My work has put me forward for the SVQ (Scottish Vocational Qualification) in Food Handling. It is a job related qualification that you do in your own time which means I have some homework, feels a bit like school, this weekend. I have the first two modules to read through and fill in the answers, all pretty straight forwards really. The whole thing is over the next year and at the end I get a certificate to show for the effort. One thing that it seems to show is that I should be working this time next year as well as the time in between as until now I haven’t been told or even given a contract of employment. Not that every job I’ve had came with a contract but it does give you a more settled feeling. Saying that the place I work isn’t that bad, in fact it is rather relaxed which I enjoy. The work isn’t really that hard either unless your doing Dave’s job of loading the baskets, a right back-breaker that job is. Most of the other jobs around the factory are easy compared to that. Well at least doing the SVQ gives me some security in these uncertain times.
My peas are flowering again so I’m looking forwards to a second crop in a month or so. I’m glad I put netting over my blueberries this year as the wife saw a bird trying hard to get at them. I don’t think I’ll have as good a crop as last year but there’s a month or two before they’ll be ready so who knows. While my potatoes are now pushing up out of the soil in the sacks I’ve got them growing in, so they’re promising a bumper crop this year. All this talk of the garden reminds me I need to get my hedges trimmed tomorrow if the weather is with me. I also need to get more weeding done around my strawberries and fruit trees. It shouldn’t take me long, of course that all depends on the weather which it’s looking like rain from where I’m sitting just now. Hopefully it won’t come to anything.