All I had on my agenda today was a hair appointment at 11 and a visit to a cemetery in a nearby town. Easy, right? Lots of free time. A nice relaxing day.
I polished up a brief translation (a questionnaire) and sent it off by 9 a.m., made a social phone call and set off for my hair appointment at 10. Only back home some time after 12.30, lunch and off to the nearby town.
After waiting for the train for 20 minutes and wondering if there was any information as to why it was 5 minutes late, I did discover that the train I needed wasn't running and that there was a replacement bus service. Off I went in search of the relevant bus stop. Another 10-minute wait and, instead of an 8-minute train ride, a longer bus ride.
When I got to the station, the bus I needed drove off as I was getting off the bus I that had brought me there. Another 10-minute wait.
After I'd finished tidying up an old friend's grave for about 20 minutes, I saw that the bus stop in front of the cemetery had been moved and I didn't know where to, so I walked back to the station. As I was waiting for the replacement bus service to take me back into town, the waiting time grew from 3 minutes to 8 minutes.
By the time I had got back home, the round trip had taken me 3 hours - instead of the usual 1 hour and 30 or 40 minutes. I was knackered.
All day to do two little things. Consider what one achieves at work in 8 hours: e-mails read and responded to, filing, translation, editing, paying invoices, writing invoices, chasing up unpaid invoices, research, queries... And as I work from home, I can add domestic chores to that list.
And yet all I did today on my day off was have a haircut and tend to a grave. And it took me all the working day. It's no wonder that the pensioners' mantra is "I don't know how I managed to fit in work - I'm on the go all day".
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