Wet and dark now in the mornings. Autumn is with us. Had our service area union meeting this morning. Greatly enlivened by our street cleaning shop steward rather spectacularly falling asleep in the meeting, much to the mirth of everyone present, including the other union guys. We are now all thinking of a variety of new nicknames for him. Other items on the agenda included our Christmas working arrangements, a restructure in the waste collections area, an update on the budget situation (Grim), and an assortment of odd gripes including a wobbly ramp, queries about fuel and some moans about the vehicle wash. All in all, relatively quiet though.

About a gazillion emails this afternoon. Also had a phone call from my boss. The recent budget freeze which we had enacted in our service area is now being eased - they realise we are a front line service with big political impact so want us to keep working. This is excellent news.

Tomorrow I am on a training course run by our Internal Audit people on Investigative Techniques. We have such a number and variety of these investigations in our department - the ingenuity and creativity of a bin man with money on his mind never ceases to amaze me.

When I got home from work, I went out to feed the fish and sat out in the garden, just admiring it. It looks fabulous. Tomorrow evening, Andrew's parents come to visit for the weekend. They are really looking forward to seeing it, after all the work we have done. I just hope it is dry over the weekend as we are hoping to visit a local garden on Saturday to look at their autumn trees.