From a complete non-reality day yesterday, I’ve come down to earth with a bump today trying to sort out a couple of really nasty problems at work.

One of the two problems I’ve wrestled with all day has been finding a conference venue for one of my team who wants to host a conference for 60 people or so. It’s proven surprisingly difficult. I don’t know if it’s a symbol of a much healthier economy this year than the tough conditions we’ve faced in recent times or if it’s just that we’ve been quite stringent about the requirements for the day but we have struggled to find anywhere that can accommodate us on any of our possible dates.

My team has looked at loads of places, but to no avail, the response everywhere has been the same ‘sorry, fully booked’. We were coming to the conclusion that we would have to cast the net wider and look at venues further away. That’s a bummer because most of the Pharma Industry in the UK is located fairly close together in the Thames Valley corridor and setting the meeting outside of that area means people are less willing to travel.

So, I had a call from my marketing manager this afternoon saying that this lovely old estate, with manor house that’s been converted into a golf club has a vacancy during the time we are looking at. What’s even better is that it’s on my way home from work. I popped in to check it out and see if it would be suitable for us and had this photo opportunity. Failing light and no tripod made life a little tricky but a convenient fence and a bit of ingenuity gave me two photos that were both OK but not fab.

A bit of photoshop trickery gave me a single picture that’s a composite of two images, one with a good sky and one with a good foreground. It’s a bit on the crude side in as much as you can clearly see the join but I like the way it’s given the manor house a ‘hammer horror’ feel to it, with the glow all around the building!

So, that’s two days in a row when I’ve felt as though I’ve been part of a horror movie – is there something strange happening in my life? Possibly!