Getting on

The training on Saturday went ok. I am still sort of wondering what I have signed up to do and I think it is going to be really difficult, but nothing ventured, nothing gained I guess. I did find that some of the people seemed to have quite set views about things and I felt that a bit uncomfortable with that at times. I’m not sure if that was because I thought their views were wrong or if I just thought they would talk me down if I tried to put across my view. But it disconcerted me a bit anyway. I have various bits of homework to do, which includes having to learn something off by heart. I am not sure I will have perfected that by next week though – and I think we might get tested on it. I’d better get on with it.

The two most memorable things from the day were not actually about the training, but other things. First was lunch (surely the thing people always remember from training?) which was home made Caribbean chicken and rice and peas. It was made by the mum of someone who works there and it rather better than the sandwiches I had been expecting. The other thing was that a woman in the group invited me to go to a book group and so I am thinking about doing that.

G is back tonight. Hooray.

Off

I had the day off work today. I met up with my sister and nephew and we went to see the Changing of the Guards and then went to the National Gallery and looked at some paintings and ate jam and scones in the café there. I am no expert on art but we were trying to get my nephew to look at some of the paintings and he then had to describe what he saw and tell use whether he liked the painting or not (he generally did like them). He also has a very good sense of direction and was really good at directing us using the map we had picked up at the entrance.

G flew up to Scotland this afternoon and will be back on Monday. I am wondering quite what I will do with myself on Sunday. I lived on my own for ages and never had a problem entertaining myself, but it is strange how quickly we adapt to other circumstances. I am busy most of the day tomorrow because the training for my volunteering starts. I am sort of looking forward to that, but also wondering what I have signed up to…

I assume G made it to the airport. I walked with G to the bus stop, as I needed to get the tube about the same time. It was only on the way there that G thought to wonder which terminal the flight was from. I texted a friend who looked it up on her computer and then texted me back. G phoned the airline anyway to check. I guess I normally sort these things out for us and G just hadn’t thought about it. G also texted me and said “do I get off the bus at [a station near where we live]” to which I replied “No, [station much further away]”. This did not bode well. I am going to drive to the airport on Monday and collect G so hopefully it will be a bit less fraught then.

Stay

My team has been given a stay of execution. We can now stay together until the end of December (although I guess the second half of December will be a bit of a right off anyway). After that? Who knows… Maybe we will get another stay of execution of sorts.

Anyway, at work the managers at my grade have been asked to apply for a new project that the office is going to run and it will be the ‘replacement’ for my team. I can apply to run it (and may or may not get it) or if one of the other managers does it then I will backfill their post. They want a side of A4 explaining why we would want to do the job and I am just not sure that I can be bothered to fill out the application. I would be interested in doing the project, but equally would be fine with backfilling the vacated post. But I feel as though I should apply and the work would be quite interesting, but sort of venturing into the unknown… And also possibly entirely reshaping the way that we work, which might or might not be welcome. Hmm, I have a couple of weeks to get the application written, so we shall see if I can summon up the energy.

I am off work tomorrow. I can’t wait.

Books

As you might have noticed, I do also have a book blog, which is, primarily, my way of keeping note of the books I have read and some of the basic details of them. Since January last year, I have read 121 books, 61 of which were read this year, which is probably quite good going.

I was looking at some of the details of the books I have read over the last 22 months and was really surprised that 60 of the books have been written by British authors, which, in case you haven’t worked it out, represents almost dead on half the books I have read. The next nationality I have read the most of is American authors – and I have read 25 books by Americans. The latter figure is probably somewhat skewed by my discovery of Paul Auster because he is my top ranking author – I have read six of his books since I started that blog and imagine I will read several more by him. The author that comes next is John Wyndham (a Brit) and I have read five of his books – of which The Day of the Triffids was the best.

Over that time period I have actually really broadened the types of books I read, thanks in part to the book ‘1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die’. I am thinking of stopping at book 1000 in case it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I have also got some great book ideas from other bloggers, such as Sarah and I continue to be amazed at some of the books out there (although I have also read some that I have found absolutely dire).

I really like books and my biggest problem seems to be finding the time to read them all.

Invitations

I seem to be suffering jetlag from the change in the clocks this weekend. I am very pathetic. I think I just am so used to going to be at about the same sort of time most nights that any break to the routine and I get sleep deprivation. I know that we actually got an extra hours sleep, but I still went to bed later than normal and somehow my body clock take a bit of time to adjust to any change. The sooner I can retire the better.

We went to my parents’ house for dinner last night. We had sausage and mash and G fell off the veggie wagon again and ate pork sausages. Mum would have cooked G something different, but the temptation was too great. I had briefed my family not to comment too much is G ate meat, as I feel that being supportive of such moves is for the greater good. My nephew and sister were there as well and my nephew just does not get that things are not quite so hyper on a week night and tried to entice me into various activities, but without success. This did include him wanting to compare belly buttons, but I declined his kind invitation. I am actually taking Friday off work to do stuff with my nephew so I will have to be on better form then (but I think I will probably still decline the belly button invitation).

Furore

Yesterday morning I was not very impressed when builders turned up to do some work for the freeholder in her empty flat. They had already been there all day on Saturday and then turned up at 9am on a Sunday morning. I phoned the freeholder at about 9.20am to ask if they were going to be there all day, as I was so unimpressed that they were that at all during a weekend. The freeholder was confused, as she was under the impression that all they had left to do was to put in the cooker – and they had also been asked not to do any work at weekends. Her husband was going to come over later in the day to see what was going on, but I went out at lunch time so have no idea if he did.

