Enjoying not doing very much at all

It’s strange for me to be sitting here in my jammies, just pondering, at eleven thirty on a Wednesday morning. Normally, I’d either be work working, or at the hospice, or on some course or another, or – although much less likely – doing some house-work. Today’s completely different as I’m away from home, up north, for a wee mini-holiday.

I arrived last night; Alex and Ross have been here since Saturday and have clearly been enjoying doing what they love to do most for the past few days. I know this from the number of empty beer bottles waiting to go to the recycling bin and the mountains of manky running gear waiting to go in the wash! It's great that they had that bit of time to themselves - I couldn’t join them till last night as I had my course to go to on Monday and Tuesday - but it’s great to be here now. I’m really looking forward to a few days of catching up on some reading, doing some writing, going out walking and just chilling. It’s kind of a weird time to for us to go on holiday, but it’s often a fairly quiet time for us work-wise. Alex had hardly any time off last year, so we decided to make leisure hay while the work sun wouldn’t be shining and booked this wee lodge, in the beautiful Highlands, a while back.

Sod’s law has seen Scotland being battered by some pretty horrendous storms over the past few weeks. Fortunately, not many people were hurt and, as far as I know, no one was too seriously or fatally injured. Unfortunately, many people have faced the difficulties that arise through having no power or have sustained substantial damage to their property. Loads of stone chimneys have been toppled, many boundary walls have collapsed and scores of trees have fallen down, with many of them damaging stone-built things in the process. Consequently, what is often a snow-bound, quiet (and, therefore, often worrying) time for us in our wee stonemasonry business, has turned out this year to be one of our busiest. And we’re away from home. Up north. On holiday.

Yup, sod’s law.

Ocht, it’s not really that big a deal; we’ve left our great wee team of lads to keep things ticking over, we’re picking up messages from the answer phone and we’re responding to emails and answering queries through our website. We’re making sure folk don’t think we’re ignoring their calls and assuring them that Alex’ll be out to see them as soon as possible. Thank goodness for computers and mobile phones! When I think back to this time last year – when we were worried sick about an ex-employee issue and the fact that we hadn’t been able to do any constructive work for over a month because of the snow – I’m so thankful that our wee business is still here for folk to contact at all. Many other good small business’s haven’t been so lucky over these past few, economically bloody difficult, years.

So, we're looking forward to a busy work work time over the next few months. For the moment though, it’s a toss-up between getting down to some serious writing, coorying up with my new Kindle (Santa was good to me), or getting up off my butt and going for a wee walk in the sunshine (yes, sunshine, in January, in Scotland!!).

Lovely choices; but I think I’ll just sit here, look out at the beautiful surrounding scenery, and ponder for a wee bit longer....