It was a long week...

...and unfortunately it got the better of me on Sunday night. I'm just not used to working a full day and then on until 1am under a lot of pressure (breaking and restoring our whole network), and then back in for a long day to do the same thing all over again. So by Friday night I was somewhat emotionally exhausted tense, but managed to get over to the The Man at his mum's while he watched the golf. Now, The Man is usually wonderfully considerate, but he has never worked in an office environment, much less under pressure. I expect the nearest he has come to feeling how I did would be after a 24hr flight with delays and transfers. Kinda like you've been through the wringer. Perhaps I should point this out to him, so he can empathise a little more next time, instead of teasing me and not being helpful. He did however quickly take the hint when I stopped playing along and has been an absolute sweetie since.

The rest of the weekend was wonderful but not restful. My brother was having his 30th birthday party, complete with hog roast (yes, a whole pig) and 50 people or so, so on arrival at the farm at 11am I just walked into organised pandemonium of sorting out catering and beer and balloons and lighting and music and more beer and wine and babies and people arriving and beds and feeding puppies and so on. My brother invited some of my good friends too which was lovely because we don't get to catch up often, and serendipidously another friend from Hong Kong was over to go to a wedding the previous day just down the road! It's kinda weird but kinda nice that my parents get on well enough (ie very well) with my friends that they all get drunk together and laugh at each other. Dad, at midnight, came into the house to find his ancient Russian phrase book because he wanted to show some Russian bird who had come to the party around the farm in his Land Rover. We all told him not to because he would probably drive off the bridge into the river. Mum just laughed, rolled her eyes, and asked for more wine from the bottle she relocated from the bar table for her own purposes. (Later on it turned out the bird was German anyway.)

(This kind of makes it sound like my parents are alcoholics...)

So anyway, after a lovely lunch and mooch around in T Wells on Sunday, I retired to the settee with a cup and tea and a DVD of Becoming Jane, and half way through, from a combination of relief at work stress being over, happiness at spending time with lots of the people I really care for in the world, general tiredness, time to sit down, and PMT, I just burst into tears and cried for about half an hour. And I still easily could if I started thinking about it all again. I am so lucky to have the option of immersing myself in such a charmed life. Some people would say that coming away from all that back to work in London is coming back to the real world, but more and more I think it's the other way round.

(Sigh.) Life is good.

(Apart from crappy work, but we won't talk about that.)