Thursday 26th - Bridgwater

I'm not an office guy - the 9-5 bores me senseless. I'm quite happy with the current arrangements of doing two days a week in one place and working on a variety of other projects the rest of the time; interestingly I had a meeting on Tuesday evening (just before very satisfyingly completing a difficult logic puzzle in Mathsjam Birmingham) about the situation regarding jobs in the Midlands, and how overall we're switching to a more creative economy based on projects than full careers.

So I'm working with bits and pieces at present and enjoying life and its benefits; what I didn't count on was being drafted into the van to go to Somerset for a day of presenting work with the company for which I work. Every day the teams go out across the country for their education workshops, and every so often they have to call on their casual staff to help them deliver the programmes. Very rarely do they get desperate enough to ask me.

The most interesting thing was the travel, rather than the day itself. The students (Year 8, 12-13 years old) were great, even though the school itself had been labelled as one that wasn't so good. Yesterday evening I was picked up and we were taken 2 hours down the M5 to the Travelodge to stay over. I was lucky; I got the whole room to myself, but usually rooms are shared between 2 or 3, then you get dinner and breakfast on expenses and you go to do the day.

What was great was the camaraderie in the van, in the pub and in the school. You can see that whilst it's not the easiest life, having to get up at strange times of day, focus on driving for inordinate amounts of time and cope with neverending stretches of motorway, it's the people that make it. The fun they have can make the difference between the job being a holiday and being a prison sentence. I don't think life on the road like this is exactly the job I want, but it beats sitting in an office any day.