The two-week gap since my last entry is a good indication of how busy things have been recently. I’ve been frantically trying to get a piece of work out the door in the face of client requirements that seem to change by the minute. At the same time, I’ve been asked to act as a subject-matter expert for another client, and to lead a piece of business development for a third client. It means that I’m trying to do eight days of work in a five-day week.

After ten beautiful, sunny days in the US, we’ve come back to several weeks of grey, rainy weather in the UK. The garden looks great – Aude spent most of the weekend before last getting all of our flower beds planted, I took care of re-seeding the grass and getting everything trimmed. But the grey weather overall is a bit of a drag.

The weekend was spiced up a little bit by a Eurovision dinner party thrown by a friend of ours, although we still maintain that the UK was robbed.

Most of this weekend was tied up with wedding preparation courses – overall not quite as dull as I’d expected, although I did learn rather more about the sex lives of our hosting couple than I really would have liked. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.

It’s another busy week at work this week – tying up loose ends on one client engagement on Monday & Tuesday, off to Croydon on Wednesday to assess the presentations of all the graduates at the end of their 18-month graduate training programme, then off to Paris on Thursday / Friday for a training course of my own. I’m taking Thursday morning off to race around Paris securing the various pieces of paperwork I need for the wedding.

Still, even a trip racing around Paris is a good trip. They’re taking us out for a slap-up meal on Thursday night, which makes the trip worthwhile in itself.