Returns

So, we made it back from our holiday in one piece. It was such a good holiday and we covered just over 2000 miles (and I actually did all the driving because Avis messed up the stuff on the additional driver).



I won’t go into massive detail now, but we went to Montreal first and really liked that, but it then paled by comparison to everywhere else we went and each time we went somewhere we liked it more than the last place we had been. I think of all the places we stayed we liked Shediac, which is in the south east of New Brunswick the best. It was a nice place to stay and we got to go to two other provinces while we were there – Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. I was surprised by how French speaking a lot of places were, but fortunately most people were also fluent in English.



Canada is such a vast and beautiful country and we saw just a tiny part of it. We now have a plan to try and see all the other provinces we have never been to. This trip we covered (parts of) Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia (and technically we went to Ontario because we flew via Ottawa, but I guess that doesn’t really count. We’ve both been to Ontario anyway though).



Some highlights:

Driving through such a vast land and seeing such beautiful sights.
Driving across the Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island (except for the massive toll to get back!).
Listening to The Proclaimers whilst driving through Nova Scotia!
Eating Sugar Pie, which must be the most unhealthy, but incredibly, delicious dessert ever.
Staying in a really nice B&B in Shediac run by a Parisian couple. It was just such a relaxing time and the woman was just so hospitable.

Some lowlights:

Getting very lost on a walk in Fundy National Park. There were some rather worrying moments on that walk, but we made it back in the end…
G being really sick one evening, for some unknown reason.



It was a great, great holiday and seemed to last much longer than two weeks. I am hoping my jetlag doesn’t last quite so long...

Alert

I phoned my credit card company to see if they could explain exactly what caused the ‘alert’ on my card. They were useless.

Me: So can you explain what the alert was?
Credit card man: It was triggered by unusual activity.
Me: What was the unusual activity?
CC Man: I can’t tell you that, it doesn’t say on your records.
Me: Ok, well what transaction caused it to happen?
CC Man: I can’t tell you because there were a few transactions around that time.
Me: Right, so what is ‘unusual activity’ because what is unusual to you might not be unusual for me? If I could understand what caused it then you might not block it like that again if I could discuss it with someone.
CC Man: I can’t tell you that. The security department deal with alerts.
Me: Can I speak to the security department?
CC Man: No.
Me: Why not?
CC Man: Well it is a computer generated alert, so speaking to them wouldn’t stop alerts in future.
Me: So, you can’t explain anything about the problem and I am not allowed to speak to anyone that can.


This is just a mere snippet of the conversation. I wasn’t being stroppy, I was just trying to prevent it happening again because trying to pay for a meal in a restaurant to find your card has been blocked is not very helpful.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m off to Canada for a couple of weeks. We’re spending some time in Montreal, Southern Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. Marvellous.

Clean

It turns out my parents are back from their holiday. This means I have managed to get my washing done! I did three loads, which is good but also bad, in that I don’t really have the space to hang up three loads of washing in one go, but details, details…

Yesterday morning I went to put my shoes on and realised that they had a massive hole in them. I feel as though many things need replacing at the moment and I don’t have time to sort them out. These last few days before going to Canada seemed to be filled with sorting out various last minute problems. Hopefully, all will be well by Saturday though.

Conspiring

Having been very organised for going to Canada, things are starting to unravel. First, the washing machine broke. So I still haven’t managed to do any washing, although I have now bought some extra socks.

Next, I tried to transfer some money to G and the payment was rejected.

Then, I was buying a new washing machine on the phone and my credit card didn’t work properly. They had to phone me back and then it did finally go through.

Next, on the way home from work I got absolutely drenched because I managed to pick the time to leave work that coincided that with the heavens opening. I nearly had to build an ark.

Finally, we went out for dinner and my credit card got blocked again. The restaurant couldn’t get it unblocked, so G had to pay cash. I phoned my credit card company but they had closed for the evening. I will have to phone them today and find out what is going on.

I feel as though the world (the *whole* world) is conspiring against me to prevent me from going to Canada. This does, of course, work on the premise that the whole world revolves around me. I think that is fair enough.

In other news, one of my colleagues wanted to do her own personal tribute to Michael Jackson by moonwalking her way out of the office at the end of the day. She did slip in Tesco at lunch time though, with her Michael Jackson OK tribute magazine in her hand, and decided that was as close to a moonwalk as she wanted to get for one day.

Hot

The washing machine appears to be terminal. Whatever temperature I try to run it at, it runs at what must be over 100 degrees. I know it must be over 100 degrees because it has a 95 degrees programme, so it must be safe to operate at that temperature, but whatever temperature it ran at on Sunday managed to partially melt the soap dispenser drawer. That is rather hot. So I am going to buy a new one and arrange for it to be delivered when we get back from holiday. This therefore means a trip to the launderette (if we can summon up the energy for that) and the purchase of some new clothes. I am not terribly impressed by this, as the washing machine is only a couple of years old. I should have gone with John Lewis when I bought it. Although I haven’t actually heard back from them about my refund for the sat nav, so perhaps I have too much confidence in them.

I am reading The Plague by Albert Camus at the moment, which is a good read. If I were the sort to be paranoid, I would wonder if it was a lesson in how things could go with swine flu - and let me tell you it is not a good place from what I can tell based on the first 185 pages of the book.

My colleagues with suspected swine flu came back to work yesterday and seemed totally fine. Apart from now having a fear of apple sauce – and she did also cry when someone ate a bacon sandwich. But apart from that she is perfectly fine.

Heat

We went up to Nottingham for the weekend for a baby naming ceremony. That was good and various people gave readings that they had chosen and we then ate lots of food. There were some rather nice cakes and I had a good sample of each of them.

We used the sat nav to get there, which was fine, except that it ran out of power about a mile before our destination, which was not great timing. I did have the cable to charge it in the car, but that then had to be sorted out so that we could find where to go. On Saturday morning I looked on the John Lewis website and the sat nav I bought had gone down in price by £20. So I phoned then before we set off and I asked if I could have the £20 difference back. It seems they will refund it to me, which is a bit of a result.

The washing machine seems to be doing odd things – and just in time for us to go on holiday, when we want to do lots of washing. First of all it wouldn’t work and then it was doing the washing at a really high temperature, even though it was only meant to be a doing a 40 degree wash. I don’t think this improved the clothes that were in the machine. We may just have to resort to buying some new, and therefore, clean stuff...

Assistance

On the way into work yesterday morning, someone pulled the emergency alarm on the tube. One of the things that can really irritate me about people is how they react in those circumstances. When the alarm went off, a number of people tutted and loudly sighed, as though the activation of the alarm was merely to inconvenience them. Admittedly, sometimes alarms are activated maliciously, but the vast majority of times, it is because someone needs help of some sort. Sometimes I want to ask my fellow commuters if they would find it so inconvenient if it was them who needed help and someone pulled the alarm. I sometimes think that we are so busy operating in our own little words, with our noses buried in books or listening to i-Pods or talking loudly on our mobile phones, that admitting that other people actually need to share the same space as us is beyond our comprehension. Don’t get me wrong, I am not an entirely cheerful commuter and have no wish to strike up a conversation with my fellow commuters, but I do think that we should be a bit more generous spirited at times.

Then on the way home last night, I was walking to the station and saw a cyclist collide with a tourist who stepped into the road without looking. The cyclist was just lying there in the road, so I went over to her (as had a couple of other people) and then I called an ambulance for her. By coincidence, an ambulance arrived to deal with an incident a couple of hundred yards up the road, and one of those paramedics came down to see if he could help. By then, the girl had recovered a bit and was able to speak and could sit up, but would have to keep lying down again because she was in pain. She had hit the road really hard and had struck her head and badly hurt her arm and had some nasty cuts. So I waited until the ambulance arrived and one of the other people (a stranger) went to hospital with her and I went home. She was very fortunate that there wasn’t a car coming at the time because she ended up in the middle of the road and could have ended up with much more serious injuries. I think she’ll be ok, if in a lot of pain for a while. The tourist walked away unscathed.

