Firstly - I have no cat or dog much to my daughter's chagrin due to the fact that I am allergic to them. We did manage mice in the past. I do have Cat ( daughter's nickname) so I suppose that counts.

At work I am sat at a desk with a window looking across Sheffield - Although I have to get up to see more than sky and another part of the building. The piles of paper on my desk vary dependant on on how far through a project I am. I am a dreadful filer. On the shelves beside me I have postcards of a Rembrant self portrait, Joseph Wright's experiment with an air pump, Adrian Gormley's Field for the British Isles, Bluebells in a wood near us and the local moors. I also have Cat's latest school photo which she hates as usual. I have a fresh cup of tea which my erstwhile colleague has just made me. In the background I am listing to calls comming into the help desk and my manager having a meeting at her desk just to see if anything will effect me.

At home the computer is the the spare room. Rather chucked in as it is still a fairly new addition. We have an old wooden chair and and my old desk from when I was young. Cat is agitating for a proper chair. The walls are covered in book shelves with books piled rather higledy pigledly. I think Tim has reorganised them again as I see all his Irish books are together. The floor and the desk are covered in various pieces of Cat's school work which I am going to tell her to tidy up, soon. From the window I look out across the tops of the houses and to the steel works in the valley . Sometimes you can hear the furnaces crackling when wet scrap meets the hot metal. Then you look out onto the opposite hill across the valley with the cars passing on the bypass. Sometimes I just sit in the dark listing to the steel works watching the lights of the cars, catching some of the domestic sounds while waiting for the computer to reach its conclusion. ( Fun but not good for the eyes)

Julie