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Pass it on

This weekend has been lovely - the weather has been fabulous, the kids have been on form and everything seems just as it should be. I was away much of the week with work - a few days in Portugal at the Leadership Conference. I couldn't have asked for better timing and it was a chance to go and meet lots of people who up to this point have been names on the end of a group conference call or in a report. I made lots of new contacts and even a few friends and it was a great, if admittedly tiring, few days. The hotel we were in was beautiful, just outside Lisbon and immensely green with lovely walks for the few spare moments we got; the weather was a sunny 20 degrees - almost felt like summer!

I arrived back on Thursday evening and worked at home on Friday. MY early reflections are very positive. I love the fact that the company philosophy is to get stuff done - my job is to try and help everyone do it safely. Given everybody understands the risks of not doing things properly, my team and my role is well respected and I'm expected to be involved. I can see where I can make a difference and I'm already formulating some plans of where to focus. I've agreed some trips to start to get a better feel of the business - I'm off to Liverpool in April to visit one of the prisons, then out to S Africa for a few days, then a trip to the US (Florida) to see our shared service centre and visit some branch operations, before a trip to Kenya in July to see the secure business in the flesh. I just need to sort something for Asia and I will have managed to tick off most of the regions. I'm actually looking forward to these trips - they might even allow me time to see something of the cities I'm visiting unlike most business travel I've done in the past. The girls don't mind me being away for a few days (apparently "Daddy did quite well at not being grumpy" according to Abi this time!), as long as they can Facetime me it's really quite easy now.

This Saturday Izzy was playing in a local school's netball tournament so have to be up bright and early to be there for 8:30am. Her team are pretty good when they are on form, it's just a case of getting it all to come together on the day. I dropped her off and went to yoga, coming back to find that they had done well through the heats and were in the quarter finals. They then stormed that match, going on to play well and win their semi-final as well. They then played Burghclere in the final , a small school but one with a team dominated by girls who play for Newbury Netball. The final was amazing, a proper fast paced game with goals being scored to keep them neck and neck. Izzy pulled out some brilliant shooting (she plays GS), one of which came from nowhere right at the back of the D! At then end no-one was quite sure who had it and then they announced Thorngrove as the winners by one goal! I can't tell you how proud we all were - they played so well!!

After all this excitement Izzy felt she deserved a lie in yesterday so stayed in bed while I went for my run and Glenn went riding. The sun was out and when I got back Abi was lying on the patio with the dogs making the most of it. Izzy then went off to Mia's (Abi's best friend but sometimes they are interchangeable) and Abi spent the whole afternoon in the garden with me, helping to take out plants, move them around, put some new ones in, pot up some stragglers. She asked if she could have a bed to work on by herself and did a fab job of making it look super smart and ready for spring. We spent a lot of time talking about how my love of gardening has been passed to me from my parents. She concluded at the end of the day she wants a garden when she is older - the genetics are obviously staying strong! As a thank you I bought her a couple of plants to pot up by her shed (which she slept in both Friday and Saturday night!) so she is now the proud owner of her first couple of pots. We'll see if she manages to water them through the summer...

We sat back at the end of day (having stayed in the garden way longer than we should on a Sunday) contemplating our efforts. Our garden is looking lovely already, despite the muddy puddles at the bottom which we always have at this time - who wouldn't want a garden to invest time in - it really is a perfect antidote to a busy life :-)

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