Where's the time gone

 At the start of this year I made a sort of resolution to try and post something diary-like roughly every fortnight.

Well, this month there's been a bit of a hiatus. Not that I haven't been busy, but it has all been bits and pieces - for example up at the Athenaeum it's been itsy bitsy bits of administrivia around funding, and getting purchases approved by funders.

There's been no real progress with recataloguing the collection - I'm increasingly minded to do some of the work myself as part of a 'pilot study' that sort of turns into a guerilla recataloguing exercise and gradually drag other people into the process, rather than continuing to work on a formal project plan that will probably go nowhere and seems likely to become mired in endless discussions about funding etc.

Certainly, the idea of getting volunteers to help with the work seems a non-starter. One of the problems of living in a rural area is that we actually have a very small talent pool to draw on. 

While we have hordes of tree changers in the area, they are on the whole more interested in dying fabrics and making pots from local clays than recataloguing a few thousand books. Nice people, who would undoubtedly bring great enthusiasm to the project, but who are lacking the basic skills required, and who, less face it, are not that interested in what will be a rather boring and repetitive task.

At the same time we went down to Melbourne for a couple of days.

You may remember we had had a trip in July which turned into an endless set of public transport cock ups which included a medical appointment for J.

Well J had to go back for some tests, so we decided to drive, especially as she might be a bit wobbly after the tests.

Personally, I loathe driving in Melbourne, but sometimes you just have to suck it up and get on with it.

As it was, it turned out to be one of our better decisions as the hospital rescheduled the tests from the afternoon to the morning at the last moment, so we drove down the night before accepting that we would be donating several of our less essential body parts to cover the cost of overnight parking in the city.

We rationalised this to ourselves by saying we might go to Ikea on the way back to pick up some bits and pieces.

As it was, J was a bit wobbly, so we skipped Ikea, and after a quick stop in Doncaster to pick up something for dinner headed straight back home.

Otherwise, it's not all been bad. Spring, having spent well over a month teasing us over its imminent arrival, seems finally to have got its act together arrived properly, and I've been busy in the garden, planting, pruning and weeding, something that is good for the soul, scrabbling around in the dirt...