Less than three months

I went to two Christmas dinners this week with former colleagues. The first, on Monday, was with the investigative team I used to work with. The second, yesterday, was some people from corporate services. What's astonishing, in less than three months, is how things have moved on already. The pace of change always seemed continental drift-like while I worked there. Now it seems merely glacial. They are recruiting mainstream investigators - the post from which I was made redundant - to fill the gaps left by secondment of existing investigators to the new work areas. This is stoopid, evidently, but I'm happy to have benefited from it.

There's a new knowledge management manager, and the intranet really is, after all this time, just about to get updated. Meanwhile, computer systems are being tightened up, and made more corporately uniform. I don't think I'd like that. My desktop had a picture of St Mary in the Marsh in Kent, which I found more attractive than an intranet home page is likely to be. (But I was always astonished by the number of people who hadn't changed the desktop background, and still had the windows default "teletubbies hill" picture. Presumably they won't mind.)

It's all overdue and inevitable, I suppose, but some things don't change. It was really nice to see Rita again. She's an HR person, and with two very young children she's been on maternity leave for a very long time, it seems. I can't deny I've a bit of a crush on her; she's very attractive, and has an infectious laugh a lot like Alesha Dixon's - only louder and dirtier. Her husband (curse him!) is a lecturer, and his job has taken them to Birmingham. So she asked the management if she could return to work but based at the Coventry office. With apparently not a moment's thought, the answer was no, so she's leaving. Such a waste.