I've been furloughed!

Completely out of the blue.

Along with 22 other colleagues, we have been put on two months furlough. The government is offering to reimburse 80% of our salary's under its new job retention scheme and luckily our firm has agreed to make up the other 20% so I'm on full salary. Trouble is, will I have a job to go back to at the end of May? Currently, two people have split my job between them, and the worry is if they soldier on doing my job and theirs in the 'spirit of the Blitz' the firm may decide to make it permanent.

While two months paid leave sounds nice, it is in fact not when you wake up every day wondering if you will have a job in the summer, should you be job hunting and what if you find something? I have nearly six years with this firm - it could mean starting again, no job security until two years after starting, six months probation, interruption of pension, maybe having to work in an office again.

Right, so the negative stuff out the way. Now for the positive.

Maybe it is time for me to move on, get a pay rise, more responsibility, challenge myself, etc, etc. I have got very comfortable working from home, sat on the bed, meandering through my days. Maybe it is time for a change.

So, the plan it to clean up the house and garden thoroughly and get all the outstanding jobs done, while simultaneously updating my CV, improving my skills by actually learning how to use some of this professional software I have on my work computer, and then job hunting. I will make me feel better to take some kind of positive action.

Over the weekend I ripped into the sunken garden, which had got out of hand. The variegated ivy had completely taken over one bed, killed off some shrubs (it was actually choking the little conifer on the left of the picture) and was snaking its way down across the paving, so I ripped it all out and cleaned it up. I was annoyed to find that the ivy had forced its way through the wall, which now has a big crack running down it and a edging piece lifted that will have to be repaired and concreted back. I have a large shrub stump to get out as well. The rosemary is looking bedraggled and very sorry for itself so once the flowering is over and the bees have had their fill, I'll be dragging that out and planting a new one.

In general the sunken garden it looks unkempt and a bit straggly. Around the outside is a semi-circle of lavender, which is quite old and has started getting woody and dying back in places. I had a search through my seeds and found some dwarf lavender, so have decided to rip out all of those big lavenders later this year and replace them with tidy dwarf lavender plants interspersed with a bright orange early spring perennial (if I can find one). I'd like to get some more early flowers for the bees.

Martin has been very busy cutting down a massive conifer that had got so big it was obscuring the light into the kitchen and blocking out view of the garden. That's now just a stump so we'll even that off and add a pot of something bright and trailing.

So, lots to do, as ever, and now I have the time to really crack into it.