Tests

So... another person where I work has swine flu. I know this because her manager broadcast it to the whole office. I sought advice from HR about the person who works for me, as I wouldn’t normally tell other people if someone was off sick because it’s their private business and I wanted to know if this should be treated differently. The advice was that it was no different to normal, unless things seriously deteriorated, and telling everyone would only cause panic. So I told the people who needed to know and that was it. The other manager sent an e-mail to the whole office to tell everyone about the other person. The two cases are entirely unconnected and there is no way they caught it from each other, as they won’t have come into contact for weeks, so I am still going to stay quiet about it. But I might be fighting a losing battle now!

I still haven’t been paid the money work owes me. I spoke to payroll about it again and they told me they had loads of queries to deal with and hadn’t got round to dealing with mine yet. I was not impressed. Strangely, I go to work with the expectation that I will be paid, so I think it is fair enough to get all of my pay.

I should be grateful that the weird chap who sits behind me has never tried this with his nail clippers (as far as I know). If he did attempt it, I might have to overcome my British reserve and ask him to desist. Or I might just wander off and make a cup of tea. I hope I will never have to be tested in this way.

Oh and, it's July already... how did that happen?

Moments

It was pay day yesterday and I am now being paid by the organisation where I am on secondment. They underpaid me by about £300. I phoned them to try and find out where the rest of the money is. They are looking into it…

One of my team phoned me yesterday to say that she might have swine flu. She has just got back from holiday in the US and had felt unwell the whole time she was away. She came back and tried to make an appointment with the doctor, but he refused to see her and told her that she must stay at home in ‘quarantine’ until the symptoms have passed. She was quite surprised by this, as she just thought she had a cold, but it seems her doctor doesn’t want to take any risks. I couriered some work to her yesterday, so that she can work from home. I gave her two words of wisdom, one was to handle the files with gloves on. The other was to stay out if the sun in case she turned into bacon. I have an excellent bedside manner.

Yesterday the weird chap who sits near me (the same one who was cutting his nails recently), suddenly said to his colleagues “does anyone know where I can get a man’s swimming trunks that are like a thong?”. His colleagues all went a bit quiet and they then all denied any knowledge of where to buy such a thing. I think they would have to be quite brave to be the one to say “Well, where I normally buy mine is…”.

Quotes

Until now, I have failed to mention Michael Jackson’s death. We were talking about it in the office on Friday and one of my team was rather upset about it, both on a personal level and also because she had tickets to his concerts that were coming up. She then went through a list of concerts she had been to where something had happened to the performer (Luther Vandross having to stop a couple of times and then sit on a chair and then giving up etc) and she had so many of these stories that in the end I said to her “Have you ever though, it might actually be you?” We did then conclude that the person dying was probably about as bad as it could get, although the person actually dying on stage would be a whole new low, I guess.

We were also talking about someone from the office who came over to speak to me and she kept referring to her team as “my people”. Afterwards one of my colleagues said “Do you think she sees herself as being like the Pope?”. Very possibly…

I am currently reading The Great Gatsby and there was a quote in it that made me chuckle. Perhaps it just appealed to my sense of humour and will pass others by…

“Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known”

Sorted

I gave in and bought a Sat Nav on Friday. A TomTom to be precise. Despite being rather anti such things, I have actually become rather engrossed in messing about with it. We drove to Oxford yesterday to see G’s cousin and we tested it out. This did also highlight that it displays the speed of travel, which may have been something that G was best off not knowing... I downloaded a map of Canada for the Sat Nav and have also programmed in the addresses of various places that we are staying, so hopefully we can't get lost. We also decided on loads of CDs to take with us to Canada and that is now sorted and next we need to decide on a talking book or two to take with us.

On Friday I went back to where I used to work to sort out the rest of my stuff. While I was there my old boss told me that the woman who worked for me had got the bonus I had put her forward for. So while I was there I told her about that. She was rather overwhelmed, as she hadn’t been expecting it at all, and she told me she thought she might cry! She then said she would take me out for lunch to say thank you. I told her it would be nice to go for lunch but she did not have to pay, but she was set on the idea. So we are now going to meet up after my hols, on my birthday, and go for lunch. My old boss asked if he could come along too, so the three of us are going to meet up, which will be really nice and gives me something nice to look forward to when I get back from holiday.

Anyway it’s off to work and I get to spend quite a lot of time with some dogs today. My new job is good fun sometimes!

Expenses

This Sat Nav idea is growing on me. I might go to John Lewis tonight and ask them for some advice. They might not get my business though because all the Garmin Sat Nav’s they sell are considerably cheaper through The AA. *note to self* Get a life...

My team really seem to be getting through the work they have. They still have masses to do but most of them keep asking me for more work so that they can try and get through it all in a more structured way. I am really pleased with how it is going and am hopeful that we are going to have some really good figures next week that will reflect the amount of work that has been done. We’re almost a sixth of the way through the project already. Time has really flown by.

I got a letter from a surveyor a couple of days ago about how much it will cost to extend the lease on where I live. £10,000! I now need to workout what to do. The dilemma is that the price will go up the shorter my lease gets, but it is a *lot* of money to spend. I also have no idea how to negotiate this. Do you go in with a low offer and then work your way up or just show the freeholder what the quote said and say that is all you’re willing to pay? Or something else? I haven’t a clue and am not good at having a poker face with things like this.

Confused

Last night I watched the programme on BBC1 about homelessness. The programme made me kind of angry, which I knew it would before I watched it. I find something very distasteful about people pretending to be homeless. I find something quite patronising about that, even if it is meant to be showing people the reality of life on the streets. I was impressed by the sheer kindness and generosity of some people, but that made me angry as well because the people they were ‘helping’ didn’t really need help, as after a few day these people would be returning to their nice homes. I feel as though taking money from people when it could have gone to someone who generally needed that help or care is morally dubious to say the least. I was very unimpressed.

I am trying to pull together our itinerary for Canada. We have a lot of driving to do and various places to visit. This has made me wonder if perhaps we should get a SatNav to take with us, but a) I’m not a fan of SatNav and b) I haven’t a clue how they work really but from my brief bit of research I think I would either need to buy one with Canadian maps preloaded on it or would need to pay to get some on top of paying for the SatNav. This sounds rather expensive. But I do think it might make our trip rather easier. We will need to decide.

Some work I was doing yesterday made me think that whilst I may be a bit of a Puritan in some ways (don’t smoke drink, swear etc), I am a very liberal Puritan. I think I have got more and more liberal as I have got older – and even shock myself with my somewhat liberal attitude to some things. This amuses me.

Territory

In my new job, I seem to have a large amount of admin that needs to be done. In my last job, I had a secretary/ admin person, but never needed her to do much. Now I don’t have one, I seem to spend so much of my day sorting out admin jobs. This is mainly because of having to sort out various things to get us fully functional in the office space we have been given. If I was in their main office, none of this would need to be done, but yesterday I was even having to order some chairs because there were a few missing, which must have been acquired by people when the desks were empty for a while. I also seemed to spend a large amount of time trying to sort out some double-sided adhesive pads to stick a couple of posters up to make our territory. Given the amount of difficulty in getting the backing strip off I may have had to suggest a team bonding activity that marked our territory in more base and animal ways, but fortunately this did not prove necessary in the end.

G registered with a doctor yesterday, which involved downloading a form and taking along a couple of forms of ID. There were a number of things that make me think G may have been better registering at the same surgery as I use. Let me give you just a few quotes from the receptionist.

G hands over the form.
Receptionist: Are you sure you are trying to register with us? I don’t recognise that form.
G: I downloaded it from your website...
Receptionist: I didn’t know we have a website!

The receptionist inspects the form.
Receptionist: You need to fill in the country where you were born.
G: I have. It says UK.
Receptionist: But you’re from Scotland, aren’t you? So you should have written that down.
G: But that isn’t the name of the country – it’s the UK.
Receptionist: Oh right... I’ll put it down as you being from Scotland though.

