I've only been in work two days over the last 5 weeks. Once for some new staff interviews, once for some badly organised training. Apart from that, I've been doing my best to help Sam have a good summer holiday... West Yorkshire was plunged back into semi-lockdown a few weeks back so he's been forbidden from seeing much of his friends, I've only been able to take him to his Nanna's a couple of times, and no holiday clubs or sports' camps like he's done in previous summer holidays to break up the monotony of spending so much time with daddy.
But today I was back to work for real. Except I'm not, because I'm still working from home a lot of the time and will still be teaching the majority of my lessons online until at least Christmas. I'm hoping they'll actually let me go into the building tomorrow for the first time since March, and hoping they'll allow me to continue doing that at least two or three days a week for the foreseeable future... but I'm having to beg for the privilege.
I know there is a danger to my physical health in going back to the office... but there's a greater danger to my mental health in continuing to work from home.
I'll keep you posted how it goes.
There's still a question mark hanging over the future of this blog. Not whether I'll continue it - but where. If blogger scrap the old interface completely, I find the new one so hard to use, I may well jump ship to Wordpress. It'll be a shame to lose the meagre position this blogger link holds in the blogosphere, but I can (and already have) exported all my old posts to Wordpress, and I'm hoping most people reading this will follow me over there if I'm forced out of here.
Regular service will resume soon - either here or elsewhere - and I'm looking forward to my new interactive Tuesday feature, which I'm hoping won't be quite as labour-intensive as the Hot 100 became. And the Mid-Life Crisis and Positive Songs will also continue. Speaking of which...
The Hooters will primarily be remembered for their Top 30 UK chart hit
Satellite, a song I bought on 7", along with their beer commercial follow up,
Karla With A K. One of their biggest hits in their homeland USA however was never heard over this side of the Atlantic. It's as good a song as the other two though, and worth revisiting here...
The older I get, the more I miss the 80s. I know it wasn't actually that great at the time, but with rose tinted glasses, it looks blood brilliant. I find nostalgia strangely calming in these turbulent times, even if I know it's nostalgia for something that never really happened. There's still a great comfort to be had in fake nostalgia.