I have been interested in the discussions about Nick Griffin and his appearance on Question Time. I think it was fine that he was on the programme, but that it shouldn’t have been quite so focussed on him and he should have been able to show his true colours (do you see what I did there?) on a range of issues i.e. that his party lacked any policies beyond anything on race and immigration. Anyway, the whole furore reminded me of something I read in the book Freakonomics, which explained part of the downfall of the Ku Klux Klan*. Basically in the 1934s a man called Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Klan and by way of radio broadcasts gave away their ‘secrets’ thus destroying its ‘mystery’ and making it a bit of a laughing stock. He supplied to secrets to Hollywood writers who then used them as part of the plots for the Superman radio programme broadcasts, which children listened to. The children then re-enacted these scenes in their playground games and it helped to undo the power of the Klan and people were embarrassed to be associated with it. I am sure that is a very simplistic summary of what really happened and there were likely to be a number of other factors as well, but there is a part of me that thinks that maybe not taking the party too seriously might actually be the what could bring about its downfall. This is not the same as not seeing the threat it could pose. But laughing at something, rather than treating it like an enemy to be defeated – which surely puffs it up and makes it feel stronger and a force to be reckoned with - is potentially a better way to bring about its demise. Just a thought…

As a minor aside on another matter – that of the Jan Moir/ Stephen Gately furore – if you want to read a really good take on the shallowness of journalists of that ilk, you should read “What a Carve Up” by Jonathan Coe. One of the characters is a really brilliant satire on that type of journalism. It is also a very good book and worth reading anyway.





*I can’t quite recall how this bit of the book had anything to do with economics, but we will brush over that.

Mixed

So, unexpectedly, yesterday I found out about my job and also the future of my team. The news is that I can stay on in the office for longer (until at least the end of the financial year) but my team is being disbanded. Another team will be created that I might or might not manage and might have people from my current team in it but might not. So it is all a bit uncertain, but I do have a job and I do also have a slightly miserable team, as they were very disappointed by the news that they were being split up (as was I). I will have a team to manage but at the moment it isn’t clear who that will consist of, but all should become clear over the next few weeks. So I am pleased, but a bit disappointed.

Anyway… G and I went out for dinner with my mum last night, which was very pleasant and didn’t cost very much either as we redeemed some TopTable points. The restaurant was very busy, and so there was a fairly quick turn around on the table, but the food was very nice.

When I got home I phoned the woman from my team who had been in hospital and found out she has now been released, which is good news. I told her what the decision was about the team and she wasn’t very happy about that and said she would talk to the others and think about what she will do. At least she is on the mend now, so that is good.

Advice

The course went pretty well yesterday and the feedback was all very good – and the new bosses was very complimentary, which was pleasing and hopefully it will have convinced them that they cannot possibly survive without me.

Last night I spoke to the woman in my team who is in hospital. She is still there and it seems they have now identified that she has an enlarged heart. They don’t seem to have worked out why this is the case or what can be done about it. I asked her a few questions but she said that without her usual source of information - Google- she was a bit stumped. I was actually sitting in front of my computer when we were discussing it but didn’t really think it was wise to offer to look it up for her in case I made some terrible discovery about life expectancy or some such thing.

Anyway… A couple of nights ago I realised that sometimes it is good to take advice. I got on the tube was about to sit down when someone told me that seat was wet. I put my hand on the chair and said it didn’t feel that wet, so said I would sit there anyway. But after a couple of minutes I realised that I should perhaps have heeded that person’s advice as the dampness seeped through my trousers in greater and greater quantities. By then though I felt that I had rather committed myself to sitting there and felt I had to abide by my decision – and in fact giving up the seat would have made it available for someone else, which would have just passed the problem on. So I endured it, but took my trousers off when I got home and had to wash them as they were very wet and had also picked up a somewhat unpleasant odour. Sometimes it is worth listening to the advice of strangers.

Keeping on

I spent most of yesterday evening, in fact all of it apart from when I ate dinner, doing work. The course went pretty well yesterday, but I foolishly agreed to conduct an interview, which will be videoed, today and I hadn’t plotted out the interview so I had to spend last night doing it. I haven’t actually agreed a script with the other person because it is meant to be vaguely genuine looking, but this might prove to be a mistake! Both of us are nervous that we are going to be one to let the side down, but hopefully we can wing it.

I also spent a while talking to the woman in my team who was admitted to hospital on Monday. She is still in hospital, but seemed in good spirits. This was rather an improvement on what she was like on Monday because for quite a while she thought she was going to die, including when a doctor saw her at the hospital and he did various things and lots of blood started to appear. I think it has all been rather traumatic and she isn’t entirely happy that they still don’t know what is wrong with her, but they appear to have ruled out some of the more serious options.

Hopefully this is the last team drama for now. My team are lovely though and my boss commented to me yesterday about how touched she was to see how enthusiastic my team were about me. Hopefully it will be enough to convince them to keep me on...

Survival

The two people in my team who were not getting on seem to have patched up their differences. I believe they even gave each other a hug yesterday. So, that is certainly an improvement.

The new team related issue is that one of my team is currently on hospital due to breathing issues. She got taken to hospital yesterday morning and had various tests run and stayed in hospital over night. I think she might get released today. My team are nothing if not eventful. Actually when I got into work one of my team told me straight away that the partner of this colleague had phoned and my team wanted me to phone straight away to find out if something was wrong. This wasn’t because they are nosy but because our office seems to have a higher than average death rate and they therefore wanted me to make sure that something really serious hadn’t happened. So I phoned as soon as I sat down at my desk and the rest of the team breathed a collective sigh of relief that it wasn’t worse news. It’s amazing how paranoid you can get working in my office! I hope things improve today.

Anyway, I am off out early today to go and meet up with the other person I am running this course with. I hope I survive the next two days.

Course

I had quite a busy weekend, but the majority of it was spent doing work. I am running a two day course on tomorrow and Wednesday and I was running through all my material for it, rewrote small parts of it and also had to write a scenario for something I foolishly agreed to do on the Wednesday. Part of the course is about conducting really difficult interviews, so I have arranged for another manager to join us on the second day and I am going to interview him and he is going to be really obstructive and we are then going to get the group to tell us how we could have done it differently etc. If it works, it should work well, but there is also much scope for disaster... I also found out last week that my two new bosses are coming on the course. Given that they have yet to decide if I can stay on in the office, this is going to feel like a two day job interview!

