All in The Christmas Spirit

The last couple of weeks have found me in a rubbish skip; tracking down a 5 foot blue fairy and trying to eject Father Christmas as a trespasser.

The skip was totally my fault. I’m rather a Womble at heart, and when I’m out and about round the Arb I pick up litter as I go, merrily chucking the bag I’ve collected into the skip on my way back into the office. On this occasion, I had my rather snazzy new camera in the same hand as the rubbish bag. I realised as soon as it left my hand and sailed merrily into the heart of the black bin bags. Cue frantic belt over to the main office, nabbing the nearest bloke to hand, and then back to the skip for a leg up into it. And then a calm saunter into the next meeting with the Canopy Walkway architects in the hope that no-one had seen me rooting around in the rubbish (or would notice the faint whiff on my wellies).

The fairy is easier to explain - the Enchanted Christmas is now up and running on weekend evenings, and the launch night saw my office hosting the changing space for the Fairy and Christmas Tree actors. What they didn’t explain was that Mr Claus is a semi permanent fixture, he actually stays on site whilst he’s working here. He was appropriately jolly about it when I flagged him down and rather frostily demanded what he was doing wandering around the site after dark.

Slightly more mundanely I’ve also been interviewing Project Support Officers, it’s a role that is going to make a big difference to my capacity, as I’ll finally have someone to delegate tasks to! Can’t wait, and I’m already storing up jobs for them when they arrive. We’re working through the civil service paperwork at the moment, and very much hope that we’ll get the preferred candidate in post in early Jan.

Contracts for the architects and consultants we’ve recently appointed to draw up plans for all the new and replacement buildings are the next thing on my to do list…