I’m finally home after two gruellingly long days. Days when we achieved a huge amount and, I believe, we managed to gain consensus on some really important issues where hitherto we’ve been unable to strike a balance between the needs of all of the individual members of the team who have been working now for six months or more on this project. So, now, at last, we move forward with everyone in agreement and everyone motivated to put in the final bit of effort and ‘get there’.

All this excitement of seeing the team face-to-face and getting the project really buttoned down has been good for my morale, I feel now as though the efforts of the past few weeks are starting to pay dividends and our business will be better and stronger again because of the work we as a team have put into this project. I think we all feel a huge sense of achievement from this and all have done the work in addition to their ‘day jobs’. I’m sure my colleagues are much like me in as much as it seems less of a chore if the outcome is good.

Knocking the gloss off it though is the journey home. When I go away, all I want to do when I get into the taxi to go back to the airport is have a trouble-free journey home. I want to know that it will all go smoothly because if it doesn’t it eats into my own time. Today my journey was marred by a two-hour delay to the flight (including an hour sat on the runway at Barcelona airport in a cabin with no air conditioning in sweltering heat) and why? Because of the short initial delay, five passengers who had booked in and checked in baggage, went missing and didn’t get on the plane. That meant the rest of us had to sit and watch out of the windows while all of the luggage was taken off the plane and the luggage of these people removed from the hold, then the hold repacked. How frustrating is that?

So, DM was waiting here along with all of those organic things that I was talking about yesterday……and I was somewhere else. Instead of getting a good journey home and being in the house at 8.30pm, I ended up getting in at 10.15pm. Pah!

When I arrived, the front door opened to two joyous dogs leaping all over me, DM with a twinkle in his eye not far behind and the smell of food wafting from the kitchen. Rosie glued herself to me, hopping up and down on her back paws, struggling to plant a wet snog on my chin because she’s so tiny and whimpering. Archie ran back and forth between the front and back doors barking like mad then settled by my side for a tickle on top of the head. DM? Well a kiss and a hug and a home-made bowl of Sweet Red Pepper and Chilli soup, home-made pesto and home-made rosemary foccaccia. So, my need for the organic was sated by all of these things that matter to me more than everything else. I didn’t need to talk to the bricks because I had the living, breathing and loving attention of those precious to me. It’s wonderful to be home.