Injuries

When I got back from lunch yesterday, I reached into my bag and came into contact with the wire bit of a notebook. The wire, rather painfully, went under my fingernail and when I pulled my hand back out I was bleeding. I did bravely soldier on (once I had stopped it bleeding, but it didn’t half hurt.

Despite sustaining a work-related injury, we are still well on course to achieving our target. We have just hot two-thirds of our target and the end of August we will be half way through the project. I am still amazed at what the team has achieved and at the beginning of September I think we need to go out and celebrate.

Last night I was saying to G that I will be a bit miffed if I don’t get to stay on at the end of the project, given that my team are churning out a lot more work than the other teams and I have also now been asked to help run a course to teach other people in the office how to do their jobs better and more efficiently etc. Time will tell.

Boycott

I am concerned about the call for a boycott of Scottish products as a result of the release of the Lockerbie Bomber on compassionate grounds. My main worry is that if I complied with such a boycott, does G count as a Scottish product. This could be a problem for our relationship, but actually perhaps more of concern is whether I would get my dinner made for me each day.*

We had a team meeting yesterday morning and I said to my team that I am planning on leaving early on Friday. I said I was thinking about leaving at about 3.30pm. One of them looked at me and said rather dryly “You really do know how to live. Why don’t you go crazy and leave at lunch time...”. I feel that I don’t necessarily have the most racy life.




*I don’t actually have a view one way or the other about the release of Megrahi. I think we should show compassion in some circumstances, but it depends on the individual circumstances of the case and I don’t know all the details to be able to know if it was the right decision. I bet the SNP are wishing they weren’t involved in it though...

Weekends

We had a good weekend. We went to a barbecue on Saturday, which was very nice. I was supervising a dog most of the day due to some young children being there – and lots of food. I did get told off a couple of times for not keeping enough of an eye on the dog so she still managed to lick some small children on a couple of occasions. I don’t think I will be signing up to be the next Dog Whisperer any time soon.

We went for a picnic in Hyde Park yesterday with my sister and nephew. We met at the Princess Diana Memorial, which was actually very good and we ended up spending ages there. You can just roll your trousers up and walk through the water and enjoy it. My nephew loved it and we had lots of fun there. We enjoyed the picnic too and ate lots and I’d brought a flask of coffee and some cake as well. Very civilised. Conkers had started to fall from the trees and my nephew then had a mission to find as many as possible. As ever, it is the minor and somewhat impromptu things that ended up being the highlight for him.

Anyway, it was a good weekend. This weekend coming up G and I are staying on a rather posh London hotel (for free) and are really looking forward to that. Roll on next weekend…

Clues

I was in Trafalgar Square last night. The fourth plinth is still being occupied (in an artistic sense) by people. The first chap I saw there last night just seemed a bit bemused by the whole experience and he just stood about for an hour. Then when a woman took over, she got out her camera and was taking photos of people in Trafalgar Square. I think these people need to understand that they are there to entertain us (meaning me) and not the other way around. I wanted action and art!

There was actually more action down on the ground though (that sounds far more suggestive than it should…) because “One Magic Summer” started last night, which means you can sit in deckchairs in Trafalgar Square and pretend you are on holiday. At about 6pm we were shown the delights of Bad Taste Cru who did some dance thing that probably had some deep meaning that passed my by, but it was quite good.

I saw the Evening Standard billboard which said something like “Murdoch to end free London Paper” and I heard people discussing this headline:

Person 1: So one of the London papers is being stopped. I wonder which one?
Person 2: I don’t know. There’s the London Lite or The Metro, so I guess it must be one of those.

I had to resist the urge to turn to them and say “Or have you thought that maybe it means The London Paper. There was a clue in the headline.” But I thought they might not appreciate this somehow.

It’s the weekend ahead, which includes going to a barbecue on Saturday and for a picnic in Hyde Park on Sunday. Very civilised.

Pace

Yesterday was a strange day at work. Two people were working from home anyway, once texted me and said she needed to work from home due a ‘domestic crisis’, another was in during the morning and then when I was out at lunch time sent me an email to say she was taking some flexi time for the rest of the afternoon and someone else phoned me mid-afternoon to tell me she had got home so late the night before that she was still in her nightclothes and so would take the day as leave. This meant that, apart from me, there was one person in all day. Perhaps some have started to find the task a bit of a slog now.

