As comfortable as a camel on ice skates...

Don't ask me why I'm ending every blog title this year with one of these "..." but I am, so deal with it.
Gavin has started getting me to do some weird, extra duties that aren't really any part of my job, and were certainly never mentioned as things that I should have to do when I first started here. I'm guessing this all dates back to our little meeting in Peterborough before Christmas, when he had quietly suggested that I might take on some of his usual tasks in Suffolk while he was playing with his White Elephant down in Devon. (Or Dorset, I can't remember now. Apologies to those of you in the South-West...) That meeting ended with me saying I would think about it, which he seems to have taken to mean, 'Yeah, sure boss, please add to my workload while you're spunking loads of money on a venture that will ultimately go nowhere and end up being sold at a loss.'  I'm having to write reports about things I have no clue about, to send to government departments I've never heard of, while talking to local organisations that sound fictional. I'm filling in forms that make no sense to me and I'm being forwarded e-mails that may as well be written in Flemish and relating to a land treaty from 1700, such is my lack of knowledge pertaining to their contents. I am spending huge amounts of time feeling lost. More lost than a Latvian train driver who took too many left turns and ended up in Somalia.

I like a challenge, and I like learning new things, and I don't mind taking on some extras, but when I'm being bombarded with questions about topics I have no understanding of, or being expected to fulfil promises that were made in meetings I did not attend, then it gets a bit much. I'm doing my best, but I have not the faintest jot whether I'm getting anything right, because there's no-one else here who knows what is supposed to be done, and Gavin is noticeably uncontactable. My fear is that I'll make a huge boo-boo (technical term, there) and bring an entire empire crashing down through a mistake that wasn't intentionally made. It's a bit like a commander-in-chief at the head of a huge invading force, getting distracted by another campaign in another country, and leaving his current campaign in the hands of a cook that hasn't had the strategy explained to him.
Shut up - it IS sort of like that!

Anyway, I am feeling stressed, and drinking too much coffee. And this time last week, I was saying how quite things were at work... I should keep my bloody mouth shut.

RC 12-1-23