Masonic Dinner

Third day in a row in Salisbury today! Certainly beats the dreadful commuting along the M3 up to Surrey although the working day tends to be much longer. I certainly seem to be cramming a quart of work into a pint pot! I had a meeting at 9 a.m. which was scheduled for one hour but didn't finish until 11.15 a.m. More emails meant more work to do. I cannot recall a time when I have been busier with more and more work in the pipeline. I learnt today that the executive secretary, Fleur, was now also under potential notice of redundancy. A real loss. The Exodus continues! I had lunch with our Technical Claims Manager - Mexican fajitas today- and Sara and another director joined us. The series of things going wrong for us has continued today too with Sara discovering that her tyre was flat when she left work at 2.30 p.m. The AA came out and fitted her spare but also discovered that she had two illegal bald tyres and the tracking was out in a big way. I had told her this was the case when we drove up to Grimsby recently. The juddering on the steering wheel had been quite pronounced when we drove over 65 mph. Tonight I attended a meeting of Elias de Dereham Masonic Lodge at Crane Street at the invitation of its Worshipful Master. It was a very enjoyable evening indeed. The Provincial Grand Master was present and made a presentation to a member who was celebrating 50 years in freemasonry. We also had two other presentations including an explanation of the first degree tracing board. During the main course of the dinner afterwards I was approached to speak in reply to the Visitors' Toast. I had about 30 minutes to prepare something and I was conscious that I would be speaking in front of the PGM and a large assembled group of senior Freemasons. In the end it seemed to go down well and I was presented with a small flower arrangement to take home to Sara as a thank you for the speech. If only I had been given a little longer or given an expectation that I would speak and it could have been much better. I arrived home to discover that a lovely family group photograph which has graced our piano for a few years now had been smashed when Sara moved the piano out to release a mouse which Emily (our cat) had brought in. The mouse ran into the study and Emily was put in there to capture it. Unfortunately, as I write this the mouse is still at large and Emily continues the search!