Monkey business

We’re growing various bits of veg in the garden. Some tomatoes, sweet corn, onions, broad beans etc. They might make it if we remember to water them, although I am not entirely sure if they will survive the two weeks while we are on Canada. At the very end of the garden there are a lot of nettles. We have not been cultivating these, but over the weekend it did cross my mind that we could perhaps use the nettles for various things. However, I then inspected the nettles and decided that the amount of bird poo they seem to have on them was enough of a reason to ditch that idea. This would be going a step too far in terms of making use of nature’s resources.

I was talking to someone in my team today and she was telling me about all the weight she put on and then lost over the last few years. She said the really defining moment for her was when she heard the story on the news a while ago about the 14 stone monkey that ripped the face off a woman. I don’t actually remember that particular story being in the news, but I can see how that might be one of those moments that makes you look at things in a whole new light. It might put you off eating too many bananas though.

Excuses

On Friday I was sitting at my desk and heard a clipping sound. I turned around and the chap sat at the desk behind me was clipping his finger nails. I didn’t know this man at all - although he is the one who seems to have his clothes hanging up all over the place – and so didn’t feel I could say anything. Late afternoon the clipping sound started again. He obviously hadn’t managed to do the job properly in the morning. I decided it wasn’t the time to say anything. Next time I might have to ask him to stop. Or perhaps vomiting on his desk will get the message across.

We stayed at my sister’s house on Saturday night and yesterday morning my sister and nephew were finishing off a cake. I think my nephew was the excuse for the interesting cake decoration technique, rather than the cause...

Work

I have been on a course for the last three days, so am wondering if there is going to be a massive pile of work waiting for me when I get into the office. I have been keeping up with my e-mails, as I can check those at home, so at least there aren’t those to deal with. Yesterday evening I spent quite a bit of time doing some work because someone had given me something really complex to look at earlier in the week and I want to have it pretty much sorted by the end of today. I have to keep up with the pace of work because if I get behind it will be difficult to catch up.

It is all about perspective though, as however bad things may ever get at work, at least I am not the pilot who died on this flight... or the co-pilot who had to bring the plane into land... or the doctor who was on the flight and determined that the pilot was dead and then very probably had a moment of thinking “and I hope it’s not me next given that there is now no pilot”. I imagine that wasn’t a great time for anyone involved.

Damage

I was at home last night when I heard some sharp braking on the driveway. I looked out the window and my neighbour who I wrote the note to at the weekend had reversed into a van that was being driven by the mad builder who is doing the work next door. I think it was a low speed collision and any damage was really minimal, but I did feel a certain poetic justice in this. It is probably totally wrong to have felt some satisfaction...

My nephew phoned last night. He spoke to me briefly and then wanted to talk to G. I have been downgraded to being a switchboard operator, merely routing calls to the intended recipient. *sigh*

How not to get more business

I got a letter from my mortgage provider a couple of days ago. The letter started by reminding me that I might die or get a serious illness and that I needed to have cover in place in vase this happened. According to their records I don’t have any cover. They would be phoning me to discuss this.

Let me interpret this letter for you. “We have noticed that you don’t have your mortgage protection products with us. We would like to make some money out of you by phoning you to tell you that you might die. You don’t actually have to have your mortgage protection products with us, nor do you have to tell us who those products are with. But if we phone you, you might be willing to divulge these details and we might also persuade you to change providers for these products.

We want to make money out of you – and remind you again that one day you will die. We look forward to talking to you.”

I wrote back to them by return of post and told then not to write me letters like that - a paragraph telling me I might die, was not a great opener (and they should at least have bothered to use headed paper). That suggesting I don’t have the required products in place was incorrect and I did not want them to phone, as I had nothing to discuss with them.

I may have put it slightly more politely than that but I think they will have gathered that I was not impressed.

Thoughts

My neighbours seem to be fairly compliant at the moment. I was wondering if I had perhaps made a mistake in mentioning the parking. I remembered that the woman’s personalised registration plate contains the digits ‘666’. Maybe not the person to choose as an enemy.

My sister phoned me last night to see if we were watching the programme on BBC 2 which was about the various food fads of the 1980s. My sister said “do you remember potato waffles?!” I replied “Er... yes... I had some last night with fish fingers and baked beans”. I felt slightly naughty confessing this, but it was a good meal...

Nervous

I got woken up at 5.40am yesterday morning by my neighbour getting into her car and running her engine before driving off. She hand her partner both have cars and they had parked one of them in the space right in front of my bedroom window because that neighbour isn’t about very much. So going out at 5.40am she woke me up, which is annoying in itself, but even more so given that she shouldn’t have been parked there in the first place.

She and her partner have lots of visitors. My neighbour who lives above me thinks that the chap is a drug dealer. I’m not convinced by that, but he certainly gets an awful lot of visitors, some of whom stay for only a very short amount of time. The constant stream of people also often means that the visitors park their cars in my upstairs neighbour’s parking space because she is not around a lot. So sometimes my neighbour has to block my car in or ask me to move mine so she can fit hers in as well. They are nice people, but the amount of parking they take up really drives me mad. It’s always the petty things that cause the problems…

Anyway, I decided that being woken up at 5.40am (again!) was enough reason to mention it to them. But I wasn’t brave enough to knock on their door and speak to them. They are very nice people, but I didn’t want to have the conversation. So I wrote them a very polite and slightly apologetic note and asked them if they could park elsewhere, as they keep waking me up and also our parking spaces keep getting used.

I don’t know if it will have any impact, but I have wanted to say something for ages and have finally done so. But now I feel like I need to sneak about in case I bump into them. I made sure I had put my rubbish out before I put the note through their door, in case I bumped into them later!

I find confrontation a difficult thing. At times I can be very bolshy – my last boss would testify to this! – but in situations like this, I am not bold at all and try and avoid the situation, even if it really bothers me. I am hoping that it doesn’t negatively affect things with my neighbours, but given that at some point someone will be moving into the empty flat next door, the situation will get worse then, so I wanted to speak up. I was also quite tired from being woken up so early, which may also have made me reach the point where I had to say something. But I do still feel kind of nervous about it...

Points

So it’s back to work today – not that I wasn’t working the last couple of days, but I just cannot get into the right frame of mind if I am trying to work at home. There are only going to be two of us in the office today anyway, so it perhaps won’t be much different to working at home, except for no daytime TV to distract me.

I bumped into the freeholder yesterday, which turned out to be quite useful. I mentioned to her that I might try and extend my lease soon and she was fine with that – it is free money for her, so I guess she would be unlike to complain too much about it. She also said to me that they are thinking about changing a couple of the front doors and I said that if she was going to do that then I would be interested in doing that as well. Of course, having endless amounts of money would help with this.

There were a couple of stories in the news this week that made me raise an eyebrow. One was that Earth might collide with another planet. Potentially alarming, what with that possibly meaning the end of the world. But it then seems slightly less alarming when, if it does happen, it is not going to be for more than a billion years. I know we should show concern for the next generation, but I think a billion years is beyond most people’s imagining - and we are likely to have destroyed the plant long before then anyway. I was amused when I saw the item on the TV and the BBC showed a planet crashing into Earth and then added that it was only a simulation. That was a relief because at times I am not very observant and might have missed the end of the world.

Also Caroline Flint has said that she left government because Gordon Brown thought she was disloyal. Since then she has appeared in various media totally slating him. Er... did he maybe have a point?

Perceptions

I was going to go into work today, despite the tube strike. But then I saw my boss yesterday and he told me not to bother and to work from home. I decided this was enough of a steer to comply. I am rubbish at working from home, so we’ll see how I do…

Yesterday I spoke to the woman I used to manage. She told me that I have been replaced – by two people! I did tell her that I wasn’t entirely surprised to learn that it takes two people to somehow replace me, and now I have my proof. She also told me that she misses me, which I thought was a really nice thing to say. I must arrange to see her at some point.

