Monday, May 4

We wake up at the start of a full working week, ready to resume our work-from-home routines for the seventh or eighth week in a row. I go for a forty minute walk to simulate leaving home and travelling somewhere.

I listen to Al Stewart this morning, for the first time in years. I have found an old compilation album I bought for 2 euros in a bargain bin in Antilla, when bargain bins and Antilla both still existed. It lacks Love Chronicles which might count as a point in its favour. It does have most of the other stuff I vaguely remember, and a lot of things I have never heard.

It holds my attention as I walk. I take a turning I have not followed since last summer and pass the allotments at the edge of Mellunmäki. I spend five minutes there looking at the scene before the gardeners arrive. I photograph the sign at the edge of the allotments.

When I get home I will find Irma already in the cut and thrust of her regular early morning meeting.

At lunchtime I will attend a Zoom meeting in which Nathalie will announce that she has resigned in order to take up a post at Metro in Oslo. Shock will permeate the Zoom room, as people take this in.

I will have further meetings, large and small, for most of the afternoon. Fortunately everybody seems to have switched from Teams to Zoom so it will all go well.