There is actually one person in the team who is working slower than the others, so I have done some of her work and then given her all the information to write up and she will then get credit for it all. I think she needs a bit of help so that she doesn’t feel as though she is totally lagging behind. I am sort of wondering if we are hitting a point with the work where people are going to need a bit of a push to keep them going. I know I am certainly rather tired, so I guess they are too.

In other matters, I am reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami at the moment and I really like it. It is a bit gruesome and bizarre in places, but it’s a good read. Another good author to have found.

Savings

I seemed to spend a lot of time sorting out financial type things last night:

My credit card bill didn’t seem to have been paid by direct debit. I phoned my credit card company and they assured me they had the money. I am hoping they have taken the money from someone else’s account now!

I shut a savings account that was giving me a rubbish interest rate and am about to move it to a new account that also has a rubbish rate, but not quite so rubbish.

I realised that some Tesco clubcard vouchers were about to expire so cashed them in for some restaurant vouchers. G was going through the pile of vouchers and found two that expired a while ago. So... when I was ‘buying’ the restaurant vouchers, I tried the expired vouchers and one of them still worked, despite being about four months out of date. Result! Let’s hope the voucher now turns up in the post.

I remembered that I needed to apply for £20 cashback for the SatNav I bought. So I filled out the form for that and will send that off today.

Totally unrelated, I really like this song by Arcade Fire. I just thought I would mention this.

Change

G seems to have turned into a different person – a very industrious person. The kitchen is now clean enough to eat your food off (I prefer a plate personally, but there you go…) and during the ad breaks on TV G seems to find various chores to do. This is not normal for G and I am wondering if there might be some alien involvement.

We were thinking about going to stay down on the south coast again at some point and I was checking the website of the place we often stay, only to discover it has changed owners. I don’t think I would want to go and stay there with new owners because it wouldn’t quite be the same. I think we need to find a new seaside destination.

In other news, it is really great to see LKSN back in blogging world, but the circumstances are not so great. You might want to wander over there and be nice.

Moderation

We went to a wedding (not a weeding, as previously stated) on Saturday. It was at 10am in Richmond. This meant an early start. I was not too impressed by this, particularly as I didn’t even know either of the people who were getting married. Anyway, despite the brevity of the marriage ceremony, the registrar certainly packed in more jokes that you’d get in a stand-up routine. There was much laughter, including at the brides middle-name to which the registrar looked at her and said conspiratorially “we all have out secrets” or when he asked if there was any legal reason that they should not be married and the bride started to turn round to look at the guests to which he said “Don’t look round! I’m sure all the guests were handpicked anyway”. I had certainly woken up by the end of the ceremony.

We all then went and drank tea and ate cake at a café, which was very pleasant and then went to a pub and ate some lunch and just sat about and chatted. A very laid back and different experience.

Two of the guests had both done a diet that involved only being allowed to eat 500 calories per day. I did ask one of them if she spent her whole day being bad-tempered, but she assured me she didn’t. Such a drastic change in eating holds no appeal for me at all (not that I am desperate to lose weight). The thing that concerned me though was these two women were saying that they didn’t think there could be any major long-term problem with eating so few calories as they had survived and also there are people like Fern Britton who have had a weight operation which means that they can only eat a very minimal diet. Except surgery like that can actually kill you. Also, women should eat 2000 calories per day, so cutting that by three-quarters doesn’t seem sustainable in the long–term to me. They had both lost several stone watch (at a huge financial cost), but I was most concerned that they didn’t seem to think that there was anything potentially dangerous about eating so little. There almost seemed to be a slight brain-washing behind it – and these were perfectly intelligent people. Everything in moderation is what I say.

Security

Last Friday I felt a bit down and I was wondering why. I realised it was because the builders were about so much and were rather taking over. I think I felt kind of powerless to deal with it and given that it affected my home and my privacy, I found this a rather uncomfortable position to be in.

I bumped into my neighbour on Friday night and she told me that the builders had said they would be back on Saturday. I didn’t really want to speak to the freeholder, who the work was being carried out for privately on the two flats that she owns. She had no idea that they were coming back the next day. But I assured her that the builders said that they were and in the end she agreed to see what she could do, as it would affect my barbecue. She did manage to get them to agree to come early and said that they would be gone by 2pm (it was 5pm as it turned out). In some ways I felt sort of elated that I had tried to do something about it, rather than just letting the builders do as they please.

