Cross

I was away last week when the election was announced, although I did see some coverage of it on the rare occasions we were allowed to sit down while we were away. However, even the little bit that I saw bored me. The coverage I have seen since has bored me all the more. I just find all the bickering and politicians trying to outdo each other absolutely pathetic.

I will vote though because I think it is really important for people to do so, and it is difficult to complain about the system if you are not willing to be part of it yourself. But I can imagine that there could be a low turn out due in no small part to the real turn off that this election campaign seems to be. I will have to vote tactically though because my MP is in such a safe seat that there really isn’t much chance of him losing it, but I exercise my vote to put a cross in the box for the party I think might oust him, in the hope that others might turn out and do the same. It’s a slim hope, but a hope nonetheless.

However, regardless of my tactics, a website that might help you to decide who to vote for (and please do vote if you are in the UK…) is one called Vote for Policies. Interestingly, the Greens are in the lead in terms of who people “should” vote for based on their answers, but a colleague pointed out to me that their policies are rather more aspirational and not weighed down by things like facts and figures. (They might well be more grounded in reality, but not in the way they are summarised on the site.) So if you are bored by the campaign but can come to terms with the fact that we are going to have a government of some sort following election day, then it might be worth your time finding someone to vote for*.





*Unless you are going to vote Tory, in which case, please ignore all of the above.

South of the border

It was really hard getting through a day’s work yesterday. I am not used to spending so much time sitting – although G might have appreciated the opportunity. I have also got out of the habit of getting up early. I need to win the lottery tomorrow night (there’s a £17 million jackpot…) and start my life of leisure immediately.

I might get round to uploading my Jersey photos on to my computer some time soon and then will possibly post some here. However, what those photos won’t show is that there are a lot of Scottish people in Jersey. I am not sure if it is as far as they are allowed to travel and therefore they congregate there or there is some other pull factor but everywhere we went there seemed to be a lot of Scottish people (and G was, of course, boosting the numbers). I bought some petrol in Jersey one day and the chap behind the counter was Scottish and I made some comment about how he wasn’t a local and then said that G was from Glasgow. The chap was decidedly shifty and I reckon he was on the run from something judging by the rather evasive answers he gave me. So maybe Jersey is a place that harbours lots of Scottish criminals. Where is Bergerac when you need him?

I have also been disappointed to learn that the weather was fairly good in London while I was away in sunny Jersey. I was hoping that whilst we basked in sunshine, London was suffering a deluge of rain. I did go away with this image in my mind that we were going to be in glorious sunshine though and it seems that I was right. It is a shame that I can’t use my intuition for something useful like picking tomorrow night’s winning lottery numbers.

More sitting needed

We’re back from Jersey and we had a great time. The weather was fantastic and there was lots to do – G would say we did too much and should have done more “sitting”... We did a lot, an awful lot. We saw castles, went to museums, played mini golf, went bowling, went to the cinema, went to the zoo, did an eight mile walk, ate lots of food, drove over 200 miles on what is an island that measures about nine miles by five miles, and even more than that. Can you understand why G might have wanted to do more sitting? Many years ago, I used to go away on holiday with a friend and I would do all of the travel logistics – book flights, car hire, hotels, work out how to get from A to B etc and she would work out what we would do while we were away. It seems that I am a bit of a demon if the activities are left to me to arrange. We did enjoy it though, in a very worn out sort of way. I would recommend Jersey and I think we might go back some time. We did still find time to send postcards. I am an old fashioned sort who still thinks it is nice to send postcards while on holiday.

The Channel Islands were under German Occupation during World War II and we learned quite a lot about that while we were there and it has made me interested to learn more. It is quite a sad history and some Channel Islanders were sent to Concentration Camps, which I was rather shocked to learn. I was also reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society while I was away, which is actually set just after World War II and says quite a lot about the occupation. It meant more to me having learned about some of it while I was in Jersey and was a reasonable enough read – even though Guernsey and Jersey are not the best of friends, so it was probably sacrilege to be reading the book whilst in Jersey. I must update my book blog, as I am now three books behind on that.

The book did (again) make me think about the lost art of letter writing though (It is primarily made up of a series of letters). I used to be a prolific letter writer, but over the years I have given up writing letters, but sending e-mails and texts is not the same and it is a shame to be losing this form of communication. I shall ponder this further.

Response

On the way home tonight there were various delays on the tube. As I went to walk out through the barriers, my Oyster card didn’t work and the woman behind me did a slightly sarcastic and exasperated “oh God...”. I turned round and said, rather dryly, “sorry to have inconvenienced you”. I think the woman had not expected me to hear, let alone respond to, her comment. However, I think she then suffered one of those moments where she hoped the ground would open up beneath her, and she skulked out of the station.