I was also talking to a couple of people in my team about the only time I have ever had an argument with someone at work. This was about three years ago and my boss and I had a real row. We sorted it our very quickly (although I have never had any respect for him and that hasn’t changed). The people in my team said they were really surprised I had ever fallen out with anyone at work because I just don’t seem like the sort of person who has a temper. I assured them that I do, but at work you have to push me really hard for it to surface. It’s really funny the perceptions people have of you because I would say that I am a bit of a grumpy person, but it seems that somehow at work I manage to keep this hidden! If they ever saw me when I am commuting to work they might have a different opinion.

Tidy

When I went round to my parents’ house on Sunday, despite not having lived at home for a number of years, I ended up having to tidy my bedroom. I don’t think I was ever told to do this as a child (this could explain a lot). I did get to eat some birthday cake but then had to go back upstairs and finish tidying up. Or not finish, given that it would take more than an afternoon to sort that room out… At least there was cake and it was home made and even had lemon curd in it, which strangely I had been thinking about earlier in the day. I wish that I could have things that were a bit more significant than lemon curd turn into a reality.

The job is going well, although I had to stay at work late last night to make a phone call. I’ve decided that I need to do some of the work myself, as opposed to mainly supervising the work of the team, and so was sorting out some of it yesterday evening. We have such a massive target to achieve that anything I can do to help us get to the end of it is going to help. It makes the job more interesting and helps to fill in some of the quieter moments as well. It helps to keep life interesting.

Agreements

It was my father’s birthday on Friday, so we went to my parents’ house for lunch yesterday. G wanted to take something to give to my dad, but I was not very keen on this. I am not much into giving my father presents*, due to our somewhat strained relationship, and didn’t really feel that I wanted G to do so instead.

We talked about this a few times on Saturday and G, being a Scot, had been brought up to believe that you shouldn’t turn up to someone’s house empty handed. I did say that as this was about going round to my parents’ house I didn’t really think the same principle applied - and that I wouldn’t try and impose my way of dealing with things on G’s family. In the end I conceded that G could take a bottle of wine, but had to give it to my mum and not my dad.

So we turned up yesterday and we said happy birthday to my dad and G then handed dad the bottle of wine and said it was a present. I gave G a look, who then realised that this was not what we had agreed, but had been overcome by the moment.

We were due to have lamb for lunch. So I beat G to death with the leg of lamb and, in one of life’s ironies, G’s (who is a vegetarian) dying words were “See? I told you meat was bad for you...”

Life is cruel. Don’t mess with me.




*I do actually pay for his subscription to the Radio Times, which he seems to think is the best present he has ever had, but as that automatically renews, I feel as though I maintain my 'no present’ stance. Sort of...

Questions

So I voted yesterday. The Polling Station was very quiet and the ballot paper was over two feet long. Bizarre. A canvasser wanted my polling number, but I told him I didn’t have my polling card with me (which was true) and he looked horrified by this. I was decidedly unimpressed with him, as it is none of his business, and it made me glad I didn’t have the card with me.

I’m almost at the end of the first week of my new job and it has gone ok. I still can’t get my head around how they have quite such an inscrutable database that you can’t even search properly. This then makes me scratch my head on how I can then copy other people’s homework, as someone else has probably dealt with similar issues in the past. I will clearly have to be more ingenious – or just ask people instead.

Vote

At the moment it does rather feel as though the Government is imploding what with mass resignations and lots of in-fighting. I had high hopes when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, but those were soon dashed and it seems as though he may face challenges to his leadership soon.

That said, it’s the European elections today and whilst they may not seem the most relevant elections to our every day lives and the state of politics at the moment maybe makes people even less inclined to vote, but if you have a vote then today is the day to use it. People are disillusioned with the mainstream parties, but unless lots of people go out and vote that means there is a much higher chance of far right parties getting into power.

So go and vote if you can – and try and cast your vote by voting for something rather than against.

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.

John Quincy Adams

To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.

Louis L'Amour

Pains

I have had the most awful headaches recently. I wouldn’t say I am generally someone who gets headaches, but the ones I have had of late have been there when I have woken up in the morning and lasted until I have gone to bed at night. I am hoping (if that is the right word) that it is hay fever related and that if I take more medication that it might keep it at bay. I really want to be on good form for my job, but am struggling a bit at the moment.

I was really shocked by the disappearance of that Air France plane. It seems hard to believe that with all the technology we have available on modern planes that one can disappear like it did on Monday. I realise that this doesn’t quite fit with the solemnity of what has happened, but whenever I saw news reports about the missing plane, it made me think of the film “One of our dinosaurs is missing”, which is perhaps rather more of a humorous scenario than the current one.

Anyway, I have a busy day ahead and so I am hoping that I can shake off these headaches...

Satellite

The first day of my new job seemed to go quite well. Everyone turned up and that in itself was quite an achievement. It was a bit like the first day of high school though in that I forgot to take my lunch with me and I also had to sit on my own. That was actually deliberate on my part. There are seven of us in the team and there are sic desks together and I thought I should let all of them sit together. I am actually sitting right by them, but that’s not the point!

I just finished reading a book called Sputnik Sweetheart which is by Haruki Marukami, the chap who wrote The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. It was a good book and I would recommend it, although it is a bit sombre in places. There were a few quotes I liked in it:

“The upshot of all this is that when I was young I began to draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people. No matter who I was dealing with. I maintained a set distance, carefully monitoring the person’s attitude so that they wouldn’t get any closer. I didn’t easily swallow what other people told me. My passions were books and music. As you might guess, I had a lonely life.”

"And it came to me then. That we were wonderful travelling companions, but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal on their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happen to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing."

"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the Earth put here just to nourish human loneliness? I turned face-up on the slab of stone, gazed at the sky, and thought about all the manmade satellites spinning around the Earth. The horizon was still etched in a faint glow, and stars began to blink on in the deep, wine-coloured sky. I gazed among them for the light of a satellite, but it was still too bright out to spot one with the naked eye. The sprinkling of stars looked nailed to the spot, unmoving. I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the Earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep."

Errors

G and I went to Southampton for the weekend to see one of my housemates from university. We had a good time and went for a major walk on Saturday in the sunshine. I took the somewhat radical decision that whilst we were walking I would drink the stuff you normally take after you have dehydrated, so that I didn’t end up feeling like death. It worked, so as disgusting as that stuff is, I think I will do that again.

It was my friend’s birthday yesterday as we had a mini-celebration for that and had a very pleasant time. I should have taken a cake though. Schoolgirl error…

During the weekend, I discovered that the Brownies are propagating a complete falsehood. I was actually a Brownie for a while, but absolutely hated it and even the incentive of becoming a Sixer wasn’t enough to convince me to keep going. Anyway, those who are familiar with the Brownies will know that the leader of the group is called “Brown Owl”. Except there isn’t any such thing as a Brown Owl in nature and the nearest to it is a Tawny Owl. I think there must be any number of mis-educated youths who will believe that there is such a thing as a Brown Owl. Shocking.

1 June already, how did that happen...

Acknowledgment

So today is my last day in my current job. At the end of last week my boss decided to take this week as leave. I think he did have a genuine reason to take the time off but I did think it slightly strange timing given that I would then have left by the time he returned. Last Friday we didn’t even really say goodbye to each other. We were sort of saying goodbye and then my boss’ phone rang and so I waved goodbye and walked off. I think he is a bit upset that I am leaving and was a bit down about it. I haven’t had a chance to sort it out yet, but I will send him a card next week. I am not entirely sure that my big boss has quite twigged that I am leaving today. We shall see if it is acknowledged in any way. I don’t particularly want a leaving presentation etc, but on the other hand I don’t want to feel that I have been totally forgotten before I have even left!