Yesterday we did find time to go out for a walk in the sunshine and we also went for dinner at the local Lebanese restaurant. The food was nice, but the service was so incredibly slow. I’m not sure I would go there for a meal again, but I might go there for a coffee and some baklava.

Anyway, I shall be so glad when the next couple of days are over...

Agreement

Yesterday was another difficult day. The woman from my team that I had spoken to the previous day phoned me and told me how utterly upset she was by the whole conversation (by the content rather than upset with me). She burst into tears on the phone and so I spent ages talking to her and trying to help her get what I had said into perspective. I managed to get her from a position of wanting to just walk away and never come back to agreeing to sit down with the other person and for them to communicate directly, which I do genuinely think will solve the problem.

I then had to speak to the other person (both of them work from home on a Thursday and Friday) and I couldn’t get in touch with her until about 4pm. She had seen how upset the other one was the previous day and had been upset by that and so we then talked about that for a while. She has agreed that they should talk to each other and hopes that they can clear the air. Now I have got them to the place of being willing to speak to each other, I shall step back and leave them to deal with it.

Anyway... I like the new PostSecret video (although it is slightly clichéd at the end). So I shall leave you to reflect on that.

Hard days

Yesterday was an odd day. I met with my two new bosses, which was fine except that the big boss had clearly not told them that a) I could very, very probably stay on and b) my team was very, very likely to stay together. They told me that the realised the need to make a decision very soon and would get back to me.

Anyway, my team then met with the new bosses and that went well and at one point someone in the team said what a great manager I am and they all then gave me a round of applause. I was rather touched and the new bosses asked me afterwards how much they had paid me!

It all went downhill from then on. I spoke to the woman in my team who had upset someone else in the team. She was utterly shocked by the news that she had upset someone and couldn’t understand why what she had said might have been upsetting. We talked about that for a bit. But she was also upset that the other person had come to me rather than spoken to her about – as if it was the other way around, she would have spoken to the other person. I said that not everyone deals with things in the same way and that there was nothing wrong with me being the one who was told, and that it as a manager I then needed to do something and failing to do so would have just been sloping shoulders on my part. I did explain that I wasn’t accusing her of anything and that I was talking to her raise the concerns and to listen to what she had to say. But I did say that perhaps I should have encouraged the other woman to consider talking to her directly, even if she then declined to do so.

It didn’t really go very well and I just felt that I should have dealt with it differently, even though I’m not really sure what else I should have done. She was very upset by the whole thing and after we had finished speaking she then spoke to someone else in the team to say how upset she was (by the situation rather than with me). That person then spoke to me at the end of the day and said that they were going to speak on the phone last night, at which point she would say that she thought the (original) person who was upset actually deserved an apology and intended to say so on the phone in as tactful a way as possible. But it’s a mess and I am now concerned that the team might start to unravel and all the good things we have achieved will get lost or at least seriously overshadowed by this. *sigh*

Then while I was eating dinner, my mum phoned to say that my sister was having a crisis and she was going to drive over and see her, but could I phone and talk to my sister while she was on the way there. So I spent a while talking to my sister, who was not doing very well at all, and trying to help her piece together some even very vague thoughts about the way forward.

It was a hard day yesterday.

Lines

My team are meeting with the new bosses today and we get the chance to ay what we want to happen in the future. Whether they will agree is another matter, but at least the team have the chance to have their say.

One of my team spoke to me yesterday and said that she is feeling rather “got at” by someone else in the team and I can kind of see what she means. I think they are both quite strong characters, but in different ways, and this sometimes means that one of them is a bit harsh at times. I said that I’d talk to the other person about it to see what is going on. The one who spoke to me said that she is thinking of changing the days she comes into the office because she is finding it all a bit much. I said that wasn’t very fair and that I’ll see what I can do.

I suppose my fear about it is that I will talk to K about it and put her back up and she will then say that she doesn’t want to continue to be in the team when the six months comes to an end. I don’t want that to happen and so I feel as though I have a fine line to tread in terms of challenging questionable behaviour without appearing to be too draconian. Sometimes I don’t like being a manager.

Quality

My team went out for lunch yesterday. We went to a rather nice restaurant very close to work. Work was paying for it, as a reward for our hard work, so we decided to go somewhere posh that was doing a good deal. So we went to a restaurant that was part of the London Restaurant Festival, which finishes today actually. We ate some great food and had a very pleasant time. We are thinking of going back there for breakfast some time soon, as you can get a really good deal on it through TopTable. Fortunately, all of my team are keen on eating so they like to consume as much as possible. In fact yesterday I took a box of Quality Street to the team meeting and they had eaten every one of them by the end of the meeting (and I didn’t eat any of them!).

I seem to be having a slow reading month. I started one book and then decided I didn’t like. So I started another one and am not far off finishing that. But my reading seems to be lacking inspiration at the moment. I need to rectify this by finding a book that gets my reading juices flowing*.

In other news, this article gives a whole new meaning to pets being therapy.



*I’m not really sure what “reading juices” actually are, but I shall leave that to your imagination.

Success

This weekend was a mixture of the mundane and the creative. The most creative thing I did this weekend was to make some raspberry ripple ice cream. I really like raspberry ripple ice cream and this was a sort of cheesecakey version of it. I think it worked fairly well, but wasn’t 100% convinced. I also couldn’t quite work out how you put the swirls in without making the whole thing turn a pink colour, but managed to work out a method that was fairly successful.

My sister and nephew came over for lunch yesterday (hence me making the ice cream). G made some sweetcorn pancakes to start and then we had sausage and mash. My nephew was particularly enthusiastic about the pancakes, which he described as “the best thing ever”. After lunch we went to the park and fed the ducks and looked at some budgies that were in an aviary there – expect there were two dead budgies on the floor of the cage, so we decided it was probably best to move on fairly quickly.

