Ferry timetables and a weekly dose

Telephone reviews changed my life. I asked for them, they were granted immediately, and I had assumed they were not an option.

Something practical: I keep a three-week buffer, always, because a ferry cancellation once cost me a fortnight.

Coming back at two years to say the system has held, that the buffer has been used twice, and that the telephone reviews were the thing that made it possible.

This is the honest version, and the honest version is harder to write.

I found that describing the journey in hours rather than miles was what made people understand, and after that the arrangements changed.

My honest report is that this has been more work than it would have been elsewhere and has gone perfectly well.

Something worth knowing: the postal service here is unreliable in winter, so anything time-sensitive is collected rather than sent.

The ferry timetable is the calendar. Everything else in my planning bends around it and I have stopped fighting that.

Something practical: my cool bag lives in the car permanently, because I am never less than an hour from home.

The thing nobody accounts for is that a quick question is not quick here. Anything that needs a face-to-face costs me a working day.