The next day the builders started work before 9am, but they did start on the windows that would most affect the barbecue. Late morning I found one of them in my garden with his ladder. He put it up in my garden and then trampled on my plants to go up and down the ladder. After a few minute is went outside to say that I didn’t appreciate him standing on my plants and that eh should have spoken to me before coming into my garden. One of the other builders told me that it was not my private property and bizarrely I then had to explain to him that it was and that I owned my flat and garden. Then the main builder shouted at me and told me that I should direct any comments to him because he was “the boss”. I told him that I had nothing to say to him and he answered back (I already knew he was really rude) and in the end had to very firmly say to him that I didn’t want to talk to him and walk off.

It’s not that I can’t stand up for myself (although sometimes I do it somewhat nervously). It’s that I think I find it hard when people somehow threaten (in a psychological sense) my home, which is in its own way a sort of security for me.

Sometimes over the last couple of weeks I have found that I could leave work pretty promptly, but then my heart has sunk because I have realised the builders might be here. There is a part of me that thinks that it is justified to feel the way that I do (and I think it is fine to not like people treating me and my neighbours with the contempt that the builders do). But there is also a pat of me that thinks that I should learn to “hold things more lightly”. If you don’t get your security from ‘things’ then people can’t, either deliberately or accidentally, affect that.

Things to ponder.

Conversations

There have been a couple of stories in the news recently that have made me scratch my head. One is that Alan Duncan decided discuss the impact of the changes to MP’s expenses in a ‘woe is me’ way with the guy who was found digging up his law. Is he showing that he has no judgment whatsoever? If you are going to pick a confidante then I would suggest someone who is clearly opposed to your spending of public money is not the right person. Although Alan Duncan was only joking, as he later went on to say. Of course he was.

I am wondering if it being August has somehow meant that people are allowed to talk on the tube. On the way home a couple of nights ago, a woman struck up a conversation with me and we chatted for a few minutes. Then on the way home last night, the two people next to me started a conversation with each other (although I think one less willingly than the other). I would say it was the hot weather, but I am not sure we have seen enough sunshine for that excuse to work.

Progress

I may have been a little premature yesterday. Last night we were due to eat some of the burgers left over from the barbecue. We’d discussed it the night before and G wasn’t going to eat meat, but implicit in what I said – implicit I tell you! – was that I would. So I went into the kitchen last night to see G removing veggie burgers from the grill and there was no beef in sight! I stammered out “but… but… I thought I was having a beef burger…” and G looked at me blankly and reminded me about not wanting to fall off the veggie wagon too rapidly to which I said “but I’ve always been a carnivore”. And then I ate my veggie burger and it was very nice. I also know that I should be grateful that someone makes me my dinner and my lunches etc etc etc. It was just a shock. G has promised me beef burgers another evening though, so the cow did not die in vain. G did also offer to catch a moth that has been flying about recently and put it in my lunch, so that there was a bit of meat in it. I declined the kind offer.

My team is running about five weeks ahead of schedule at the moment, which is really good news. We are just beginning week 11 and have already reached the mid-way point in our target with about 16 weeks to go. I am just hoping that they don’t start to feel a bit worn out. Anyway, there progress to date has been marvellous and now it’s about keeping them on track. We have achieved far more than I would have expected by this point, so I’m really impressed with that they have done.

Counting

The barbecue was good, but one of the best things that came out of it was – and I know I can trust you to keep a confidence here – G fell off the vegetarian wagon. G confessed to me that there was some chicken eating that took place on Saturday and since then we have eaten chicken *together*. This is indeed a major event and might mean that I get to eat meat on a more regular basis. But I am trying not to celebrate too much in case G regresses.

I am reading a book called Vertigo by W.G. Sebald at the moment. I am not much of a fan. Anyway... on the back of the book there are a number of quotes, one of which says:

“...the fact that W.G. Sebald chooses to tease, dazzle and mystify should not blind us to the fact that he does the one thing that every novelist should do: he entertains, provokes, stimulates and inspires”

If the writer of that review rates himself as being good at English, I hope that he is more realistic in his assessment of his ability at Maths.

Success

Another weekend over. In some ways this weekend felt a bit like being on holiday. We had a barbecue on Saturday and I think it made being at home more of an event and it was very relaxing (after various builder related stresses that I shall explain another day this week). There were about 15 of us, including some children (and there were also two dogs) and we ate food and chatted and tried not to lose any of the children or dogs (the former was more successful than the latter).