Anyway, yesterday I went out for lunch with some colleagues who work for another organisation but we work in a joint team. The food was very nice and we had a good chat. One of my colleagues pointed out Howard from The Apprentice, who came into the restaurant part way through the meal and had lunch as well. We were sitting very close to him but unfortunately I have no overheard conversations to report. But I would just like to point out that clearly where I go the celebrities* follow. But you knew that already.




*if calling Howard a celebrity is not a misuse of the term.

Excel-lent

I was feeling decidedly rough yesterday. I just seemed to have a headache all day and despite taking some tablets and drinking a lot, I couldn’t shake it off. I was meant to be in a meeting at 10, but was feeling as though I just needed to spend some time at my desk to get a few things done and also because I needed to just “exist” for a bit rather than sitting in a meeting.

We do now seem to have finalised where I will be working with my team as of Monday – at last! We are back at the start and working from the office where we were due to be in the first place. It seems that the people we would have had to evict to get the other office we were offered wanted to keep that office so much that it meant that we got our first choice. Result. I also sent over a spreadsheet to some of the other managers I will be working with and the big boss to show them the task ahead. The big boss was so impressed by my ability to sort some data that he said he hoped the other managers would see if they could do something similar in future. I had no idea such simple things could impress so easily... I do often tell my colleagues that the way to attain promotion is all about the ability to colour in. I have had so many experiences over the last couple of years where picking the right colour in a document or table has been what has been taken as the way to assess the quality of a piece of work. The new big boss is not like that, but I will add “the ability to sort things in Excel” to the list.

Standards

It was great to have an extra long bank holiday weekend (as in taking a day in addition to the bank holiday). I got lots done, including various things I should have sorted out ages ago. Like getting the boiler cross bonded, which should have been done a year ago…

On Saturday G and I went to John Lewis. Once again it has sunk in my estimation. They seem to have lost that ability to pay attention to detail. I get more and more frustrated with that shop. They also seem to sell some rather bizarre items – the sort of thing that are suited to people who already have everything that they need, particularly when it comes to the kitchen. I would show you some examples, but they seem too ashamed to put them on their website.

You can see a photo below of one item that meets all of the above criteria. It is a cat crumb pet. As the name suggests, you use it to hoover up crumbs. It’s a strange item anyway, but if you look at the picture carefully you will see that the person who typed the label either wasn’t paying enough attention or decided that because they sell an array of strange kitchen items (how many different lemon related products do you really need? Clearly a net bag to catch the pips is vital though…) and cat related products, including this somewhat odd (and painful looking) one that a cat crumpet was not something worth raising an eyebrow about or perhaps asking “we sell cat crumpets? What would the RSPCA think?!”



John Lewis, I despair.

Trauma

Bank holidays. What joy! I also have tomorrow off work. It has been a really good weekend so far, except for one issue…

Last night I was doing some stuff on the computer when G came into the room and said “The biggest spider I have ever seen is on the kitchen floor” followed by “do you want to come and look at it?”. I politely declined and shoved G out the room to go and deal with it. G went to get a glass to put over the spider, which meant stepping over the spider. The spider ran off and has not been located since. I am traumatised – and also now have the perfect excuse not to go in the kitchen.

G is now on Spiderwatch.

The kindness of strangers

G is now doing a course on a Thursday night. I think it is on Developing World Economics (I do normally pay more attention that this and think I will probably end up having to follow the syllabus as well). Anyway, I think that officially makes Thursday nights “meat night”. Hurrah! G doesn’t object to me eating meat, but as I don’t normally do the cooking now, I don’t eat meat anywhere near as often as I used to. I am sure there is some strange imbalance between what G is studying and me seeing it as an opportunity to be a carnivore.

Anyway, last night I watched “Playing the Part”, which was about Denise Welch finding out what it is like to be a teacher. I have never had much of an urge to be a teacher, but I certainly don’t envy those who are. Two particular things struck me though. First was that, whilst I am sure some of the pupils were troublesome, they were all in their own way quite decent and were rather different to the image we are so often shown in the media. Second was how kind they were when Denise went to pieces a couple of times. They sat there and patiently waited for her to return and the teachers encouraged her to face the pupils by explaining how they would support her – and they did.

It reminded me that one of the things that I find hard to deal with is when people are kind. It just has the ability to really want to make me cry. It does when people are kind to me, but even more so when I see someone being kind to someone else. Although it makes me want to cry, it’s not a sentimental thing, it’s a real gut reaction to seeing someone reach out to help another person and I just find that a bit overwhelming. I have no idea why that is the case, but kindness is something I find hard to see.

Plummet

I have not actually started my new job yet. Based on the amount that I have had to do for that job so far, it does seem quite hard to tell though. Yesterday, I spent a lot of time dealing with issues around the accommodation we are meant to be getting, which given that we don’t seem to be getting anything that we wanted, has led to morale plummeting in the team. The team now feel that they were mis-sold some of what they were being offered and that some of the incentives have been taken away. This is so disappointing given that they were really getting into it at the beginning of the week. They are definitely confirming that they are an opinionated bunch though!

I actually have no problem that they are really upset by the situation. I just can’t give them the answers at the moment because other people are making the decisions. I spent a while talking to my new boss (who I know of old) and we were trying to decide what to do. He has basically said that I can do what I think necessary to sweeten the pill. The last time I got an update yesterday though, I was told that we may not now be able to have the rubbish accommodation that we were offered, which would then mean that we potentially have nowhere… I am waiting to see what happens today. I have not mentioned this latest bit to the team as yet.

Ruffled

I met with my new team on Monday. They are a lively and opinionated bunch! We are definitely in the rather run down accommodation, but they took the news really well and we went over to look at it that afternoon and said where we wanted our office to be and hopefully they will sort it out for us. They have less than two weeks to find us desks and computers and cupboards and absolutely everything that you need to have the basics of an office. They are really enthusiastic about the task ahead though and we went through the work they were going to be doing from 1 June and I gave them a proposed workload each and they went off and started on it when they went back to the office that afternoon. I had to send an e-mail to their current managers to apologise for cutting across their role. Hopefully not too many feathers were ruffled.

Yesterday I was at a conference which was for various people in my directorate. It was ok, as conferences go. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn’t leaving, but it didn’t particularly inspire me. At the end of the day, the directors where I work were answering questions people had submitted throughout the day. One of the directors was handed a question by his boss to answer. It was about a really good example of leadership that he had seen. I don’t know how long he has worked for the organisation, but I would say it has been several years. He also has a lot of staff who work for him now. Who does he give as his example of great leadership? That’s right, his boss. The very person who gave him the question to answer and was sitting almost next to him. Pathetic.

Press the Button

I went out for dinner with a friend on Friday night. We had a very nice evening. I was, however, a bit distracted at one point. The restaurant we ate in was opposite a branch of Boots, which closed at 8pm. A little while later a man turned up to remove all the rubbish from the shop. He opened the doors, raised the shutter and walked into the shop. He then proceeded to walk off several times leaving the shop open with no-one in it.

A few minutes later he walked back in with someone else who was also collecting the rubbish. His colleague then walked off and the man went to leave the shop and the doors wouldn’t open. As much as he tried to prise the door open, they were not going to move. His colleague came back a few minutes later and they talked about it through the door. His colleague then somewhat casually walked off. The man trapped in the shop started to make phone calls on his mobile, with an occasional attempt to open the door. The other man came back a while later and they spoke to each other through the door. The man outside the shop then pressed a button next to the door and the doors opened. Probably not their normal Friday night outing.

It does make me think that when the IT people tell you to switch your computer off and on again that maybe it just sometimes works. When people ask if you’ve tried pressing the button maybe sometimes we should do the most obvious things...

Strange Things

G made some humus this weekend, apart from chickpeas, the other major ingredient seems to be tahini. Tahini is a very weird product and is sort of like peanut butter, but not the sort of thing you would want to spread on your toast.

On Saturday I had my hair cut and on the way back, I walked passed a woman who was sitting on a small plastic stool on the pavement. As I got closer I realised that she was repainting in all the letters on a road sign that had been sprayed over with graffiti. Very public spirited.

