Saturday
An uncharacteristically, bright and sunny morning
Took Alice to a schoolfriend's party at the "Megabowl".
What a Godforsaken, awful place. When it came time to pick her up, I couldn't go in, but stood tentatively in the lobby waiting for her to emerge from the darkness.
There were several parties being hosted at the same time.
One boy came out, complaining to his Dad.
"Ooh, ow, Dad. This sun is really hurtin' my eyes! It burns..."
What a w*nker.
I think you'll find its the flashing neon blue lights and mile-square video screens that are hurting your eyes.
She was in there for nearly THREE hours, so we had plenty of time for a visit to a nearby park.
Obscene graffiti.
I like street art, Some guys have talent.
Rachel B s*s her dad's Ck, is not so clever.
And considerably more difficult to explain to a nine year old.

Took a detour on the way back to walk through Mill Mead along the stream.
Blissfully quiet.
I do love Southampton's Greenways, its just such a crying shame the council don't back up their initiative with maintenance and regular visits to the sites.
Had Grey Wagtail and Nuthatch within a few seconds, and then tracked down 50 Siskins in the alders.
Superb views of these charming finches that I haven't seen close up for many years.
Funny how you never forget what they sound like.

Then lunch at Tesco. A ridiculous example of how using 14 yr old staff on a Saturday is actually costing them money.
No queue, so at the hot food counter I ordered egg and beans on toast twice for the little ones and a couple of mozarella paninis for me and Trx.
She was unnervingly gorgeous.
Talk to the two yr old. Too much eye contact.
Then picked up sandwiches for Flo, drinks, cake and tea and went to the checkout. There was the girl with the other braincell.
She was unnervingly gorgeous.
"Hiya! What you got then?
Sandwiches bleep bleep, two teas bleep bleep..."
Anything else?
No spoon with a number on, no little plastic thingy?
"No no, that's it."
"Cool. £5.80 please. Bleep bleep"
Chat chat. Scary smile.
"Thank you"

Ten minutes later, spacechick number three wanders around the café calling "two paninis, two kids beans"
That's me.
"Thanks. Enjoy your meal."
For £5.80 we did...

Friday
Signed off the loan with a quick trip to the solicitors this afternoon. AW's godfather runs a private practise in a HUGE rambling cottage in the New Forest. This should all come through next week and allow us to pay of the outstanding print-bills before year end.
Everything is going ridiculously to plan at the moment. Apart from the fact that we have already taken orders for about half our predicted turnover this year. This includes £15K for cartography before Easter, when we anticipated a budget of £12K all year.
No doubt the reason for this is the arrival of Jo in the office. She has taken a lot of the database management and stock control etc from D (which he never made a very good job of anyway), releasing his time to sell - which he is very good at.
He's pulling in more work and the results are starting to show. Just means now that we are in danger of creating a bottleneck unless I can get some more prodcution help. Actually, admin help would be better targeted, and free me up to do more of the work.
DK World Atlas for example. A project worth so far £800 to conceptualise the methodology. Completed with a monster late night to clear a path for more short turnaroound stuff early next week.
D and I had one of out best meetings at the end of the day. ITs still tight, but beginning to look brighter. I decided we could take the risk of having an extra divvy payment on Monday.
Ironically, I got a statement from the bank when I got home, telling me another DD has been 'returned unpaid' because I have again reached the bottom of the barrel.
This is made more of an acute problem when a very tired Trx has to do the week's shopping becasue I have no money...