In Bruge

Well, thank god it's Saturday. It's been a longggggggg week.

Woke up about quarter to seven this morning and came downstairs to make a cup of tea. Outside there is a thick fog, so I'm sat in the conservatory gazing out at a mysterious looking garden shrouded in mist and the birds coming in and out of it as they search for food. I know I have said this before but I just love autumn, it's such a beautiful time of year.

Work has been frantic this week, but yesterday everyone else in my part of the office disappeared into various meetings and I was left in peace to get on without interruption - how I love those times. I put a CD on my PC, plugged in my head phones and listened to some great some music whilst I typed. This works perfectly until the phone rings and you forget you are wearing headphones and clonk the phone on the side of you head! Anyway, by mid-day I'd pretty much cracked the work pile and was moving on to non-urgent stuff - so I'm back in control again.

Last night Peter and I decided to watch a Sky Box Office film and chose 'In Bruge'- Basically the story is - Ken (Brendan Gleeson,)a hit man with history, and new-to-the-profession Ray (Colin Farrell) are sent to Bruges by their boss after Ray's bullets claim an innocent victim. It has lots of black humour and stunning shots of Bruge all the way through it - Ralph Fiennes is brilliant as the evil boss. It made us both want to visit Bruge - my friend Carol goes every year and always raves about how beautiful it is.

Of course the news is full of the 'credit crunch' at the moment and looming recession. I said to Peter last night "well at least both of us are in pretty secure jobs" and Peter went "eh - well.............." It appears that the Council, where Peter works are, in about a years time, are going to privatise certain areas of the Council such as IT and bring in external companies to run these areas. The Unions are heavily evolved but it's still worrying. I immediately started worrying about our credit card debts and thinking of ways to help pay them off - basically if one of us lost our job we'd be up a creek without a paddle within a month so I think it's time to get sensible and start some serious financial planning.......

This morning the cold that seems to have been lurking in me waiting to come out seems to be doing so. Despite having a sore throat and the sneezes for a few days I had thought that my immune system was kicking it into touch but this morning my voice is croaky, my ears feel like they are permanently blocked (like you get on an aircraft) and my nose has started to run. I really don't want to be ill, it's just too inconvenient and I definitely don't want to take sick time off from work - let's hope it passes.

Have a reasonably quiet day planned today - just seeing a friend this afternoon, cold permitting.