12 of 12, December 2016

The first half of December has been rather hectic, and, since I am embarking on a much anticipated holiday in three days’ time, all the deadlines are coming to a head in frantic fashion.

Fortunately I had technology to remind me it was the 12th.

An email reminded me that the cleaners were going to be cleaning our floors, and so I had to excavate the carpet from beneath several layers of accumulated paper detritus.

These layers were then dumped on any horizontal surface I could find … with the exception of the floor. This is why the rest of the office remains an unmitigated disaster area.

And that is also why I took my pile of marking out of the office and found an empty classroom in which to work (the additional reason was to reduce the number of interruptions from others).

I confess I appreciated the view from the window every so often.

However, my focus kept having to return to the impossibly large pile, despite — and because of — a growing realisation that I am not going to be able to get through it all before the end of the 14th.

The short bush track in the nearby gully allowed me a brief escape into the fresh air, and a chance to grab a few more photos.

But I was soon back indoors with the marking pencil, the dreaded pile, and a leftover packet of choc mint biscuits (not my favourite, but they were left over and sufficed as an incentive of sorts).

And then something urgent and important cropped up which meant that no more photos got taken. This is only a problem if you can’t cope with the fact that there are only 11 rather than 12 images here.

(The oddly named “12 of 12” project involves taking 12 photos on the 12th of the month. Usually I take a lot more and cull the collection to get 12; this month I stopped one photo too soon. The project provides the opportunity to get snapshots of different aspects of your life … or to pick a theme for some photographic focus. I have been doing this since 2009.)