Today, my two new bosses start. I already know them, as I worked for them both a few years ago. I am hoping that they will confirm that I can stay on and we can get it signed off asap. As we have already exceeded our target, I am hopeful that they will not take much convincing of the benefits of keeping me on. We shall see...

Sorted

I am pleased to report that I managed to get through a day of work yesterday without anybody dying (that I know of).

I have also pretty much finished writing the first day of the course that I am running and have prepared all of the materials to go with it. Just the second day to sort now…

At work I sit on my own. I am only a few feet from my team, but when we selected the desks I left it to them to sit together and then took what was left, which I knew would mean sitting on my own. Anyway, another team is coming over to join us and one of them phoned me today to ask if she could sit next to me. It was like being back at school, but in a nice way, given that I hated school. I think some of it is that she doesn’t want to sit near her own manager, but I shall take the compliment and look forward to being less lonely.

Sombre

It has certainly been an interesting week. I spoke to the person from my team who had made the mistake. She told me she had hardly slept because it had been on her mind so much. I said to her that she’d already spoken to the big boss and as far as he was concerned, the matter was now closed and not to beat herself up about it. We chatted for a while and I think she felt better by the end of the conversation.

My team also reached, and exceeded, its target yesterday. We have now achieved what we had until the end of November to do. However, we still have absolutely loads of work to do, so I have told them they can’t put their pens down. It’s good timing though, as we are going out for lunch next week and also the new bosses start, so to be able to tell them that we have completed our really stretching target already. So that’s good.

Other things are not so good though. Yesterday we heard that a colleague died at the weekend. We hadn’t worked with her for a while, but we were all rather shocked by this, and there were several people from the office who were still in regular contact with her. She was a really nice person and we used to be in the same team when I worked in the office previously. So that was bad enough news in itself, but actually someone else from the office (who had also left a while ago) died on Monday. So four people from the office have died in about three years. We don’t do anything dangerous or that risks our lives. It isn’t even a big office. None of the people were even old. But we seem to have the most phenomenally high death rate.

Errors

Yesterday, I spent an incredibly tedious day in a meeting. I did chat to my new boss who starts on Monday though. I did already know her, but it was nice to catch up with her and be reminded what she was like. I then went back to my desk for about an hour to then be contacted by the big boss to say that someone in my team had made rather a big mistake while she was out on a visit. He had found this out from the place she had visited, but she phoned him later and explained herself what had happened.

I think she was absolutely mortified by it all and for her to have phoned the big boss showed that she knew she had messed up. He’s a nice bloke though and will have been pretty decent about it. She’s not in the office again until tomorrow so I will have a chat with her then. But as the big boss has already talked to her about it, it will be primarily to see if she is ok and so she knows I am aware what happened. I judge things on overall performance and she won’t face any further consequences of it – and I don’t think there is anything I could say that would make her feel any worse than she probably already does.

Brief

Yesterday was interesting… there was some news that wasn’t so great, but I can’t even begin to explain about that, so the least said the better. However, in good news, I got offered a place as a volunteer. The scary man left a voicemail so I sent him an e-mail last night to make sure that I didn’t get into trouble for not being enthusiastic enough. The training starts at the end of the month, so I need to get some practice in now so that I don’t cry if the man tells me off.

Worthy

On Thursday last week I walked past a van that was making a delivery to a house near where I live. I happened to glance at its tyres and saw that one of them was totally bald – it had no tread on in it whatsoever and was basically an entirely smooth tyre. I would have spoken to the driver, but he was about to drive off. The tyre looked completely dangerous so I thought about what to do as I sat on the tube going to work. By the time I got to work I had decided that they best thing to do was to contact my local neighbourhood policing team (I don’t know if you get these all over the UK, but in London there are a small group of officers dedicated to each area of a borough). So I sent them an email giving them as much of the registration as I could remember and an internet link to the company and explained my concerns.

The next morning the police emailed me back and said they’d spoken to the company the previous day and spent ages talking to them about the importance of the roadworthiness of vehicles etc. It was such a helpful response from the police and I was so impressed with the way they dealt with my concerns. I wasn’t really sure whether it was worth contacting them but was glad that I had because they took what I said really seriously. I wouldn’t do it over minor things, but I was so concerned about the state of that van (and it was a big and reputable company as well) and thought it would have been remiss to do nothing.

In other news, on Friday the big boss told me that he intends to extend my secondment, which is really good news. Not only that, but he thinks my tea, should stay together (assuming none of them want to go back to their previous teams because they only signed up for six months). I still want to get it all in writing and I have two new bosses starting in a week’s time and they will have to agree it. But it is all looking very hopeful and I now just need to get them to sign in blood.

Persuasive

None of my team were in yesterday (and actually none of them are in today either), but I was talking to one of them on the phone. She was telling me how unimpressed she is with the manager who I mentioned in yesterday’s post and that she doesn’t rate her at all. There’s no point explaining here why she thinks that, but what the person from my team also said was how much my team want me to stay on and that they want to keep on working for me after the project has finished and she was going to make sure that they said this when my new bosses start in just over a week’s time. It’s nice to get a vote of confidence from them and I hope they are quite persuasive with my new bosses.

Yesterday I had the interview for the volunteering I want to do. I was interviewed by two people, one of whom was the scary man who I met a few weeks ago. I think I managed to escape relatively unscathed (as in didn’t get told off!) and the interview seemed to go quite well. I’ll find out next week if they want me. If I get it, it’s going to be pretty tough work, but I think I will learn lots – not least, how to deal with scary people.

Pressure

Another team is meant to be joining us from the main office. That team’s manager is the person in the office I seem to have a bit of a mixed relationship with. I think she gets stressed quite easily and, certainly when I started, she was quite off with me several times, which I think was because she wasn’t coping very well with all the things she had to do.

