I cuddled Soot the nearly 20 year old cat until we set off in the car at 10.03am this morning, the sun was out and it was 8°C; and there was a stop at the shop down the road (where there was an unbelievable amount of alcohol – some in big skull shaped bottles, and some sort of edible product called Dead Man’s Fingers) to drop off some food packaging for recycling. The Shell garage further down the road had petrol at 151.9 P/L and diesel at 173.9 P/L, a ginormous piece of some sort of yellow machinery was on the back of an even bigger truck being driven along, HS2 work didn’t appear to have much work being done on it, and ‘BLIND SPOT – KEEP CLEAR’, ‘PLATFORM CAN CRUSH’ and ‘TUCK UNDER’ were all stickers on the back of a white lorry we briefly followed; and it was 7°C and 10.25am when we got to Ryton Organic Gardens for our volunteering session (and a van with Garrick Highway Maintenance Welfare Unit on it was in the car park). 1 of the staff we know said that van is so good that when the fire alarm went off at 5am a member of staff had to cycle in and turn it off, there was no fire and it seemed a cleaner had accidentally hit the button when feeling around for a light switch; we were given the last five boxes of 180 envelopes to sticker with postage stamps and began at 10:35am.

A phone somewhere in the room briefly rang 10 minutes later (an old style rock ringtone), and I noticed four boxes of biscuits, a tub of Quality Street, and a tub of Celebrations on another table. We started the second and third boxes of envelopes, (doing one each) at 10.53am, people came in with sprouts, the tall foreign staff member sat down and started eating a massive sandwich and poking his phone, there were eight people apart from us in the room by then, Mum started the 4th box at 11:21am, another bloke came in 15 minutes later and said his bycycle wheel was knackered and he’s trying to swap good bits from that bike to a new one. Everyone went away again and silence descended at 11:45am (and I could see trees blowing around a lot outside); we started a box that we thought was the 6th at 12:00 PM and finished it 13 minutes later, and at that point the woman we know reappeared. Mums cataract surgery came up in conversation, and got described, which she found very reassuring, the state of the NHS was ranted about, followed by rants about NHS managers coming from Tescos and descriptions of giving birth and maternity wards were given by both of them (and how they’d both shocked the midwives by getting up again). She went away, I wondered what the difference between psychology and psychiatry was (and knew I’d looked it up before but couldn’t remember it); we finished that box at 12.42pm, began one more, Mum requested coffee and I found some, the woman we know had a rant about the person who built the seed ordering system, and the final box had been stickered by 12:58pm (and I noticed some odd green masks on a wall outside while saying goodbye to her, who said they’re there because no one sees them and she thinks they’re as creepy as hell).

Rain started just after we got in the car, which said it was 8°C; down the road in the local pet shop I saw things on the shelves including ferret harnesses, large wooden gnaw carrots, pee posts (outdoor potty training aids for dogs), doggy biscuit baking kits, Woofmus Pud selection, trip meatballs, beef tracheas, hairy cow ears, extra large pizzles, pig snouts, cow udder and doggy doughnuts, and the bloke behind the till was chatting to us and told us hairy cows ears are one of the most popular bits. Outside Morrisons on old Warwick Road, an accident had occurred, a police car was there and some bits of smashed up car were all over the road; I saw a small Thomas the Tank Engine toy for a toddler to ride on for sale in the Age UK shop at the tip; and at 2:10pm at the supermarket I saw The Vegetarian Butcher products – including packs of soy based chicken style What the Cluck chunks, euthymol toothpaste, 213 gram jars of marshmallow fluff, Xbox controller cakes, Juice Jumbo Marshmallow speakers, packs of 18 cans of BrewDog Punk IPA and Squishy Poopster toys while the store got dashed round. The weather back outside at 2:35 was horrible, the car said it was 7°C, the station was open and trains were running, the river was really really high, Mum started talking to the car and praising its work today, and it was 2.54pm when we got home (and she thought it felt like we left yesterday).