Another busy day, but interesting too. Spent the morning at a leisure centre talking about Community Planning. The leisure centre had the most beautiful and stunning view over the waterfront, but internally had obviously been designed by an unemployed psychologist, bored of making mazes for lab rats. The occasional very small and obscure signs were hopelessly confusing, and even worse they had those little Braille bits underneath. Nothing wrong with Braille at all, but I couldn't help wondering how on earth a blind or partially sighted person was meant to even find the signs, let alone read the damn things.

Returned to our depot via Tesco, where I picked up a sandwich, a newspaper and some cold remedy things, as I am a bit snuffly today. While staring at the Echinacea, I bumped into one of my favourite colleagues, A, who looks after a lot of our performance management stuff, bemusedly holding a pot of raspberry jam. He explained wearily that his allotment society were asking all the men allotmenteers to cook and he'd been volunteered for raspberry tarts. Now I've sampled the luscious produce from his allotment regularly (yes, home grown really does taste better) but he confessed that baking was not his thing, and he hadn't done it in years, so tonight was the experiment.

At work, tried to catch up with the avalanche of emails. Some of our public convenience attendants were over for a training course on Breakaway skills, so I had a chat with them while they were on their lunch break. They were explaining that they've recently had a spate of confused men wandering into the ladies toilet in the bus station. This is beccause they are foreign gentlemen who cannot read English signs so the attendants were asking if we can have really big, leave no doubt pictograms on the door to avoid doubt and embarrassment for all concerned. Seems reasonable, so will try to investigate. We discussed the perennial problem of drug use in the toilets as well.

Went back down to Bigg HQ for meeting with boss and another lovely colleague, C regarding a personnel matter. We went in at half past three but as he had nobody else booked in after us, we stayed till 6 - eek! It was lovely though, as we were able to discuss lots of things and bounced around a few ideas - I really like doing this. He suggested a visit to another European city where apparently they have cracked the problem of cleaning behind parked cars.... I will write more on this as I find out.

Drove home, happily, ordered a Chinese and thought happy thoughts about my husband. He phoned after I got in, was just going for a run. His first 10K race is in a few weeks time. He also announced he has ordered a couple more tonnes of soil for the garden to arrive on Saturday - very exciting. We both like dribbling over plant porn, much more exciting than the real thing, I think. This probably means I am irredeemably middle-aged. Other indicators - last winter, I bought vests from Marks and Spencer for the first time, and what's worse, wore them enthusiastically. Also, I don't like very loud music or noisy pubs. Before it ended, I had also reached the point of watching Top of the Pops and bemoaning the pathetic standard of music, unlike the real songs of my youth..... cue nostalgia for the Buzzcocks etc...