Yesterday I heard a very loud banging outside and looked out the window to see a man standing on the drive with a large hammer smashing the taps off the bath that has been removed from the flat next door. I guess he wanted it for scrap metal, but I didn’t feel like challenging him, what with him having a very large hammer in his hand.

We watched ‘Come Dine with Me’ last night. They all seemed like nice enough people, but I could not get my head around what would have made one chap think that it was ok to serve his guests sushi that was on the torso of a teenage boy. Yes he had shaved some of his more hairy bits, but food and flesh at a dinner party probably don’t often mix. It was just wrong on so many levels.

Spanners

There might now be a slight spanner in the works on the new job, in that we don’t currently have any desks. These do seem fairly fundamental. Some had been arranged in another building but that offer now seems to have been withdrawn. We may have been offered some other desks, but they would involve being located with some organisations that it would be totally unsuitable for us to be with, as part of what we are doing is scrutinising their work. So... we now have two weeks to finalise where we will be working. I have a meeting with the team on Monday and am going to have to tell them that things are a bit uncertain now (but do this in a positive sounding way) and that they might now not have access to all the facilities they were expecting (like a canteen and gym or any way to arrange refreshments for meetings etc...). The big boss is meant to be told today so I am hoping that he will be able to get something done about this.

If you’re at a loose end later this month, you could go and watch some live surgery. Somehow I don’t think that is for me, but if I passed out (probably before the scalpel even touched any flesh) at least there would be a doctor nearby.

Progress

I’ve been doing various things to get organised for my new job. We are meeting as a team on Monday, even though that is two weeks before we actually start the work, because we need to do some planning for it. Fortunately my current boss is fine with me doing things like that, given that I should be concentrating on my current job. Anyway, I sent them an e-mail yesterday which included a whole load of data for them to look at. I got various e-mails back from one of the people, who was the one I was most concerned about, and she seems to have really started to engage with the task already and has come back with various questions and is starting to analyse the data and look at the detail behind it. I feel really encouraged that she is really giving it a go. She has old me that she is quite daunted by what we have to do, but I think if she carries on like this she will be more than capable of keeping up with the others.

Apparently my overly friendly colleague knows I am leaving. So far he hasn’t said anything to me, but I feel that at some point I may get cornered by him. This may primarily be for him to demand lamingtons but I may have to make sure that I have a colleague to accompany me at all times.

There was an article on the BBC a couple of days ago that I wanted to mention a quote from, but I can’t now what the article was about or anything about the quote. Useful.

Paper

I have realised that what with bank holidays and other such things I only have 11 working days left in my current job. That is not a lot of time… I probably should start to shred all those papers that have built up over the last *four* years. That is rather a lot of paper. I should also transfer lots of files on to the shared file system. That is rather a lot of files. I think I could be busy over the next 11 working days.

I have got a bit behind in updating what book I am currently reading. At the moment it is “The Double” by Jose Saramago, an interesting if weird read. You have to be willing to read very long sentences because the author’s style seems to involve him avoiding the full stop (although all other punctuation does not appear to be a problem). Sometimes there is a whole page without a full stop and also you have to be aware that conversations are not punctuated and just move from person to person without any warning. But even so, it is quite readable. Saramago won the Nobel Prize for Literature, so it seems that punctuation is not a requirement to win that award. There is hope for us all.

Singing

I have realised that going on holiday once a month is something I could really get used to. I do actually have a couple of days off at the end of May (one of them being the Bank Holiday Monday), but it is nearly nine weeks until my holiday to Canada. I don’t know how I will cope. Of course, I do have a new job to start before then, so the time will probably fly by, but I still think I should be booking a holiday for June or maybe winning the lottery so I can retire early.

While I was away I discovered that my nephew is a big Enrique Iglesias fan. He was singing away at the top of his lungs in the car. Very cute. I am not sure if that is a good sign – does it show he is a sensitive soul? Or is it a bad sign – lots of heartbreak ahead?

This is one of his favourites.



Don’t forget to sing along.

Return

Cornwall was great. We had a really good time and the weather was much better than in London. It was nice to spend time with my sister and nephew. We ate lots of ice cream and pasties and various other unhealthy things. We saw various sights that I had been to previously (Land’s End, The Lizard etc) but I enjoyed going back to them and we also went to some places I hadn’t been to before, such as an owl sanctuary. This was a baby owl we saw.



The highlight for my nephew was when we spent time on the beach running away from the waves. We weren’t always very successful at getting away from them fast enough though.

G was there for the first couple of days but had to be back in time for work on Tuesday. My mum had invited G over for dinner one night, but had to cancel, which I was sort of relieved about because there is something slightly freaky about G spending time with my family when I’m not about!

It was our second anniversary on Wednesday, so when I got back on Saturday we went out for a really nice meal. I had scallops and black pudding to start and wild boar as my main course followed by orange bread and butter pudding. It was a really nice restaurant and a very nice meal. I think G had missed me and seemed to have lived on take away while I was away, so a good meal was probably very welcome.

Anyway, back to work now and I don’t have quite such a “back to work” feeling this time, as I only have about three weeks left in my current job.

Jaunts

My phone line has been out of order (hence no blogging yesterday) and I still don’t seem to be able to receive incoming calls. Grr…

On Wednesday morning I was sitting at my desk and was rubbing my temples due to having a headache. A colleague saw me doing this and said I looked as though I was having a bad day and I explained I was feeling a bit off colour. He asked if I had been near any Mexicans recently and I told him I didn’t think I had, but I had recently eaten some fajitas. He backed away to err on the side of caution.

I found out who my team is going to be and four of them are definitely really good, one is fairly good but might need a bit of a steer and one is going to have to seriously up her productivity. Apparently that last person really wants to do this work though and put together some arguments to show why she should be allowed to do it, so I am hoping her enthusiasm will mean that she will have a new energy to put into her work because we have a tough task ahead. There is also a big team incentive to get the job done and so that might mean they will encourage each other to persevere if any of them start to flag. I’m looking forward to the challenge and those in the team I have spoken to seem to be raring to go, so that’s good. I really need to do something new and I’m hoping that this is what is going to make me enjoy work again.

Last night we went out for a friends birthday and walked to Kings Cross station to get a train home. When we walked into the station a man had collapsed on the steps and there seemed to be a lot of panic going on. We walked on and G had run out of top-up so couldn’t get through the ticket barrier. One of the station staff had a go at G about this and then he apologised and said he was feeling stressed because they thought the man who had collapsed was probably going to die. An unpleasant end to a very nice evening.

So I am off to Cornwall for the week tomorrow. G is coming down for the long weekend but has to head back for a course so can’t stay the week. On 6 May we will have been together for two years but I shall be sunning myself and eating cream teas while G will be hard at work in London. Such is life.

Anyway, have a good week all...

Food for thought

The plans seem to be coming together for my new job. I did have a slightly sobering moment when it seemed that I was going to be on some kind of fixed term contract, which would in effect have meant that when the work came to an end I would have been jobless. I looked into it and they are going to do it as a loan instead, which means that I revert to my current employer at the end. Phew… I think today I will find out who the people in my team will be (they are putting the team together for a particular project) and I know at least three of them are meant to be “really, really good”.

I saw these cards yesterday. I don’t know what it is about them, but I really like them. The images on the website don’t quite do them justice (click on them to enlarge them), as the cards themselves look much better, but they really made me smile. I really like this one and also this one. They sell them in a shop round the corner from my work and I might have to buy a few. I’m not sure if I would want to send them though or just keep them.

Cold

I seem to have the beginnings of a cold at the moment. I am slightly paranoid about sneezing in public in case people think it is swine fever and then send a lynch mob after me. As far as I am aware I have neither been to Mexico or come into contact with any Mexicans, but travelling on packed tube trains with lots of strangers could have had an undesired effect. Somehow, I suspect it is just a bit of a cold though.

