9 weeks

Ha! Bet you thought this was going to be some pervy post that is just half a week less than the infamous 9 and a half Weeks fillum...but you would be wrong. It is in actual fact the amount of time I have spent at my secondment. And today is the last day!

It's been a weird old time. Initially there was excitement. It was something new! I had escaped from libraryland, which was so badly needed it was untrue, and exciting times were ahead. One week in and boredom hit. Big style. The sad fact is that there's been nothing to do here. And so I've done what many people believe librarians get paid to do: read lots of books. And perfected my hand-eye co-ordination by playing lots of online games. But it's not all been bad. I've had a chance to schmooooooze with lots of people from the university that I would never have met should I have stayed in libraryland. And I've used new systems and I've met new people. All these things are very positive. Plus we've been working in a huge office with actual windows that you can see out of! And natural light flooding in, so much so, that we often have to close the blinds against the glare of the sun. It's been truly fabby to be here in Autumn when we've watched the trees turn red and gold before starting to drop their leaves and show their nekkid branches (naughty) ready for Winter. So today we depart.

Packed our desks up today and our side of the office looks all sad and bare. Well it would if we hadn't have come in to some wonderful gifts this morning. A beautiful orchid plant each (no mention of the b-word allowed Fizz!) and a card saying thank you, and bestest of all, a GIANT FRENCH FANCY cake - oh oh oh! And of course we had to have a tale for the last day and what a surprise, it involved travel. I was running late as had slept in, texted T to let her know I'd be on the next train, she texts me back, train not turned up, she's in car so she'll come pick me up. Then hit the armageddon rain which was only seemingly in far-off T-land as where Dizz lives was a beautiful day! Then we get closer to work and there were 3 horses running backwards and forwards across a very busy road, clearly escaped from a field somewhere and very very frightened. Slowing down to practically crawling speed we managed to get past them without incident and only arrived in work 15 minutes late, not too bad at all!

And so endeth the secondment. Mixed feelings abound. I'm really going to miss the windows, libraryland is oh so dark with its forced lighting and no visible windows near my desk. And I'm going to miss our colleague J too, as she's really rather lovely and we've had lots of fun in the past few weeks...but it will be nice to return to a place where work happens - what a novelty! I definitely won't miss the walk to the bus stop, the early bus, the walk from the bus stop down to the station (often a trot or all out run if late), or the train that sometimes doesn't turn up due to vandalism or leaves, and the looooooong walk from the station to the campus that in rotten weather (which we've been having a lot of) is simply hideous.

So fare ye well secondment. Thanks for having me. Of all the things that I could say about it, I will end on this: it provided rescue when I was sinking, in a libraryland that is descending, and for that I shall always be grateful.