She came over yesterday to see the desks, which was interesting. Her team had already been over the previous day and they were in the process of choosing their desks, but she said to me “I told them they needed to stop because I needed to go over and see the desks so I could pick mine and they would then all fit in around me”. I just looked at her and said “ok”, but I wasn’t very impressed by that. There are times when managers have to be in the lead, but I really don’t think this was one of them. When my team had to pick their desks, I told them to decide amongst themselves and I would then take what was left. I knew this would mean I ended up sitting on my own, but it really isn’t an issue and it was more important that the rest of the team got to sit together.

She then told me she had to rush off because she had so much work to do. She is going to be on leave as of the end of this week, so I just said that if I didn’t see her before she went that I hoped she had a good holiday. Apparently earlier in the day she had also said that unless the office took on more staff to form another team that she couldn’t see there would be any point in me staying on at the end of my secondment, which I didn’t think was a very helpful thing to say and I don’t suppose she would have appreciated it if I was broadcasting my opinions on whether I thought she should continue to be employed by the office. She’s a nice person, I think she just doesn’t cope well with change or pressure.

Back tomorrow

A late night and no brain power this morning...

Progress

My team is so near to reaching its target that we should hopefully have done so by the end of next week. Then we have seven more weeks to go until the end of the project (and potentially my secondment. Gulp…). I am waiting for a decision to be made on my secondment but the big boss doesn’t want to decide because there is going two new people are starting very soon who will be between me and him and he doesn’t want to cut across their decisions. I can understand that, but it leaves me in a slightly precarious decision in the interim – and I will have to find anew job very quickly if they decide I can’t stay on.

I have made progress on preparing for the course I am meant to be teaching on. I hate role plays but there is something I want to demonstrate and the only way I can think of doing it is via one. I have convinced another manager to help me with this and we are basically going to rely on people on the course to give us directions. This could be interesting… I have also got someone else to agree to come along to talk us through apiece of his work and we are then going to use that as the main focus of the second day of the course. Today I am meeting up with the other person who is going to be running the course, so I am hoping that she will think all the things I have sorted out are ok (we discussed them in advance, but at the time it was all a bit hit and miss as to whether I would be able to sort all these things out). I think it is all starting to come together now and I just need to finish writing what I need to cover and then hope that I can explain it all on the day. There’s nothing like a bit of pressure.

Banned

It seems that this week is Banned Books week, which is an initiative to celebrate the freedom to read and the efforts of some to ban certain books. In the UK we are probably in a fairly ‘safe’ position when it comes to books banned by the state. The only ones I can think of are ones that the Government stopped being published because they were a threat to ‘National Security’ – so, books like SpyCatcher and Andy Hayman’s books that was due to be published this year on the London Bombings. I have mixed feelings about such bans. I am definitely no pro-banning books, but I am also not pro people who are trying to make a bit of money by selling their story and revealing things that they shouldn’t - be that state ‘secrets’ or details of a relationship.

But actually Banned Books week is about something more subtle than that. It is more about banning books from the educations system because they promote ‘unwholesome vales’ – which might be issues about race or sexuality or the language contained in it. Of those, actually the one I would have the least issue with not allowing to be used in schools would be ones with offensive language. But generally banning something is not a good thing (for a whole variety of reasons) and it can often have the opposite effect anyway buy drawing more attention to the issue or giving the banned issue or person something of a cult status (for good or ill).

A great book on the consequences of banning of books is Fahrenheit 451 (which I read last year), maybe this week would be a good time to give it a go if you have never read it.

Moments

I saw something on TV last night which was talking about life changing events. I think there is going to be something on TV later this year or next year, which will be made up of stories from members of the public explaining about events that have changed their lives. It didn’t have to be anything amazing or profound and it could actually have been something that lasted a long time rather than being a one off event, but it was something that changed their life as a result.

So G and I were talking about this while we ate dinner and I had no problem with identifying a significant event in my life. In 2000 I went to New Zealand to see a friend and while I was there, her housemate wanted to do a skydive, so we went along to watch. They asked if anyone else wanted to do it and my friend said she would and I thought about it and just couldn’t really think of a reason to say “no”, so I said I would as well. The skydive was really amazing and this incredibly exhilarating experience that left me on a high for quite some time. I am generally a fairly risk averse person and not one who tends to make many spur of the moment decisions, but that experience was just amazing.

When I got back to the UK, I went back to work and a short time afterwards came to the conclusion that I didn’t really like my job and actually wanted to do something totally different. That was quite a scary prospect, but I thought back to doing that skydive and how scary the prospect was and how risky that felt - and yet the end result was so amazing.

I changed careers as a result of that and generally I would say that was a good move. But actually it also led to a number of other changes - the people I met, the things that I have learned, the ability to buy somewhere to live. Ultimately perhaps I would have changed jobs anyway and maybe have ended up doing something sort of similar, but I don’t think I would be doing what I am now if it hadn’t been for making that decision to change careers at the particular time I did and I only did it then because of that skydive.

I don’t believe in fate and my life would just have gone down a different course, whether for better or worse if it hadn’t been for that skydive. But ultimately I am here now right where I am at because of it. I am not sure I can think of another moment that I can see as being quite so significant in terms of setting off a sequence of events and to me it is a really defining moment.

Voices

Yesterday evening, for some unknown reason, I was thinking about how who the narrator is in a book can really change what you learn of the story (more on that another time). Anyway, this suddenly made me wonder what the voice was that I hear in my head when I read. This then made me wonder if the voice G hears has a Scottish accent. At this point G got home from work, so I took the opportunity to ask. But G doesn’t seem to hear a “voice” when reading, which I find perplexing (although this does also make me wonder if I am “hearing voices”, which probably wouldn’t be a good thing – unless they gave me the winning lottery numbers).

Then I was trying to work out if the ‘voice’ I hear when I read is my own, but actually I’m not sure it is because I don’t think it is enough of a sound to actually be a clear voice in that sense. However, when I recently read “The Girl Who Played with Fire”, I heard a lot of that as though a bloke with a Swedish accent was reading it, although that was because I listened to the previous book in that series as a talking book and it was read by a bloke with a Swedish accent and I was ‘hearing’ his voice.