One of my neighbours came and we were actually using their garden as well. They have a Jack Russell and he has a habit of disappearing if he is not kept in check. If he is kept in his own garden he will jump up and down and leap at my fence and if you can imagine what it would be like to have a dog on a trampoline then you have the right sort of image of what it was like. Apparently if he is left alone in the hall he has learned to run at speed down the hall and leaps up and opens the living room door. He did manage to get on to the top of my fence three times and he would then be perched there wondering which way to go. My neighbours told me they were training him to do that so he would poo in my garden instead of theirs.

My nephew had a good time and was in floods of tears that he had to go, but somehow I didn’t think this was about me and was more about not being able to play any more. Life is very cruel when you are four years old.

Anyway, it was a good day and the weather was great. I did also manage not to kill the builders and so it was a success all round.

Rain

My mum came round last night. She came to pick up some theatre vouchers because we are meant to be going to the theatre next week and also to drop off some paperwork which is for G and I to have a two night free stay in a very nice hotel in London. When mum left it was pouring with rain and I was about to say that it was like a monsoon and then I remembered that a monsoon is not actually rain, even though that is how we normally use the word, but describes a wind. So I think I said something like “what a lot of rain”. I think I need to find a new word.

We are having a barbecue this weekend, so I am hoping that rain holds off tomorrow. We have pretty much all of the food and need to spend tonight doing some cleaning and making things a bit more presentable. I think this will be about the first time I have actually done anything in the garden other than mow the grass and the odd bit of gardening.

Have a good weekend all.

Tidying

I was doing some major tidying in the garden yesterday to make it look a bit more respectable for the barbecue this weekend. My neighbour came out to speak to me. She told me she was furious with the builders because the day before there had been water leaking into her flat from the one they are renovating. So she told them and they managed to stop it in the end. Then a short time later all of her lights went out and so she got them to come down and have another look and the fuses had burnt out. But they denied it had anything to do with the water leak and said it wasn’t their problem. My neighbour spoke to the freeholder, who didn’t have a clue, but then phoned back yesterday and said it was nothing to do with them because the builder had said he hadn’t caused it. My neighbour still had no lights, so I gave her the phone number of an electrician who is going to come out today to fix it. Today, the freeholder will also get a letter from me saying how unimpressed I am with the builders. Somehow I am not sure that it will make any difference though.

Recently I read a story that suggests I have competition on the book reading front. A woman has borrowed about 25,000 books from the library. It might take me quite a while to catch up, given that she started borrowing books in 1946, but I’m willing to give it a go.

Annoyed

For about six months there has been building work going on where I live because the freeholder is renovating the two flats that she owns. The builders are often about when I leave for work, still here when I get back and about lots over the weekend too. It feels really intrusive and relentless and I have been holding off saying anything to the freeholder because I need to stay in her good books because I want to extend my lease. However, I got home from my work to find that one of the builders had put a bag on the roof of my car. I went up to them and asked them to remove whatever it was and told them that the roof of my car was not the place to put anything. The chap apologised, but I was really annoyed.

So I wrote to the freeholder and asked if she could do something to make them less intrusive. They woke me at 8.15am on Saturday morning and then were about all day going back and forth right in front of my living room window and making lots of noise. We have gone from living somewhere quite private to being in the middle of a building site – and we don’t even get any benefit from it. Them using my car roof to store things was the last straw. So the letter was friendly but exasperated. I am hoping that things will now change, particularly as we are due to have a barbecue this weekend and I don’t want people turning up to find builders’ vans parked on the drive and builders working all around them. Grrrrrrrr…

In other news, Rebecca Romero and James Cracknell had to call off their world record attempt from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Rebecca Romero had injured her knee, so they had to stop. What a shame. I bet they must be gutted.

Reflection

I enjoyed writing a post by hand despite it perhaps being more of a challenge for you to read it. I tend to write very fast which means that I merge letters together, so I often have to make myself slow down a bit to make it more legible. I did actually send someone a card on Sunday and had to try my hardest to make sure she would be able to read it. The card was to someone who was my boss a few years ago. When she retired about four years ago I wrote her a card to tell her what a great manager she has been, even though I hadn’t worked for her for ages by then. Since I started the job I am doing at the moment I realised how much the way she managed me still impacts me today and the way I am doing my job both in terms of the decisions I make and the way I manage my team. So I wrote to her and told her how much she still inspires me and that sometimes when I get stuck I ask myself what she would have advised me to so and often the answer comes! I am not sure I can think of anyone else I would be bold enough to say such things to, but she has crossed my mind several times of late and I wanted to just say thank you to her (again).

