The new assistant in the Finance office grinned.  I stopped waving my arms and grinned back.  “I get over-excited so that you don’t have to,” I explained.  Yes, we may be bypassing the local authority as an academy, but we’re still at risk of being scuppered by bureaucracy, and one’s personal government financial assistant going on holiday for three weeks (out of email contact), returning to work for two days and then taking another two weeks’ leave is really not very helpful.  “Most contracts don’t allow that, my daughter’s didn’t when she worked full-time,” I pointed out.  The financial director agreed.  She’s not allowed more than two weeks of holiday at a time either.  Actually, she works so hard that it’s rare for her to take more than a few days off.  And she took a whole morning, using the Head’s office so that she wouldn’t be disturbed, to track back a year through all the information that she had already given, the acknowledgements and reassurances that she had received, just to establish something that should have been scheduled already.  When she was finally replied to, she emailed me asking for approval, which I gave at once and then drove back from Norwich to the school to sign the agreement so it could be posted as well as emailed.  The deadline is Friday.  Thanks to Lynn, we caught it.

In other news … I’ve started a new phone contract for the Sage, using my old iPhone.  He is very happy.  It kicks in tomorrow.  And while I was about it, I asked about the amount of data my phone has suddenly started using.  The other assistant agreed, a friend of his has complained about TMobile, just recently, notifying him after a week or so that he’s used 80% of his paid-for data, with no additional use.  No one knew why this has happened, but the very helpful assistant showed me how to turn off yet more background data users.

Sorry if this doesn’t apply to you, but it may be helpful to some so I’ll write about it – go to Settings – Location Services.  You may be surprised at who is tracking your location.  I turned off Audioboo, Camera, Google, Homer (yes, as in Iliad and Odyssey, it’s a book app), Photos and Waitrose, just leaving on the weather, maps and Siri.  I’d already, via Settings, turned off Notifications for various apps and turned off, under Store, the use of cellular data to download purchases made on other devices, though I don’t know if that was necessary.  I’ll keep an eye on it for the next few days and see if it helps – just checking emails, which is what I mostly do, shouldn’t use the amount of data that it has been – the thing is that it’s a sudden change, since March, when there has been no change in my usage.  I sometimes surf, sometimes use maps and weather, but I always have.

I was just starting to cook dinner when the Sage put his head round the kitchen door, a hopeful grin plastered on his face.  “Um, is it all right if I meet M in 15 minutes?”  I took the dinner off the stove and said yes, of course, no problem.  And it wasn’t.  Just as well he hadn’t said that 15 minutes later though.  I’d still have said no problem, but his chops would have been hard and dry by the time he got back.  But now it’s time to start cooking again.