Sometimes my job is hard; customers who don’t want to talk to you, long journeys with many changes of train (or plane, airport, taxi – I’ve done all of them), staying away from home overnight in lonely hotels, long times on planes without much to do except read or watch movies.  Lots of disconnectedness without seeing colleagues from your own team very much: we often would see each other overseas more frequently than we would in our home country!

Sometimes my job is easy.  Long train trips looking out the windows, many interesting forms of transport filled with people all going places, getting loyalty points for hotel stays which you can then spend on family holidays, lots of time to read books (or blog).  But it does make you wonder if elsewhere there could be a better life…

Walking down the street from the last place I passed lots of market traders looking very bedraggled in the rain.  It was cold, it was raining, and there wasn’t any shoppers in sight.  So close to Christmas you’d think that people would brave the cold just to get some things but as most Londoners know this can last a while and on a good day may end in snow … which then turns into slush and mire splashed everywhere and doesn’t actually improve things like it does elsewhere!  I thought about those men and women who’d set up their stalls in the cold morning before light, waited and waited then had to pack away perhaps without a single sale.  I should be so lucky.  Maybe what I do isn’t so bad after all?

Now to drink the espresso, eat the almond croissant, and read a bit after checking the work emails.