A Lazy Weekend and a Catch Up

This weekend was a pretty lazy one.  I finished work on Thursday night and wasn't working again until Monday, so I had the weekend completely free. I did my grocery shopping on Friday which meant that I didn't need to go anywhere over the weekend.

We did go out on Saturday night, into Central London, as OH's brother and some of his children were staying in a hotel in London for a couple of nights, so that his daughter could do a 10K run from Trafalgar Square.  We met up in their hotel for drinks and then we all went for a meal on Butler's Wharf near Tower Bridge, had a walk along the Thames and drinks in a pub on London Bridge, before heading home.  LB didn't actually join us, as she had a friend's party to attend.

On Sunday evening, however, we all met up again, this time over towards Canary Wharf and had drinks, so she did get to see her cousins on this occasion, which was good. A sociable weekend for us, which isn't the usual, but I think we all had a good time.

The rest of the weekend, I did very little apart from attending a class at the gym on Sunday morning.  The heat just gets to me and makes me very tired and lethargic, so I've spent most of the weekend indoors. I did cut up lots of old t-shirts to make dishcloths which was about the only productive thing I did, and I did start packing for our holiday.  It was truly wonderful to have a bit of thunder and rain on Friday night, I must admit, everywhere really needed it. We could do with a bit more though, especially whilst we're away, so our plants get watered.

By way of a catch up, work wasn't too bad last week. I was, however, very shocked to hear that the new Deputy resigned after just one day. They didn't actually have any experience of working in this particular kind of retail environment, and it's not for everyone, so my difficulties there have kind of resolved themselves for the moment.  I'm not sure what's going to happen with regard to the job now. 

The Manager and I had a good sort out of numerous cluttered areas of the sorting room on Wednesday, where excess stock gets put away in boxes and then doesn't see the light of day, as it gets forgotten.  We condensed lots of it, labelling all of the boxes for easy access, put lots of it in the shop and managed to make the sorting room a lot more organised and a lot less overwhelming.

On Thursday, I continued in a similar vein, organising winter stock that we've been putting aside for later in the year.  The irony is that people tend to donate a lot of autumn/winter stock in summer and summer stock in autumn/winter when they change over their wardrobes, so we have to store it out of season, to make sure we have enough seasonal stock to put in the shop when the weather changes in the autumn.

I've been busy vacuum packing lots of the coats and jumpers for the past few months, so they take up less storage space and it's quite physical work. I think we've now reached peak stuff when it comes to winter stock, but it is all packed away in appropriate out of the way spaces. It's an ongoing cycle, I'm sure it's familiar to some of you guys who work and volunteer in charity shops.

I've got one more day to work now before we go on holiday. I'm looking forward to the break, getting out of the country and away from the heat for a week. (We're going to Northern Portugal which is forecast to be cooler than here). I'm looking forward to lazing by a pool reading lots of books.