I really want to see this film. It’s not because of the subject matter, which is a guy dying from cancer, but because the film is meant to a kind of “love story about Canada” and show an amazing journey across the country. The problem is that I don’t think this film has ever been released in the UK, I don’t have a North American compatible DVD player and I actually I would like to see it at the cinema anyway, as I think it is the kind of film you need to see on the big screen. One day maybe...

Click here

Today's post can be found by clicking on the image below (you may need some help reading it!)

Being

I was wondering why I like Canada so much. I think it is because you don’t have to do anything to be experiencing it. It has galleries and museums and sights and cities, but you can actually just be driving along and be struck by its beauty and immenseness. It is a country where you don’t have to be doing things to be experiencing it. It is a country where you can just “be”.

Anyway, it’s my birthday today. Happy birthday to me. I am having lunch with a couple of old work colleagues and am going out for dinner with G tonight (although somehow I did end up booking that myself…). Anyway, happy birthday to me.

Dislikes

I got my payslip yesterday. They had sorted out the problem last month, so that is fine. But this time they failed to give me my pay rise. I am still paid as I if I work for the organisation that I am on secondment from and so I was due a pay rise this month. The new organisation didn’t seem to know this and so I didn’t get it. They are looking into it...

I saw someone from my old team yesterday. She was in a meeting and I went to wave to her when I realised that it was a meeting of all of my old team. They beckoned me into the room and so I caught up with them all for a few minutes. I told them about my holiday and one person asked if I had seen a bear. I said I hadn’t. Someone asked if I had seen a Mountie. I said I hadn’t. I told them that until then I thought I’d had a great holiday, but thanks to them had now concluded that it was rubbish.

There are some people that I dislike in life:

People who jam photocopiers and then scurry off without dealing with it or even reporting it.
People who take up too much space on the tube by spreading themselves across as many seats as possible. (Incidentally, the tube seems remarkably busy during rush hour, even though it is the school holidays.)
People who see you press the button to call the lift and then go and do the same thing right after you. Let me tell you, it doesn’t make the lift come any quicker, but it might make me kill you. (I feel quite strongly about this it seems.)

I think there are more people than this, but I shall leave it at that for now.

Tethers

I had a remarkably peaceful return to work. No-one else was in, so I just went through my e-mails and got on with my work. This was a rather more relaxed day than I had envisaged because I had thought there might be a massive pile of work waiting for me. More people should be in today, so I am hoping that it doesn’t turn up today instead...

Although I did have a relaxing day, I had a ranty evening. I have pretty much reached the end of my tether with John Lewis. I went to John Lewis on Oxford Street yesterday because that is how I have now been advised to get the refund on the SatNav. I was unimpressed with them and that is the day after they scratched my kitchen floor. So I have now written to them and explained how rubbish they have been over the last three years. I also wrote a couple of other complaint letters about some other issues e.g. Avis being rubbish about allowing an additional driver. I am like Jeremy Paxman complaining about the quality of M&S underpants. G is worried that I am going to be even worse, when I get older (and I get a year older on Friday so this may happen soon...).

Adventures

It’s back to work today *sigh*. I am glad I took yesterday off because I felt really tired all day and don’t think I could have coped with being at work. The new washing machine was delivered and that all works fine, but after they had installed it and left I realised they had damaged my kitchen floor. So I phoned John Lewis and they are going to give me some compensation for it. I also phoned the branch of John Lewis that I bought the SatNav from to find out what was happening about the refund and after being passed to various people the conclusion was that the only way to get the money back was to go back to the branch in person and they would then sort it out. I did explain to them that this was different to the advice I had previously been given and, seeing as they had all my personal details, they could have phoned to tell me. So John Lewis is in my bad books once again.

The SatNav proved totally invaluable while we were away, so I am glad I got it. We would never have made it to various places had we not had it. Even navigating our way back to the airport in Montreal was a bit of a trial, so it saved many arguments! When we were in New Brunswick, we did get very lost on a walk, which was because we took a slightly wrong turn. As we walked on and on, knowing that the walk should only have taken an hour and a half and had taken three hours so far, I turned on the SatNav to see if I could vaguely locate where we were. It showed that we were in the middle of nowhere and quite a long way from the road. I am not sure that this information was comforting, but it did perhaps at least help me to confirm to myself that we were very lost – and without any food and very low on water. Some four hours after we started the walk I finally made it back to the car and then went and collected G who I had left further back due to G being in pain etc due to some nasty mosquito bites obtained in Nova Scotia. I have never been so glad to make it back to the car...

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.