The more I try and concentrate on what the voice sounds like, the more weird it becomes to think about it and it actually gives me a strange physical feeling in my head. I still can’t quite work out what it is that I hear beyond there being words.

We tested this last night (we really need to watch more television) and G seems not to hear the words really but sees the words on the page and almost just kind of “absorbs” them. Although, with real concentration, does seem to be able to hear a voice, but that isn’t the norm.

I need to stop thinking about this because the more I think about it, the more perplexing it becomes.

Stressed

I went and got some Tamiflu for G yesterday. I don’t think G has swine flu, but once you’ve got your prescription number I think you really need to go and get it or else you might lose your allocation later on (I don’t actually know that, but didn’t want to take the risk). I do think the diagnosis system of the internet is a bit weird. I can understand that they want to keep swine flu contained, but there must be so many people who are wrongly diagnosed.

Towards the end of October I am meant to be helping to run a course. This will basically consist of teaching people how to do various parts of the work of the office. I feel a bit stressed about this because I can do the job just fine, but in some ways I do some of it by instinct and other parts I am not entirely sure I can describe what you have to do. So I have a month to work out how to explain various techniques in a way that is coherent and useful to other people – and there is a lot of ground to cover and people to speak to because I need examples etc. I think this is quite a tall order to be able to do this and I am also not an expert. I often just bumble my way through, but generally come up with quite decent results. I don’t think that is the sort of thing I should be saying on the course though. There is much work to do for this and not enough time to do this during the working day so I spent some time last night going through the outline someone has given me of the sorts of things I need to cover and am now trying to work out how to fill the massive time slots that have been allotted to me. As is the case when I do public speaking, you should always be fully prepared and there is no substitute for that. I have so much I need to do before the course...

Practical

G wasn’t very well yesterday. We had wondered if it was swine flu, but I’m not convinced it is. Anyway, G asked me to buy a thermometer, so I had a look for one in Sainsbury’s on my lunch break (they don’t sell them incidentally, or not in the one I went to anyway). I was scanning the shelves to see if I could spot one and I noticed that the top shelves of one set of shelving had lots of remedies for children’s ailments. On the shelves directly below these remedies were all the contraceptives. I wondered if this was a subliminal form of contraception warning of the dangers of sex – years of dealing with children’s coughs and colds. Perhaps even sponsored by the Catholic Church as a form of aversion therapy?

I did buy a thermometer but from a pharmacy. You don’t seem to be able to get mercury type ones any more. You now only seem to be able to get ones with a digital display. I think the woman in the pharmacy must have realised it had been a long time since I’d bought a thermometer given that I did ask if the had the other sort. I just thought one without a battery was a bit more long lasting. Ever practical…

G doesn’t have a temperature as it turns out, having checked about 15 times. The only time G’s temperature went up was directly after having drunk a mouthful of tea. Funny that.

Disagreements

I found my outgoing power company on Friday. They said they wanted to check that it was me who had requested to switch companies. I confirmed it was. The chap then asked why I was changing companies. I explained that they wrote to me and from their letter it was clear that they were putting me on to an expensive deal so I looked about for a new one. Then the conversation went as follows:

Me: The cost of the electricity will be half the cost of staying with you.
Eon: It might be cheaper but there is no way it is half the cost.
Me: Er, actually it is. I have checked all the figures.
Eon: There is no way it is half the cost. You must have got the figures from some bogus website, as there is no way it could be that much less.
Me: Well it is. I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree. Ok thanks very much. Bye. *Puts the phone down*

I didn’t get annoyed with the bloke. I just couldn’t quite believe that he was basically telling me I had been duped. I actually used the figures Eon gave me themselves and then the figures sent to me by my new supplier. I compared the unit costs, I checked that the charges moved from primary units to secondary units after the same number of watts etc etc etc. I checked it all. It was half the price. Eon customer service had always been very nice in the past, but clearly not when you’re leaving - at which point they tell you that you’re thick.

In other news, you might be aware that I think Celia Imrie is the bees knees. She is in a play in London in November and so I have booked tickets to go and see it. Hooray!

Shocked

I know I keep it well hidden, but I do like to make sure that I get a good deal on things and like to do my research to check I do things in the best way. Well, it’s been just over two years since I had my eyes tested and work will pay for me to get my eyes tested every two years. At the moment I am on a secondment to another organisation, so I contacted their HR to find out if I should claim through them or my “home” organisation. As it turned out the system at the seconded place is nowhere near as good as where I normally work, and so I would probably get nothing expect the cost of the eye test. My normal place of work would pay for the glasses as well.

So I contacted the HR department of where I used to work (and am due to return to in December) and they initially said I couldn’t claim through them. I explained my situation, that I had retained all of my terms and conditions, as though I was still working for them etc, so they asked me to send them an e-mail and they’d look into it more.

They were very helpful and kept me updated on how things were progressing and when I was likely to get an answer. Yesterday they replied. It was a nice e-mail and this is a slight paraphrase, but in essence in said:

“You left the organisation on 31 May 2009. You no longer work for us. We have shut down all of your records. You need to claim through them”

My jaw nearly hit the floor. What they, without realising it, were telling me was that on 1 December they are not expecting me back and so basically unless my secondment is extended I have no job. It was like being given a totally unexpected redundancy notice. I was utterly stunned and have gone back to them to ask them to sort this out, as I still plan to have a job of some description on 1 December.

Sharp

Last night I went to an open evening about some volunteering I am thinking of doing. I should have guessed the man who was running it was going to be a bit fierce when his letter said that it would start at “6.15pm sharp”. He very clearly and strongly laid out what the level of commitment was and basically made it sound like there was heavy competition to be able to do it and only the toughest would survive. One person pointed out that the postal strike might delay getting applications in to which the chap replied “That’s not my problem. If you really want to do this, you’ll find a solution to that.” For some strange reason, I am still interested in doing the volunteering, perhaps it is because if I ever got this chaps vote of approval at something I did it would feel like I had conquered Everest!

