Sorry about the radio silence, but it’s been in a very good cause – I’ve been over in Brussels picking up my cats and bringing them back here. My girls have been staying with a friend of mine over there while we waited for the period of 6 months from their successful rabies test to expire. I then had to go over there, take them to the vet to be given tick and echinoccocus ( a sort of tapeworm, wikipedia tells me) treatment, and have their passports signed off for travel. Much as it’s a bit of a pain to go through all that, it’s meant no quarantine and I get to have them with me now, so I think we can definitely notch up the pet passport as One Good Thing that the EU has done for us.
We’ve had the Court of Auditors report today, which is never a day you look forward to, but it seems to be dealt with mainly from Brussels, so hasn’t had too much of an effect here, beyond the usual media monitoring for the folks at HQ. Nice that they approved our accounting this year, even if there are still errors (not fraud!) in certain parts of the spending. Two of the team are out today, one in Brussels on the last day of the Double Club visit which, if the footage on EBS is anything to go by, seems to have been a really great trip. I hope the kids felt they got something out of it at any rate.
My best mate, Abi, is in town, as she drove me and the cats over on Sunday. It’s been really nice having her here, even if the wretched weather meant we haven’t gone out much. Thanks goodness she was there this morning, as the insurance people were supposed to come round to look at my car (you may remember someone backed into me in August, the day after I bought the car off my brother, and the other guy’s insurance company have been appalling at dealing with it). Anyway, we had arranged an appointment “first thing” on Monday, which in Belgium would have meant the doorbell going at 7.30. When they still hadn’t come at 9.45, I just couldn’t put off going into the office any longer. Luckily I explained what it was all about to Abi, as they turned up soon after I left. Hopefully this means the dent will be removed from the car, because I’m fed up of looking like a stupid woman-driver who has driven into something when that’s not the case at all!
I’ve been asked to be on a jury for a journalism award, which is going to be interesting. We got the articles last week, so now I’ve got to start reading them all. I’ve never been asked to do anything like this – just one more way in which this job in London is opening up new horizons for me!