Ah Wednesday.... Heroine and role model from the Addams Family Values films with the incomparable Christina Ricci...

One of those strange days today. We've all been busy with our submission for the Cleanest City Awards - we are shortlisted finalists and go up to Northampton next week to present to the judges. Needless to say, I am nervous and excited. I also need help in pulling together the presentation, chasing down facts and figures and sorting out the judging packs, or "leave-behinds" as I learned they are called in Marketing Land.

After our colleagues (from the same department, mind you) were spectacularly sniffy and unhelpful this morning, we have gone to an agency we use, Randstadt - and they've delivered the goods. The goods in this case being a young post-grad who wants to get into environmental work, has lots of good experience, well qualified and with a good attitude (so far anyway). He joined us this afternoon for our meeting, coped well, was positive, didn't look too frightened and says he'll be back in the morning. I can't refer to him as A YOUNG MAN - that sounds ridicolously arch, yet he is in his twenties and he does seem just so young, and shiny and happy. Not just him, but other young persons we have kicking about the place. On his CV from the agency, it said one of his hobbies was Wakeboarding, and I had to go and find out what that was, which also made me feel about a hundred and three.

On a more cheerful note, received our monthly accident statistics and was reading them. Fortunately, all were relatively minor. One featured a member of the office staff who closed a filing cabinet drawer on her own hand and the other was so good I just sat and laughed out loud. The unfortunate victim sat down, but the chair wasn't there, so ended up on the floor. Duh!! I realise that Homer Simpson is not always a caricature. How on earth do we legislate for this? My favourite all time accident was one of our staff who got bitten by a squirrel.

Another busy day tomorrow. A financial meeting in the morning with our service area accountant, who I like. He is thorough, professional and unfailingly helpful. At the moment our trading account is adrift by just under fifty thousand pounds on an annual budget of around seven million, so I am not too worried, but there are some issues we will need to continue to manage quite robustly. It's important we don't allow the deficit to balloon too much otherwise we end up with a painful few months at the end of the financial year. In the afternoon, we have our monthly meeting with all the service area senior managers. These do have a tendancy to be a little bit dull at times,but tomorrow should be interesting as P will be lobbing a few casual hand grenades in I think as he has plans for shaking up the management structure. Am looking forward to it - it will be held at our Highways depot, I think. The meetings rotate around the three service area main depots, with as a result regular confusion and there are always at least two or three people who arrive late for every one because they went to the wrong venue.

We received an irate letter today from a resident who had had a fox die in her garden (cause unknown) while she was away on holiday and was very cross that when she had phoned the Council they had advised her to dig a hole and bury it..... I think she expected one of our Fox Removal Team Reynard Special Services (FORTRESS) to swoop in a bio warrior Humvee, wearing full body suits and deploying the special lead lined bio contaminant fox carrier....... on the other hand she could just exercise some adult responsibility and bury the damn thing. Her main gripe was that the fox smelled..... Hello? Yes, it would, it was dead, and they do anyway....But that's the Council's fault. Bit of a rant tonight, I'm afraid. Maybe my next one will be full of lovely butterflies and happy thoughts.

I leave you with the news that the fish flourish and appear to be swimming happily around their new home. It is very exciting. Also that I miss Andrew as he is away this week again and he also misses me, but is particularly sorry about missing the excitement of the fish.