D is for... Day in the Life!

I'm linking up with my fellow bloggers today, as we all post about a typical day in our lives.

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My day starts at 7.18, when my alarm goes off, turns on my iPod and I wake up to the soothing strains of Chopin's piano. I tend to snooze the alarm several times, and if I'm not washing my hair, I generally only drag myself out of bed somewhere between 7.50 and 8.00. I much prefer extra time in bed to extended early morning toilette, so I do the bare minimum of washing, teeth brushing and dressing. I don't wear make up to work, so that saves me some time as well.



My journey to work (click to enlarge)

I leave the house somewhere between 8.15 and 8.20, and cycle to the station. My route takes me past an old Victorian Schoolhouse (still a functioning primary school), but once you get over the river and past the old gas tower, the cycle is really dull. I take a shortcut to the station through a small industrial estate/retail park. My bike gets chained up in the underground carpark at the station (the same carpark my previous bike was stolen from a few years ago - I have much better locks now!) and I dash up the stairs to get to platform 2 in time for my train. Once in Basingstoke, I have a ten minute walk to get from the station to my office, as we're in a business park on the edge of town.

This is my office building. We're on the third floor, so I have a choice between using the lift and the stairs. Usually, I get the lift when I go up, and take the stairs when coming down.

I don't have breakfast until I get to work. Jamie makes me soft-boiled eggs which I take to work in a tupperware container to eat at my desk. I'm an accountant, so my work day is spent sat at my desk fiddling with numbers in spreadsheets, and dealing with other peoples' system problems.

At lunchtime, I get to choose between staying in the office (which usually involves sitting in the tiny kitchen reading a book while I drink a big mug of soup) or going out for a walk. There's a lovely park just over the way from the office, with a boating lake and playgrounds and a lovely nature trail to follow, so if the weather's nice and I just want to go for a walk, I'll go there.

Eastrop Park

Of course, sometimes it's necessary to go into town, so I take the ten minute walk. You have to choose your approach route carefully, because an hour doesn't give you much time to shop, when you have to take at least 20 minutes out of it for getting into and out of town. I get to visit two, three shops at most in a single trip. The walk in is quite pretty though:

Festival Place in background

When my working day finishes, I have to rush out of the office at exactly 17.30 in order to get to the station in time for the train. The walk to the station always feels more rushed than the walk in from earlier in the day!

My journey home (click to enlarge)

The train is often delayed as well, which is very frustrating. It's a posh Virgin Cross Country train I get on the way home, which means no stops at the smaller stations. It is usually very busy too, and I often end up sitting in the corridor next to the toilet. Sometimes I get away with sitting in the First Class carriage, which is lovely!

My route to cycle home is much prettier than my route in to town, as I go through the town centre and down the canal. There's a cycle path that runs all the way from the town centre to my house, all of it along this lovely waterway. It has so much life in it, fish and fowl. At the moment, there are ducklings and goslings, cygnets, baby coots (cootlings?) and we even have a pair of grebes that breed each year. Quite often I see the solitary heron who hunts fish around the weir and the lock, and occasionally there are cormorants fishing in the stretch of water beyond the lock, where it leads down to the Thames. Once, I saw a snake swimming in the canal.

SNAKE!!!

When I eventually get home, I am knackered. Evenings usually follow a set routine. Exercise, if we're doing any comes first, as soon as I get back (otherwise, I would sit on the sofa and not get up again), so we'll go for a run, or to a class at the gym. If I'm swimming, I'll do that on the way home.

Cooking dinner happens some time between 7 and 8pm. On workdays it's normally something easy, but we do tend to be more adventurous at weekends, when we have more time. One of the advantages of Jamie working from home is that he can do food and kitchen prep before I get back, so if we did want to cook anything more time consuming on a work day, we can.

Dinner is eaten in front of the TV. At the moment, we are watching our way through an entire series re-run of Star Trek: Voyager on Sky Atlantic, so we watch that first while we eat. I'm terrible for fiddling, so while I'm watching TV and eating I am also on my laptop, checking Facebook, e-mail, Ravelry and Twitter.

I have a sort of nest, on my half of the sofa. Laptop in front, surrounded by the detritus of my crocheting (the pliers were out because I was seeing if using them made it easier to fasten safety eyes the other day - short answer is no, they don't).

The rest of the evening is filled with us watching "our" TV programs (we have quite a lot on series link at the moment, and we're a bit behind on some of them - only got 20% left on our Sky+ box memory!). Here's some of the shows we're currently enjoying:

At some stage in the evening, my lap will be invaded, as Mr Fidget demands attention and grooming.

Unlike most long or semi-long haired cats I know, Fidget actively enjoys being groomed, and isn't happy unless he gets at least one good brushing a day. Most days he wants it twice, once downstairs in the evening and then again when we go to bed!

He tends to settle in for the evening then, which leaves me stuck in my seat with nothing to do but crochet!

Except of course, when Fidget decides that he's fed up with being ticked by my yarn tails.

We'll creep off to bed any time between 11pm and (more recently) 1am. Fidget comes with us, of course, otherwise he sits downstairs wailing because he can't find us. Luckily, our king size bed is big enough for the three of us!

To read about other fiber artists days, Google "DITL6611".