Silence is slightly gloomy and grey

I don't seem to have written anything for a while. It's probably not even a week, but it feels like longer. It feels like I have lots of little things to write about, but nothing coherent. It feels like I'll forget half the things I meant to say because my brain is fried. It feels like my thoughts are too occupied with the broken central heating, and the falling down fence, and the defunct extractor fans (yes, plural). But most of all it feels as though I'm just too damn tired to write anything.

Four out of the last five evenings, I've had this laptop on, and spent a couple of hours tapping away... but it's been work every time. Because we're just so overwhelmed that I have no hope of completing the designs I need to complete, on time, with any semblance of accuracy, unless I do the work at home. And because I have some kind of deranged loyalty to my company, instead of shrugging and saying "sod it, they should have hired the two new people we need", I'm battling to keep my head above water. And today I signed the paperwork for a £365,000 contract to build another five experimental instruments, for which I now have to start the electronics design. And I had too much to do before that contract landed on my desk.

On the up-side, the fifth night, I went to the pub. After I had an episode of wallowing in self-pity about being an outsider, I was gently, but firmly, corrected on this misapprehension by various friends. And one of them suggested that perhaps we might setup a network of local mothers who liked going to the pub. Obviously, I bit her hand off at the elbow at this suggestion, and we have instituted an open-invitation policy to meet on the first Monday of every month. And so far a varying mix of mothers have turned out and we've had a blast. The chance to get out, let our hair down, complain about our children, families, jobs, houses, politics, religion and anything else we fancy with no fear of being judged has been brilliant. I got home from this little outing, however, to the following exchange with BigBear:

BB: Did you have a good time?
PB: Yes! I had beer!
BB: <sniffing> hmmm, you did, didn't you? Bitter I think.
PB: Of course if was bitter. That's what I drink.
BB: <sniffing some more> A bit like Wherry... no... a bit sweeter than that. More like Tribute.
PB: <indignant> You only know that because we went to the King Bill!
BB: Oh, I thought you went to the Red Lion...

I am left truly, deeply disturbed that I am married to a man who can identify the exact beer that I have drunk two pints of, just from the way I smell. It wasn't as if I'd been bathing in the stuff.