We're running away for the weekend. I'm escaping work, I just have to do that for my sanity and my sense of well-being. For whatever reason, it's all encroaching on my personal life too much at the moment. However much I accept that my job isn't a 9-5 and I get paid to reflect that, there has to be some private time for me. I had to work a 13 hour day yesterday so I was looking forward to 4pm when I can justify 'downing tools' for the weekend.

After all, I work to live, not live to work.........tonight, just before we left Sandhurst, the phone rang. It was a client, ringing my home number all the way from the USA because he couldn't get me in the office. I really, really hate that. I had given him my home number a couple of months ago because he needed to call me in an emergency on a weekday evening and, as I often work weekday evenings, I decided it was expedient in the circumstances to let him phone me at home. I didn't expect him to keep the number and assume it would be OK to call me on my weekend. My home life is so precious to me and poor David didn't think to tell him I was out when he answered the phone so I got well and truly lumbered. I couldn't DO anything for the client, I had none of his materials with me so I ended up having a frustrating ten minute long conversation about what we'll talk about on Monday. Pah, pah and double pah.

So, I ended up having to dash around to get ready to come away and no time for photos. This crappy shot, taken wide open and on max iso (see exif), is one of only a handful of also crappy photos I've taken today and it does actually illustrate my day perfectly. How? Well, it's wet and miserable, dark and gloomy, grainy and badly focussed but with a little bit of light - the Welcome to Cornwall badge as we cross the Tamar and into a different kind of life entirely. A life where we know our neighbours and have a 'local'. A life where no client can find me and no-one from work can intrude.

Things are always better at this moment - the tyres are about to land on Cornish soil and we will soon be unlocking the door of our little cottage. Sheer bliss. Rosie and Archie get up as we cross the bridge and watch eagerly for us to pull up outside the house. Once I open the tail gate of our car, they leap out and do a few laps of the road, charging up and down like mad things, then Archie takes up his sentry post position, on the top of our wall, by the gate, watching for passing sheep, cows, cats, horses or even people if he's very lucky. He is completely content. (And so are we.)