a grand day out

I've taken the weekend off.  By rights, I ought to be standing in the office about now, while the Boss gave us a pep talk for the day ahead, but a friend is celebrating a major birthday with a party, and as they live in Hitchin we can't just pop over for the evening, so we're making a weekend of it.

I try not to take weekends off.  When you are a part-timer on an hourly rate, a day not worked is a day not paid.  It is salutory to add a day or two's wages to the cost of most events, and then decide whether at that price you still want to go.  Besides which, I pride myself on being reliable, and in a small firm arranging cover for weekends is a hassle.  Most of my colleagues are already working two weekend days out of four anyway, in some combination of days, so expecting them to do three out of four is asking quite a lot.  So generally, days off are reserved for major celebrations like big birthdays and weddings, or to get a clear week if we want to take a holiday.  By now our friends and relations are used to the concept that I'm not available to go out to play during the daytime on alternate weekends, and plan round it, or I agree not to go to whatever it is.  Happily, I've picked up three extra days in August to help cover for the manager who is having a whole fortnight off, for the first time in a decade, so that will pay for this weekend's jolly.

We were planning to go to the Swiss Garden, which sounded jolly nice, and close to our final destination.  However, the Systems Administrator, using in-depth knowledge of aviation which is not mentioned in the garden guide book, mentioned that the Swiss Gardens were next to an aerodrome, and that we had better check whether they were flying this weekend, because if they were the traffic would be mayhem.  It turns out that on Sunday there is an aeronatutical display, and that today there is an open-air performance of Shakespeare in the gardens in the afternoon (bring your own picnic) and that access will be available on a limited basis only until 1.30pm.  Looks like we'll be saving the Swiss Garden until another day, but Wimpole Hall sounds promising, as do Knebworth and Docwra Manor.  I shall report back in due course.  Hitchin has a very good second hand bookshop, which stocks books on cricket (the Systems Administrator) and gardening (me), so that should be us set up for the day.