There's a strange phenomenon in the CJS office.

We have banned all mention of the word which begins with a Q and means still, calm, placid, tranquil. You see whenever anyone even thinks it never mind mentions it then it no longer is.  We can be quite happily getting on with the tasks in hand and wading through the To Do list when the word is mentioned and then 40-something emails land, all with difficult questions and lots of adverts to post online within the next hour.  At the moment we're in the May Bank Holiday lull so it's not especially busy but someone made the unfortunate error of mentioning the banned word on Wednesday.  Half an hour later all hell breaks loose as the power dies, comes back, disappears again and then returns - doing a wonderful job of frying machinery and killing computers (although not permanently thank goodness); systems check and then back to work less than an hour later and it all dies again.  This time when it comes back it's full speed ahead to make sure everything is done and saved before it's lost again.

Being deadline day for the Weekly Friday is usually rather busy and we were expecting today to be even more so because the Team would be short handed with TB having an appointment to see her surgeon for a check up on her elbow. However, everything was going smoothly, so much so that sub-ed HB decided she'd get started on setting the Weekly half an hour before the deadline which turned out not to be a good idea in fact you could even say it was a big mistake, huge. No sooner had she started than the emails and adverts started flooding in again.

So the Q word is now totally, permanently and forever verboten. 

Bird news from Green End, a spotted woodpecker is trying to deprive them of their telephone by drilling into the telegraph pole and a cuckoo has arrived and is now cuckoo-ing away.  The swallows have been very active in the field in front of the CJS office and Mr Pheasant is parading his harem of hens around with great pride.

One edition of CJS Weekly has now gone to print, 14 pages this week, a little smaller than last week, with 39 adverts for paid posts and 15 for volunteers.
Monday is May Day Bank Holiday (in case you'd missed it) but CJS will be open as usual although we will be running a smaller than usual service.