reasons that shall become evident.

This (the above) is what I really like – the company is not perfect, there are goofs, there is duplication of effort, there is political strife – but above that there is also community which rises above yet also reinforces the teamwork.

The security community is possibly now the largest, strongest and most integrated community within the company, and I am proud – and grateful – to be part of that.

Next, we take Manhattan.

Ah! I am sitting here late-night on my sofa after a large, celebratory, can’t be arsed to cook meal, the which consists of rice, Stag Original Canned Chili, dollops of sour Greek-Style Yogurt and soft tortillas (viz: cheat burritos) – plus three bottles of Guinness Original.

Plus a bit of Lindt Crunchy Caramel Milk Chocolate – a chocolate that is quite possibly better than sex, or certainly better than bad sex.

Hence I am content with the world.

I have updated [crypticide.org] with the latest pictures of my efforts; today I mostly-finished the compost heap to the point where it is functional. Tomorrow I have to finish filling it (it was 60% full when I left it as darkness fell) and jetwash the gate in lieu of sandblasting, to which I may latterly get around.

I need to trim the fenceposts, install caps, rehang the gate to compensate for a slight plumb error, buy a gate-catch and fix the mechanism, and a selection of other stuff that can prettymuch wait indefinitely. One of the pleasures of the work so far is that it is mostly a matter of recycling, the actual purchases being one post and one postholder, to replace the ones I goofed up yesterday with a bad drive.

At some point I also need to fill in a monthly report for my boss, which will actually be a quarterly report. Don’t ask, it’s just better that I do it. This can probably wait until morning.

Then there is the housecleaning. And the washing. And the paperwork-throwout. The list is enormous, and (to-date) expensive.

More, later.