Work expands

I'm not so sure that there is much more than a grain of truth in that old dictum that work expands to fill the time available.  I grant you that in my 11 years of retirement I have never had any difficulty in finding something to do, and I also fully accept that I do things more slowly now that I did at one time.  Some researchers, if there were any who were interested,might claim that this just goes to prove the truth of that old dictum.  But that is only one side of the coin.  What about the other side which has time expanding to be sufficient for the work that has to be done?  I have been fast running out of time this past week, and still there is work undone.

My first priority is, of course, the daily and weekly routines such as walking the dog, going with the Old Bat to the nearby supermarket on Tuesdays and taking her to the MS centre and doing more shopping on Fridays.  I find, too, that I have to do a little more about the house each month as the Old bat's mobility gets worse. Then there is the garden, which I confess to having neglected shamefully for the past year.  It was the case for many years that the Old Bat took care of the borders and tubs while I mowed the grass and dealt with the vegetable garden, pruning trees and shrubs when necessary.  Nowadays the old duck is unable to get into the garden, and I have trouble coping with more than about 30 minutes at a time - always assuming that I can find 30 consecutive minutes to work out there!

What has really hit me this week is the volume of paper work created by my membership of Brighton Lions Club.  Well, it would have been paper work if I were still using pen and paper rather than keyboard and monitor. I realised at the beginning of the week that it was time for me to make a start on the next issue of the club's newsletter, which I have produced for the past nine years.  My efforts in that area were interrupted by a request to come up with a poster for our fireworks display.  The one that the cricket club had produced (we produce this as a joint event) was considered too wordy for our large billboards so I had to set to with an artwork program.  Then I agreed to take the minutes at the meeting this week as our regular minutes secretary is away.  On top of that, I received an email from somebody who writes history notes for several free-distribution local magazines.  She is proposing to write an article about fireworks in Brighton: could I give her information about the Lions fireworks history, which it so happened I could.  To cap it all, the programme organiser at a club for the blind wants me to produce 60 large-print bingo cards by next weekend!  And I must get on with the documentation for the special general meeting needed to change the rules governing the Lions Housing Society.

So why am I wasting my time scribbling this rubbish?

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I'll take this opportunity to get in a quick plug.  After all, we have sent tickets as far away as Aberystwyth and Liverpool in past years.