I do actually think this outbreak could be very serious. As soon as I first saw it reported on the news, I said to G that I found the initial reports very concerning and that it has been predicted for a while now that we are due a flu pandemic and thought this could be it. The 1918 flu pandemic killed millions of people worldwide and I think it would be a mistake to underestimate the potential seriousness of this flu outbreak. Not that I am trying to be all doom or gloom... or paranoid...

Remember though, coughs and sneezes spread diseases.

Plans

I seemed to spend the majority of the weekend sorting out our trip to Canada. We are staying in six different places and I have not booked three of them and have made enquiries at a few places to stay at each of the others. It will be a relief to get this done. It is a major holiday which involves a 1200 mile round trip (so I must remember to hire a car as well...) and so the logistics of it have been quite difficult.

My life seems to be about holidays at the moment, as I am off to Cornwall with my sister next week. Until last year I had never been there before and now I am going twice in 10 months. This is rather an impromptu holiday for me so I need to get my act together and work out what I need to take with me. G is coming down for the first couple of days and then I am staying on for the rest of the week.

Anyway, five days of work to get through before then...

Dodgy

It’s been a really busy week at work and not only have I been doing my own job but also various things connected with my new one. I did get some very nice e-mails connected with the new job which did a lot to massage my ego, so that put me in a good mood. That helped in that later in the day I was waiting to cross the road and was looking to the right, the road cleared and I stepped into the road to walk across to a traffic island and collided very hard with a guy who had decided that instead of walking along on the pavement he would cut into the road right in front of me. He apologised and I didn’t say anything because it was one of those moments where you need a few moments to work out what actually happened. It rather hurt though!

While I was out for a wander on my lunch break a woman asked me for some directions so I pointed out where she needed me to go. Then about thirty seconds later another woman came up to me, who it has to be said looked a bit more dubious than the previous woman I had spoken to, but I stopped anyway and right from the beginning I could see the way the conversation was going to go and so I asked her (with a smile) if this was going to involve her asking for money and she said it was. She told me she was homeless and was just feeling so miserable in London and just needed some money to get away from the heat and get a coach to Eastbourne. I asked her how much she needed and she told me and for some reason that is still beyond me, I gave her the majority of the money she needed. She said she would pay me back and wanted to give me her mobile number and I told her it was fine and not to worry about it. I am just not the sort of person who gives money to homeless people, I also have that natural Londoner suspicion of anyone who looks slightly dodgy and normally steer clear of them. I also didn’t know if her story was genuine and if she would really spend it on the coach fare, but there was a part of me that felt inclined to believe her and thought that even if she was lying did it really matter if it lifted some of her gloom by a stranger speaking to her for a couple of minutes and giving her some money. I just told her that I hoped she had a nice time in Eastbourne, gave her a smile and a wave and walked off. Was it the right thing to do? I don’t know, but I like to think she made it to Eastbourne.

Touched

I have been out of the office at various meetings and on various courses lately. I also seem to have been really busy since I have arranged to go on a secondment. It also now looks as though I will be on leave the first week of May, which I hadn’t planned to do, but for family reasons I need to try and take off work, so I can go away with my sister. I mentioned that I would probably not be in that week to the woman who works for me and she said “But that means we’ll get to spend less time with you before you leave. I don’t think you understand how distraught we are at you going”. I was a bit taken aback, but my secretary was there nodding away as well and saying that she didn’t want me to leave. I didn’t know what to say really (apart from that I really needed to take the leave!) and we joked about it a bit, but I was rather touched that they are so upset by it and one of them has only worked for me for about 7 months.

Leeds University are carrying out a survey into “flashbulb memories”. They describe this as “Flashbulb memories are slightly unusual as they are memories of our personal circumstances when we first learned of an item of public news. In other words we remember who we were with, what we were doing, where we were, and usually some other distinctive detail(s), when we first learned of a particular item of public news”. If you want to contribute to their project, then you can do so here.

Oh and today is post 1000. I really do need to get a life...

Heat

When I was coming home on the tube last night I bumped into G, which is actually a fairly rare occurrence even though we finish about the same time and take fairly similar routes home. This meant that we both got to enjoy the heating being on full blast on the train. This was not a pleasant experience.

If you were going away on holiday, would you want to be on board this flight, even after it had been repaired. A plane fails to take off three times and they then get it repaired and people get back on board and go off on their hols… I’m not sure I would have been keen. I am also slightly suspicious of people who give quotes and are described as “a 48-year-old retired customs officer”. Retired at 48 years old?? Previously a customs officer??? A connection? I shall leave you to make up your mind. Of course I could just be bitter that someone is able to retire by the time they are 48.

Unimpressed

On Friday I went to someone’s leaving drinks and only intended to be there about half an hour. Three hours later I finally left. It was actually quite useful to talk to a few people because I had been on a course the previous day and we got feedback afterwards and whilst it was mainly positive they seemed to pick up on a few other things as well. The course was about performance under pressure and we basically had this made up scenario and they assessed us. One of the things they said, which was general feedback rather than about me particularly was that everyone I work with seems to be very polite, but we never say thank you. I raised an eyebrow at this and said I couldn’t speak for the organisation I work for as a whole, but where I work I think people do say thank you. He disagreed. I then disagreed with him and then dropped the subject as he clearly wasn’t going to change his view. I have listened to my colleagues since and have heard them thank people several times. I think this guy just had a chip on his shoulder. Anyone, a couple of my colleagues said they felt miserable after the course, as they just found it very critical and made them feel a bit incompetent. These were people who I know are really capable and yet they went home doubting their ability. I don’t think you can truly judge people’s abilities based on a made up scenario and a couple of hours’ observation. Not impressed.

When I finally got home from the leaving do, G had made a really nice prawn and mushroom curry, which was ready to be served the moment I walked through the door. This living together thing does have its advantages.

After work yesterday I met up with someone I used to work with for a coffee. She wanted to update me on her news, which was primarily that she and her partner are emigrating to New Zealand in the next few months. This wasn’t news as such, given that I signed off part of her application a few months ago, but things now seem to be coming together for her actually to go. I guess that means I have a new holiday destination. *sigh*

Conversations

I had a very good weekend. On Saturday we went with my nephew, sister and mum to see The Lion King. It was a really good production and my nephew really enjoyed it. We then all went for dinner and it turned into a very long day. G asked my nephew what the highlights of his day had been. They were as follows (I don’t think they were in order of priority):

The Lion King
Doing a big poo
Seeing the man blow bubbles
Being in a cage.

Hmm... interesting...

On the tube on the way home I heard brief snippets of a conversation. I still have not decided whether the brevity was for the best or if it would have been better to hear it all.

Girl to her friend:

“I tried stroking it to see if that helped, but it didn’t make any difference”

A couple of minutes later, the same girl then said:

“I tried licking it to see if that would get it clean but it didn’t work”

Bizarrely, G thinks they were actually talking about an iPod.

Delay

How can a short week at work seem so long? I am glad it is Friday. I am hoping to catch up on some sleep. I normally fall asleep pretty much as my head hits the pillow but since being in Madrid I have taken ages to fall asleep each night. I really need at least eight hours a night, so I am suffering.

Yesterday on the way home the train I was on was majorly delayed due to a passenger on a train a couple of stations ahead activating the alarm. The journey that normally takes about 15 minutes took about 40 minutes and for the majority of that time the driver gave us a blow by blow account of the latest information, which was normally that nothing had changed and so he was just repeating the same long-winded load of information he had already given. He did this about every thirty seconds. I wanted to kill him by the time I got off the train. It was like he was downloading his every thought to us and we were there as unwitting therapists. Even after we started to continue our journey he lectured passengers who got on at the next stop about not standing beyond the yellow line on the platform, as someone had been guilty of this at that station, and then did this again at the next station. He just kept talking and talking. And talking. I guess it must get lonely in the driver’s cab.