Just to show that I do have a soul (somewhere deep down), this story gave me a nice warm feeling. I think if I was them I might have given up a few years ago, but the youth of today obviously have more perseverance than me.

Complete

It turns out that I am not as pro education as I had thought. My nephew started school on Monday and I feel traumatised by this. Surely he can’t be old enough to be going to school in his little uniform? I phoned my sister to protest, but apparently it is frowned upon to keep children out of school. Of course, as my father has decreed that it would be “such a waste” if my nephew didn’t go to university, I guess he might need a few qualifications to ensure that he doesn’t disappoint. My nephew did describe my father as “grumpy” the other day and so he clearly is a bright lad.

In other news, yesterday I bought a Cadbury Double Decker Duo. Double Deckers are the best chocolate bar in the whole wide world and now you can get a Double Double Decker. My life is complete.

Warning

We went for a walk from Finsbury Park to Highgate on Saturday. The walk finished in Queens Woods in Highgate. If you ever go there, you might want to take care as you walk about (click to enlarge):

Revised

It seems that I can be bought and that I am perhaps more shallow or easily swayed than I had thought. I got a letter from John Lewis on Saturday, sent by ‘Next Day delivery’ no less. I opened the letter and it started as follows “Firstly, please accept my apologies for the delay in my response. I had allowed other matters to take priority which was wrong of me and I am truly sorry for compounding matters furthers”. I was somewhat dumbfounded by the humility of the chap. He then went on to tell me that I was correct in what I had said and had in fact been misadvised by a member of staff. They refunded me the money I should have been given and gave me £50 in John Lewis vouchers (which included my refund). John Lewis promptly rose in my estimations – and not because of the money, but because of the way this man dealt with it.

We then spent the vouchers yesterday, as we relented and decided that a mattress from John Lewis was probably the best bet and now we were going to get quite a lot of money off it, it seemed foolish not to. The new mattress is coming on Saturday. I refused to go to their shop that I have had so many problems with and I have still not heard from that shop anyway, so it is very much in my bad books. But John Lewis as a whole has gone up in my estimations.

Disappointments

My nephew and sister were at my parents’ house last night, so we went round to see them. I think my nephew was expecting lots of fun, and so was surprised by our lack of energy on a Thursday night. I feel as though I might have been a bit of a disappointment and also that children are a full time occupation. My mum has been looking after my nephew this week (and technically so had my dad but I think his input has been minimal and mainly consisting of letting my nephew choose the TV channel occasionally) and I think it has been quite a time consuming business.

Anyway, this weekend I don’t think we have specific plans but we might do a walk and have various things to sort out. I am trying to think of somewhere to buy a decent quality mattress for the spare room that doesn’t involve using John Lewis. They are really in my bad books now given that I wrote to them at the end of July and the only response I have had is from one of their stores (I wrote to the head office and said how unimpressed I was with two of their stores) saying that they would be in touch. I never heard from the head office or the store that I had most problems with. Their customer service is rubbish and I don’t like them any more.

Reading

Some people I work with are trying to read all of the Booker Prize shortlist nominations, As much as I like reading, I am not sure that four weeks is long enough to get through all of them, as a couple of them seem to be rather lengthy.

I have actually only read one of the authors, which is J.M. Coetzee. So the others would all be new to me, but I think I might have to read them in rather slower time. The shortlist is:

A S Byatt: The Children's Book
J M Coetzee: Summertime
Adam Foulds: The Quickening Maze
Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall
Simon Mawer: The Glass Room
Sarah Waters: The Little Stranger

So if you’re looking for a reading challenge, or perhaps just one book to read, they might be worth giving a go or other books by the same authors.

Compromise

In some ways I blame myself. I tried to make G more industrious, more able to multi-task, more willingly to use time efficiently. In reality, what I have done is create a monster. Now every time there is an ad break in a programme we have to get up and do chores – primarily clearing up the trail of destruction that G has left in the kitchen (not that I’m complaining that I have my dinner cooked for me…). I now get dragged away from my important tasks such as sitting in a stupor to instead load the dishwasher. This might be part of a cunning plan to try and convince me that we should get a cleaner, but I will not be moved on that subject. Particularly given that the main reason we would need one is out sheer laziness rather than living in palatial surroundings that we need to employ staff to maintain.

Mind you, every time there is a lottery draw, I do always firmly believe that I’m going to be a millionaire. I am always therefore disappointed when the lottery lets me down by failing to draw the correct numbers. However, when I do actually win the jackpot I might allow us to have a chauffeur.

In other matters, I read the story about the council that has renamed Spotted Dick as Spotted Richard. Apparently a local councillor described it as “political correctness” gone mad. But if you actually read the story, it seems that the name change was in response to some immature colleagues making a joke about the name of the dessert. So, not really anything to do with ‘political correctness’ and more about trying to stop the catering staff from using their knives for something other than slicing the sponge dessert. It seems a reasonable compromise to me.

Positives

We got to eat lots of cake at work yesterday. A colleague died last year and so we had a major baking extravaganza at work to raise money for charity. Let me tell you that the cakes were so good. I have a very sweet tooth and I stood there looking at the table filled with home made cakes and it took me several minutes to decide where to even start. I then consumed some cakes and took several more minutes to come to the conclusion that I had to stop eating them. Sometimes work can be so great…

I was in a remarkably good mood yesterday (and this was the case even before the major intake of sugar). When the alarm went off I had one of those “oh not, how can the day have started already” moments. But by the time I was washed and dressed and was walking to the station, I found that I was in quite a cheerful mood. I have come to the conclusion over the last few months that my mood can be greatly influenced by how much I am enjoying whatever book I am currently reading. If I really like the book or find it engaging, however gruesome the book may be, then my mood tends to be very good, I think because the satisfaction I feel about the book seems to seep into my view of life. However, if I don’t like the book or find it boring etc then this tends to influence my mood as well. I used to have a rule that if I started a book that I had to finish it, but clearly life is too short for bad literature.