Today is my last day in the office for a week and a half. Hooray! I seem to have lots to do with my day. Not least because I am in a meeting all afternoon. When I agreed to the meeting, I hadn’t really taken much notice of the specific date and that it was not actually terribly convenient in that sense. One of my team still has to hit her target as well, and she might achieve it if I have got enough time to turn her work round for her. I think I am going to need a holiday after today.

I might be back here some time in the next couple of days, but if not, I am away on hols on Saturday for a week. So, Happy Easter, just in case.

Licked

We had chips with our dinner last night. G got them out the oven and went to test one and put it done on a plate before eating it. I picked it up and ate it instead. It seems G had already licked the chip. Nice.

I went into work a week or so ago and one of my sets of drawers had disappeared. This was particularly concerning because it had my tea in it. After a bit of head scratching, I identified the culprit and asked him to get them back for me, as the ones he had replaced them with were broken. He was not thrilled by this request, but I was less thrilled by his having taken them and stood my ground. When he had finished moving furniture around, he had a bit of a go at the chap who sits next to me about something entirely unrelated. Afterwards I said to him that I thought he’s rather got the wrath of the furniture moving chap’s annoyance with me, to which he replied “Don’t worry about it, it was like being savaged by a poodle”. Fair enough.

Those Australians are rather more direct than us Brits I feel, take the reference to their latest driving campaign as an example.

Time

As you are probably aware, the clocks went forward this weekend (and if you’re in Britain, I certainly hope you are aware of this or else you are probably late for work!) and the debate has raised its head again of whether we should ditch Greenwich Mean Time and move permanently to British Summer Time or even have a combination of BST and moving forward an hour from that.

I have to say that I am not very pro this suggestion. I know there are arguments about the lives that could be saved, and that is a significant point, and the counter arguments about how we have a uniform time across the UK, people in Scotland would be particularly negatively impacted because they would end up having to do more in the dark i.e. it would still be dark when they got up in the north of Scotland.

We have actually experimented with sticking with BST before – from 1940 to 1945 i.e. during World War 2 (and actually we had Double Summertime, so the clocks went forward a further hour in the summer during that time and then back to BST in the winter), and from February 1968 to October 1971.

The reason I am loathed to give up GMT though is that it is the first formalised time that existed. Until relatively recently we did not have a uniform time across the UK, and that was fine because a few minutes difference the further you headed west was ok because you were moving at no great pace yourself. It just wasn’t very noticeable. However, with the advent of the steam engine, the discrepancies began to matter. People could travel much faster – and I guess it was rather difficult to have a timetable if there was no standard time. Being a few minutes out, as would be the case where people knew the time based on the sun hitting a sundial, could make a significance difference and actually depending on which direction you were travelling you could, presumably end up going back in time. Interesting. Anyway, to overcome this the time in London (Greenwich Mean Time) was taken as the standard time for the country. The UK was the first country to standardise time and after that other countries followed suit, with GMT remaining the “base time”. So to give up GMT, we would actually be giving up a huge piece of history. Maybe that is old fashioned to not want change for the sake of history, but it does seem pretty significant to me and to no longer have GMT in the UK would somehow seem like a step too far.

Missions

As I walked to the station after work last night, I saw a man walking along with the back of an office chair under his arm. It made me wonder if it would be possible to steal an entire office piece by piece and then put it back together again elsewhere – and how long would it take anyone to notice. Imagine how every evening you could sneak out another key from someone’s computer keyboard and then 110 days later (this is obviously the more time consuming method of doing it), you could take a manual to work out how to put a keyboard back together. Then you could start on the paper clips... I’m not sure that I have really thought this plan through.

I got an e-mail from one of my bosses yesterday. I had asked if I could refuse to go to a work meeting because it was scheduled at 12-2pm. I was told that I couldn’t really get away with an outright refusal but that she would see what could be dine about providing edible bribes. I really object to meetings at anti-social times be that early in the morning or that take up the entire lunch period – and anything that affects my ability to consume food (or to sleep) is always going to draw my ire. I’m on a mission to bring a work life balance back into the working world.

Better

I was looking at the website for my high school last night. I was rather bemused by what it is like and as much as I didn’t really feel that it was a school I was suited to while I was there, I think that even more based on what it is like now. It has very high academic standards, and when I was there it brought out rather an inertia in me because I had no interest in the focus on academic achievement, seemingly at the expense of a number of other things. While I was there, it actually made me not want to go to university and the only reason I went was because I realised I’d have to get a job if I didn’t! I am glad I went to university (and it had to be a university because applying to go to a polytechnic* would have probably got me expelled from school).

Many years ago I had a friend whose mum one day said to me “the girls at your school are so well turned, out and well spoken. What happened to you?” I didn’t really have an answer to that one, but somehow I don’t think it the worst insult ever to not be seen as a typical product of my educational background.

