I was all alone in the basement this afternoon. Kevin was at Blythe House, Nick may or may not have been at Blythe House, Ailsa was on annual leave and Barbara had gone to a training session. The lights down here operate by movement (to save electricity) and the office I work in is all dark when I’m sitting on my own. Mainly because the movement sensors are on the other side of the office. Normally one of the others trigger it. But not this afternoon. So every ten minutes or so, the lights go off.
Fortunately I have the skylight above me which gives a lot of natural light. And then, every now and then one of the guys in the office next door walk by the doorway and trigger the lights. Which is disconcerting!
Kevin actually rang this morning to make sure all was well and to let me know he’s nominated me for the Volunteer of the Year award – I guess because Nick wasn’t around to do it. The ceremony is being held on Thursday but I’ll not be able to make it as I have a Talking Newspaper session. Pity. It’s being held in a part of the museum not normally opened to the public and I’d have liked a bit of a gander.
Kevin also asked if I could change my Monday to some other day because there’s a new volunteer they need to slot in somewhere. As much as I’d like to be helpful, I’m really only happy doing Monday and Friday. As it is, Tuesday is my only guaranteed day at home! Well, once I restart lunch with Mirinda when she returns to work.
And so I spent the day repairing records for models of war stretchers, made during WWI, and pewter hot water bottle records (no breast relievers today), hopefully improving them for general consumption. The records, not the stretchers or hot water bottles.
Here’s a picture I took of the office before the lights went out. This is the view from my Monday desk. Nick is right in front of me, Ailsa is in the far corner, to the right of the photocopier and Barbara sits just to the left, almost behind the pillar.
Down in the basement
At lunchtime I was wandering around the museum, looking for something to blip (I ended up finding something outside) when I came upon this. It’s the boiler from an old (1796 old) early steam engine. I have no idea how it works or what it does but it has an oddly alien look about it. Sort of Jules Verne-ish. It’s as if something from the pages of The First Men on the Moon suddenly leapt from the pages and onto the museum floor.
Steam header thingy
Nice to see where you sit for when I text you.
love mum
There were movement sensitive lights in all the classrooms at ABC. Quite a lot of the time we had meetings or sections in the class where people were discussing things – the lights would regularly go out and some students would have to wave their arms around to make them come back on. Other times we wanted the lights off to see the screen better but couldn’t turn them off!
And I think you should go to the volunteers thing – what if you win? They’ll be so disappointed if you are not there to accept.