Chilling with the snowdrops

Today was the day for submitting our Technical File to our regulator, but a couple of key bits were still missing.  The Notified Body was gracious about accepting a 12-hour slip, but it was difficult for me to step back and accept that we needed to accept a delay.

In research, always a first time for a new technology or product category, we only have best guesses of when things will be done. A board layout takes a month instead of a week; a clinical finding requires an investigation; a failed test necessitates a redesign.
It’s always something, and thus rare to hit a milestone on time (although we always hit them in sequence).

Nonetheless, when I push myself to meet a committed deadline, I hate to give it up.  When my Body Pump instructor says to give it my all for another eight presses, I don’t have an extra four in me at the end.  If I say I’ll stop at the next turn-off, I know its irritating to ask to go one more stop.   Similarly, if co-workers put in extra effort to finish on-time, I not right for me to slip the deadline.

 

This time, though, the job was huge, the delay small, and I’d had my say abut the situation.  It was time to step back and take a walk in the woodlands.

It’s snowdrop season in the UK, the first certain breath of spring.  The white flowers bloom in forests in February, and it’s been a couple of years since our last visit to Welford Park to see the display.

  

It was chilly, wet, fairly deserted at mid-week.  Admission still seems steep at £6 per head.  ‘But the forests and grounds are lovely, and it’s a nice fugue to lose myself in the fresh air and flowers for a few hours.

Tomorrow, we finish.