So, May, June, July and August rolled by and then we were in September.  September brought with it warm sunny days so I relished being outdoors, especially with those colder months creeping ever nearer.

On the plus side, I celebrated my birthday, went to a restaurant in Barnes, started running the 10K app and enjoyed my runs alongside the River Thames as the leaves started to turn to a crisp, golden colour.

But perhaps the most important of all was I got two weeks of work in nearby Chiswick courtesy of a recruitment agency.  The best birthday present ever as the job started the day after my birthday and, in a way, even in the middle of a pandemic, promised a new beginning…. even though I had a number of e-mails full of instruction beforehand and some on-line training which I had to complete first.  Luckily, I passed first time with the required pass mark.

I woke up on Monday morning excited, put on my make up and cycled to the building in Chiswick.  There were about sixty of us there and I spotted a few familiar faces.  We were given a briefing first of what to expect and then shown to our assigned desks in tiny rooms spread over two floors.  It seemed to take forever to get set up and logged on to the system with loose wires, headphones that did not work and two screens who did not seem to like one another as far as I could make out were just some of the problems that we endured.

The most important task for me as I was concerned was making sure I got a lunchbreak as this had been missed off my ‘schedule’ for the first day.

Finally, by lunchtime, I was proctoring (the American term, of course, for invigilating) my first students and it felt like a triumph.  I celebrated by having a healthy lunch in the small courtyard downstairs.

All afternoon I watched students on the screen and when one student completed their exam and clicked on the submit button, they would vanish off my screen and I would click on someone new from the queue of students just starting their exams.  It was an impersonal conveyor belt which produced a couple of challenges which I had to get help with.  That took up a fair amount of the afternoon and with no scheduled break, was long.  I finished at 19.40 and, gratefully cycled home before the sunset turned to darkness.

As I cycled furiously, I remember the River Thames was so still – the complete opposite to my whirring mind!