I was talking to a friend from work recently and she was being rather dismissive of private schools, so I thought it was probably best to mention that I went to a private school – and she was another person somewhat surprised by this. I take it from this that I would continue to be a disappointment to my former school, not quite presenting the required image and, as my school reports used to say, “could do better”.



*yes they still existed (just) when I went to university.

Inspired

Two nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep for over two hours. As someone who normally sleeps the whole night through without stirring, this really was a shock to the system. In the end I read a chapter or two of a book in the hope that my mind would stop whirring and I would lull myself back to sleep. It seemed to work (and also had the added bonus of meaning that I have finally finished The Count of Monte Cristo). I haven’t been very well over the last few days and I think it was actually that which disturbed my sleep, rather than having lots of things on my mind. But it seems that if I wake up in the middle of the night those things that wouldn’t bother me during the daytime become more significant. The other night it was that the big boss is leaving and I was trying to work out how to encourage people to sign his leaving book (people seem to find signing a book rather than card somewhat scary and so just keep passing it on without writing anything). It worked though because I came up with a solution.

It is the end of the reporting year and I have lots of work to do, but not terribly much brain power to do it with. However, the highlight of the day ahead is that my old boss from many years ago is due in for a visit and so I am hoping to see her. She is probably the best manager I have ever had and she still inspires me to this day, so it would nice to be able to say a brief hello if nothing else.

Noise

My neighbour upstairs seems to be about a lot more at the moment. She is often not about for weeks on end, and then suddenly reappears briefly, maybe only for an hour or two and then disappears again. However, more recently she has been about a lot more and I know this because she just seems to walk about incessantly. There are probably track marks across her carpet where she paces back and forth, back and forth, back and forth… you get the idea… We also think she maybe does some kind of full gym workout at various points or else she is up to something very odd.

So the neighbour above is like a herd of elephants, the neighbour on one side has a crying baby and the neighbour on the other side has a barking dog. I think it might be time to look for a house to buy at some point in the future, or I’ll find a new home at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

I heard back from the woman I knew from school and we are meeting up next Tuesday for lunch, so that should be good. If we can recognise each other.

Location

We went out for lunch with my mum and sister on Saturday, and that was quite nice. We did it on The Times dine for £5 deal and so it was quite a bargain meal. But, we did feel that we weren’t treated quite the same as other customers (a badly located table, despite some tables in far better locations not being used while we were there etc). The food was nice though and they didn’t actually take The Times vouchers from us, so we can use them somewhere else too.

I felt really unwell most of the weekend though. Although I normally have to get out in the fresh air every day to feel that I can stay sane, yesterday I managed to put the rubbish out and went to the post box around the corner and that was as much as I could bring myself to do. Perhaps not taking any leave for three months is taking a bit of a toll. Still, I only have to keep going until the middle of next week and then I am on leave for a week and a half.

Power

I did actually manage to get into work about mid-afternoon yesterday, so that gave me the opportunity to briefly say hello to the new member of my team. I do actually already know her, but have never done overly much work with her before. We’re going to have a proper chat today because she wanted to leave early – and actually my brain was not functioning very well yesterday afternoon, so it was probably for the best.

I went on a work related visit yesterday morning, and although it was not to exactly the sane place, it required making exactly the same journey as I had a couple of weeks ago. When I made the journey a couple of weeks ago, I saw this woman get on the train and spread herself and her bags and other possessions across five seats. She then made a phone call, which went as follows:

“Hi is that Mark?”

[Reply]

“Oh hi Mark, I was wondering who the driver is on the train that leaves Sutton at 9.30 this morning”

[Reply]

“Oh, so it’s you. Well, I’m on a train that arrives at Sutton just before that and I need to get on your train. Can you hold your train a couple of minutes in case mine is running late?”

[Reply]

“Great, see you in a bit then”


I couldn’t decide if I was really impressed that she had so much power that a whole train full of people could be delayed just for her, or if I was aghast at a huge abuse of power. I wonder...

Feedback

I am getting a new member of my team today. I am not actually likely to be in the office today, so it isn’t ideal timing, and I also only found out at about 3pm yesterday, so it wasn’t much notice. But, I get someone new (but experienced) who I think is sort of being given refuge in my team and I have to be extra nice to her (not that I am horrible to any of my team…) and initially am either not meant to give her any work or only very limited work. This could be interesting! We’ll see how it goes, but I am not being given any additional work, despite having an extra person in my team, so it should be fairly straightforward to gently ease her into work.

