8th March, 2002.

The Orker-of-Cows is still absent, but in the three and a half days I've been answering her phone I've made an interesting discovery: she gets only three or four work-related phone calls a day. No more. Which makes her feat of spending half the day on the phone telling strangers everything they never needed to know about the inner workings of our organisation (and her family) all the more remarkable. It's one thing to be aware that she's spending a lot of time on the phone that has nothing to do with work; it's another entirely to find out just how much time that actually is.

It's starting to look like she really doesn't have anything to do during the day except talk loudly down the phone and annoy me.