Medical

My sister told me yesterday that my nephew had fallen over as he was running up some steps at nursery and had cut his nose and had lots of nosebleeds etc. My brother in law went to pick him up and got him checked by a nurse etc and he is ok. My sister sent me a photo and he’s got a massive cut under his nose and looked a bit swollen. I’d post the very painful looking photo, but I don’t really want to put a photo of a child on here. Trust me it looked really painful. I phoned my nephew last night to ask how he was and he didn’t seem to be too badly damaged. At the end of the call he said “Thank you for phoning to speak to me” which made me laugh, as I was very amused by how polite he was.

Last night I watched Embarrassing Bodies, which is where people seek out medical help for medical conditions that they have been putting off getting dealt with because they didn’t want it show it to anyone. So they do on national television to get it sorted instead. I still find that slightly confusing.

On Tuesday night I came home from work and said to G that I had a weird sort of headache and that I thought it meant a thunderstorm was coming. G looked at me oddly and I explained that I sometimes get these weird sort of pressure headaches when a storm is coming. I don’t think this is particularly uncommon (I hope…). Anyway we were watching the weather later on and the forecaster said that overnight we would have heavy rain and thunder and I looked at G and said “There you go. I told you”. G just looked at me even more oddly.

Lines

So I was brave and spoke to my boss and he has agreed to the secondment. I think this was in part because he had just returned from leave and was feeling a bit down about being back and so, in a moment of weakness, granted me my freedom. I haven’t 100% agreed a leaving date but have said when I want to go and now need to plug away at getting him to agree. I have also been trying to come up with options for ways to fill my post and even if that doesn’t result in anything, at least it might make my boss feel I am not leaving him in the lurch.

My overfriendly colleague, R, came round with a box of chocolates yesterday morning and offered me and the woman I sit next to one. My colleague declined and R said “yes I can see that you’re probably worried you’re a bit overweight after Easter”. I told him that he had overstepped the line again and suggested that he go away. He did. The chocolate I had was nice though.

Good

A nice long weekend over. G is actually off work another two days, so I am even more bitter.

Easter eggs were eaten (I feel they may not last as long this year as in previous years), nice walks were had in the sunshine and countryside. Good books were read. Nice food was eaten. Family was seen and no-one ended up dead Although I am still waiting for an Easter egg from my parents). A successful weekend (last point excepted).

I started to read Kim by Rudyard Kipling, but am not really finding that very readable. I think I might listen to it as a talking book and see if I can get through it that way instead. I am now reading “The Reader”, which I previously read maybe 10 years ago, but am doing so again because G just read it and liked it; it has some thoughts on reading out loud to someone, which as I am doing that at the moment I would like to read what it says; and we will get round to seeing the film at some point and so want to read it again before that. I am now on book 25 this year. It is so nice to be enthusiastic about reading again. Long may it continue.

Now to pluck up the courage to have a difficult conversation with my boss...

Photos

I am on leave now until Tuesday. Hooray! The burglar alarm was serviced this morning and the man turned up about an hour early. I answered the door in my nightclothes and G was still in bed, so we had to get our act together pretty quickly!

Yesterday I got an e-mail offering me a secondment. I was somewhat surprised to get the e-mail, as I hadn’t approached them about it. I am interested, but need to chat to my boss about it next week (potentially having to do a big persuasion job on him as well) and work out all the questions I need to go back with to find out more details of the secondment. But I am really pleased about it.

Anyway, here are a few photos of Madrid. I actually didn’t take many photos so this is the best of them...

The Royal Palace



And again...



A nice park



Plaza Mayor



A slightly bizarre statue of Pope John Paul II who looked like he was about to take to flight.

Wonder

I was thinking about Paul Auster’s books that I have read and wondering why I like them so much. His books seem to pick up on a number of themes - such things as elusive fathers, identity, storytelling, stories within stories, fairytales, alienation, loneliness, coincidence, failure. Many human themes.



If I was to base my decisions on whether to read his books on the descriptions on the back of the books I don’t think I would be tempted to read any of them though. The descriptions always seem to make the books sounds very elitist and inaccessible, but they are actually very readable and engaging.

The description on the back of Moon Palace says:

“"I was the summer that man first walked on the moon. I was very young back then, but I did not believe there would ever be a future."

Spanning three generations, Moon Palace is the story of Marco Stanley Fogg and his quest for identity in the modern world. Moving from the concrete canyons of Manhattan to the cruelly beautiful landscape of the American West, it is a meditation on and re-examination of America, art and the self, by one of America's foremost authors.”

The description on the back of The Music of Chance says:

“'By the time Nashe understood what was happening to him, he was past the point of wanting it to end...'

Paul Auster fuses Samuel Beckett and The Brothers Grimm in this brilliant and unsettling parable.

Following the death of his father, Jim Nashe takes to the open road. But there he picks up Pozzi, a hitchhiking gambler, and soon after is drawn into a dangerous game of high-stakes poker with two eccentric and reclusive millionaires...”

Are those the types of book I like to read? Nope. But the books are really good.

In Moon Palace, which I read while I was on holiday last week, I was struck by a passage in it. A passage that to me seems to be infused with hope and wonder and uplifts me just by reading it and so I share it with you.

"That was how I finally came to be rescued: because the two of them went out and looked for me. I was not aware of it at the time, of course, but knowing what I know now, it is impossible for me to look back on those days without feeling a surge of nostalgia for my friends. In some sense, it alters the reality of what I experienced. I had jumped off the edge of a cliff, and then, just as I was about to hit bottom, an extraordinary event took place: I learned that there were people who loved me. To be loved like that makes all the difference. It does not lessen the terror of the fall, but it gives a new perspective on what that terror means. I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, the one thing powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity."

Bargain

Right, so I still haven’t uploaded my pictures from Madrid. I will... soon...

Anyway I went to the library and I confessed to the guidebook having been stolen and the man looked at me over his glasses in a stern sort of way... and then marked the book as lost, deleted it from my record and I didn’t have to pay anything because they don’t charge people for stolen items. I did look somewhat surprised at not having to pay and there is a bit of me that thinks I should have paid them, but I just gave them a very enthusiastic thank you and wandered off.

In other news, I went to the supermarket last night. I went to Sainsbury’s and there Easter Egg selection is rubbish. They didn’t even sell Dairy Milk eggs. So I did my main shopping there and then went to Tesco, which I drive past to get to Sainsbury’s anyway and bought the eggs there instead. They had better deals on Easter Eggs at Tesco anyway, but the best of the deals is that you can buy two Cadbury’s Creme Eggs for 50p (or one for 44p). You know you want to...

Returns

Right, so I’m back from a very good time in Madrid. It’s a much smaller city than I had expected and was easy to get around. The weather was a bit mixed at the beginning of the week, but by the end of the week it was lovely. I’ll post some photos at some point but haven’t got round to loading them on to my computer yet.

The slight black marks on the holiday were that on the flight on the way out, a small child in the row in front was very sick, which included vomiting on my rucksack. Lovely! G’s bag was also stolen, which fortunately had no money or valuables in it, but did have our guide book and phrase book etc in it, so we bought a new phrase book and then just winged it for what we would do for the rest of the week. The guide book was from the library so I shall have to go and throw myself on their mercy and hope that they don’t cancel my membership (I suspect for a sum of money they can be bought off…).

Madrid is a nice city and we had a somewhat lazy week mooching about, eating food, reading books and seeing the sights. The last few days we were there, we sat in the park each day and I would read to G from the book I was reading – Moon Palace by Paul Auster – which was so pleasant. I would read for maybe 30 minutes to an hour while we sat there in the sunshine and we would chat about the book as we walked around Madrid. I have said it before, but Paul Auster is such a fantastic author (I might say some more about him in the next few days) and G is also now a convert. Hooray! I also found a few Spanish books that I would like to read (in English) and will add them on to my phenomenally long list of books to read.

Anyway, a good place to visit (despite a few problems). Photos will follow at some point. It’s back to work now and G is away for the next couple of nights at a conference. Only three days of work and then I am on leave again. Hooray.