Progress

We had a weekend that seemed to consist of walking around the local reas lot in the sunshine and doing lots of chores. Finally, after eight months of nagging G has started to unpack some boxes that have been awaiting sorting out. There is a way to go, but progress is being made.

We ate a Wispa Gold on Saturday. These have now been re-launched and it has to be said that it was very good. A nice mixture of light chocolate and caramel. It’s a bit like eating a Twix without the biscuity bit. Tasty.

I am reading The Girl Who Played with Fire at the moment, which is the follow on to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I am really enjoying it. They are both rather lengthy books, but they are worth ploughing through if you want a decent plot in a crime type novel with a fresh twist on your main characters.

Errors

I went for a walk at lunch time yesterday. Within the space of a few minutes I saw some firemen sawing some branches off a tree (and then leaving the massive branches on the pavement for everyone to walk around). It wasn’t entirely clear why they did this, but they seemed to enjoy themselves. Then I saw two yoofs negotiating with a goose that was very keen to wander into the road instead of getting back into the river. They were having a discussion about whether they should drop the goose back into the water, at which point the goose hopped off the wall and wandered into the road again. They then tried to herd it back to the side of the road. I left them to deal with their quandary. Geese can be vicious creatures.

Just to, once again, demonstrate that I am total geek… I e-mailed the London Transport Museum last night to point out an error in one of their displays. They had managed to miss a station off and so I sent them a polite e-mail pointing out their error…

Awful

I feel as though I am coming down with something. This is unacceptable to me for two reasons:

1. Work is very busy and I don’t have time to be off sick because I want to get on with the work.

2. I have a perfect sickness record for over 8 years and don’t want to break that unless I am truly and utterly ill.

So I have to stay well.

I am trying to find a photo of a house I saw on the internet over the weekend, which was just such an awful photo that how it could possibly enhance the sale of a house is beyond me. But I can’t find it. I will keep looking. For now though, you will just have to trust me that it was terrible. It even involved a huge teddy bear. *shakes head in despair*

Plans

I can’t believe it is September already. We went for a walk yesterday evening and it was dark by the time we got home, even a couple of weeks ago we would have easily got back in daylight.

I got a letter from my gas and electricity provider last week telling me they plan to move me to a new capped rate – that is more expensive than the deal I am currently on and well above their standard rate. They assured me this is still excellent value though. I am now moving to a new power supplier that is a far better deal and the electricity is about half the cost. It has to be said that my old power supplier was very honest about its charges, but all the information supplied made me just wonder why I would want to stay with them if they charge so much. Perhaps it encourages most people to stay, as it saves them the hassle of moving, but I reckon my power bills should come down by about a third.

I need to make sure I don’t waste money because I am now on a mission to try and buy a house in the next couple of years. The more I save, the quicker this might happen...

Relaxed

We had such a good weekend. We both left work a bit early and met at the hotel, The Langham at the top of Regent’s Street. We settled into our room and then walked to Leicester Square and went out for dinner. We actually went to the Chinese restaurant we ate at the first night we went out (aw, how sweet…). Then we slowly made out way back to the hotel.

On Saturday we got up quite late and had a very nice breakfast in the hotel and then headed to Borough Market. Neither of us had ever been there before and that was good (if you like food, which we do) but was very busy. Then we went to Covent Garden and the London Transport Museum, which we both really enjoyed. We did have some minor excitement while we were there in that a man passed out right in front of me. A first aider came along after a couple of minutes and dealt with him though, so that was fine and he seemed ok. The museum was really interesting and I am glad that we finally got to go there.

In the evening, my mum and sister came to the hotel and we had dinner in the restaurant (that link has music by the way). We had cocktails before dinner and then champagne with the meal (it was a very decadent weekend! Not that I drank the champagne…) and the meal was delicious. I don’t think we would have felt we had made the most of staying at that hotel had we not eaten in the restaurant, and it was also really nice to have nowhere to travel after the meal was over.

Whilst the stay at the hotel was free, we did manage to spend an awful lot of money – and now want to spend more decadent weekends in London, but will have to find some good deals to be able to afford it. It was a great weekend and we both really enjoyed it and we have already started to look about to see if we can do something similar next year some time.

Decadent

The meeting went ok with my team. Strangely they actually wanted more objectives set for them. I also talked to them about bonuses and, with a million caveats, explained to them what the situation was. The team was hitting a bit of a lull (despite to having been their most productive month to date, in which they again broke all records for work completed) and actually the meeting managed to pump a bit of enthusiasm back into them.

So, this weekend we are going to a posh hotel for two nights. I am leaving work early and will make my way to the hotel and then spend a relaxing couple of days in London. As a Londoner, apart from because of tedious work things, I have never stayed at a hotel in London. That is hardly surprising, given that I am a Londoner, but this will hopefully give a new perspective on the city and for a couple of days I will be a tourist and just relax – and not have any commuting. We are also going for a very nice meal tomorrow night with my mum and sister and shall generally have a very decadent time. It’s a hard life.

Friction

I have a meeting with my team every Monday morning. We talk about progress and I update them on any issues and give them the opportunity to raise anything that they want to say. This week, we had the meeting on Monday, but they also want another one today. I clarified what their objectives were for the six month project earlier in the week and sent them an e-mail to make sure they were entirely clear – although in that sense the task that we are doing is relatively straightforward, along the lines of “you have six months to complete this much work”.

Sending the e-mail seems to have opened a can of worms and they now want to meet today to discuss some ‘issues’. I had a bit of an idea what that meant, but then last night I got a text from one of the team to say that they were going to specifically ask me what the bonus would be for hitting their target. The person who texted me was concerned I might get “ambushed”. Fortunately, that has given me a bit of time to think and hopefully I will sound reasonably coherent when they ask me.

I am not quite sure what has brought about this sudden slightly militant approach by the team, but hopefully this will calm things a bit.

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...