I spent a fair bit of time trying to track down a TV presenters e-mail address (which unsurprisingly is not very well advertised). G is sorting out some event and wants to invite this chap along to it and so I was commissioned to find out his e-mail address. I think I have tracked it down and so hopefully I have fulfilled my task. If I haven’t, I am sure G will give me feedback on this...

Skill

I did some more volunteering last night, which I think was the first in well over a month. It sent fine, but I did do a bit of it quite badly. But I knew I had so wasn’t really surprised when the scary man described that part as “crappy”. How charming. Fortunately him saying such things to me doesn’t really bother me.

G is out most evenings this week, which means that I either have to make my own lunch and dinner or come up with it my some other means. This is not right! I do feel I have rather “deskilled” myself since G has done all the cooking, but I really can’t say that I am desperate to get back to doing it. I do a lot of other chores at home and cooking is not one I am desperate to take up again. I do sometimes cook at the weekend, but I tend to leave the vast majority of it to G. It does make me incredibly lazy though and sometimes when I am home on my own, I have some cereal or toast for dinner, which I would not have dreamed of doing when I lived on my own and therefore cooked for myself every day. I am going to have to ban G from going out if it means I don’t get my meals prepared for me though, or insist on doggie bags being brought home. A supermarket sandwich is on the cards for today though. How exciting.

Flying

I went to my nephew’s birthday party yesterday. This meant that I got to leave work at 3pm, which was marvellous, particularly as work doesn’t seem to have got the hang of the heating system (after about 10 years) and it was like working in a furnace today. My nephew seemed on good form and was really pleased when G phoned to say happy birthday (what with them being best friends).

I am avidly watching the updates on the British Airways strike. We are flying with them to Jersey on Easter Saturday, so we know we will be able to get there because the union has said that they will not strike at Easter, but then I realised that didn’t necessarily mean that we will be able to get back again. I would rather get stuck in Jersey rather than not be able to go at all though, so we are going regardless and BA will just have to find some way to get us home again.

Catching up

It was a busy weekend. It started early on both Saturday and Sunday because G was doing some training and had to get up at about 7am. I ended up getting up then as well because it just seemed easiest.

On Saturday, I went to see a friend from school. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of years and it was good to catch up. She has got a couple of children and they were very nice and we all just had a bit of a laugh and chatted a bit. They’d bought me some sweets from a local shop and also an iced bun and such things and they were very welcoming and it was really lovely. I also realised that her husband works about a two minute walk from where I do, which makes it a very small world.

Yesterday I saw my mum for a couple of hours and gave her a Mother’s Day card. It was actually different to the one I bought a couple of days ago because G forgot to buy one so took the one I had got and I then went and bought a new one (which I preferred actually).

Today is my nephew’s birthday, so I plan to leave work early to go to his birthday party. Hopefully there will be cake.

Comment

I was in Marks and Spencer on Oxford Street yesterday evening and I walked passed a man and woman, and the woman was clearly looking for a shop assistant and then I heard her say “where is the little man we spoke to before? Where is the man in the wheelchair?”. I was a touch incredulous that the woman could describe someone in a wheelchair in that way and I could just imagine her finding him and then looking about for his carer so she could ask them to ask him a question. I saw the man in the wheelchair a couple of minutes later and he looked relatively unscathed from dealing with the woman. I wouldn’t have blamed him for “accidentally” reversing his wheelchair over her though.

G is training all weekend for some volunteering stuff (the same as I do, but in a different borough). So I am going to have to fend for myself a bit. I am seeing a friend from school tomorrow. We haven’t seen each other for a couple of years so it will be good to catch up. Beyond that, I have no plans and so will have to think of ways to occupy my time – and more importantly will have to feed myself, which I normally rely on G to do. I am not sure I like this volunteering malarkey.

Addict

G recently got a Blackberry. They are not sometimes called a “crackberry” for no good reason. I now regularly have to perform interventions so that we can speak, eat, watch TV and so on. I am going to have to find some way to remove G’s Blackberry each evening and not return it until the morning if things continue like this. Who knew a mobile telephony device could be so evil?

I had good news at work yesterday. It looks like I can stay on rather longer than expected – at least a year longer. Now I just need to get a new contract signed and sealed. We’ll see what happens longer term, but it is good to be able to stop wondering when I need to start looking for a new job, but not wanting to start looking for one because I want to stay there. Anyway, hopefully that won’t be a concern again for a while.

Cheap

Yesterday I went to buy a Mother’s Day card. There is s shop round the corner from where I work that sells really nice cards and is normally somewhere that I can guarantee getting a good card from. However, this did not prove to be the case this time. The only card I liked was had been reduced in price (which seemed a bit odd in advance of Mother’s Day) and I just felt that it was somehow wrong to buy a cheap card. So I gave up with that shop and managed to find something at another one instead. It still wasn’t ideal, but at least I paid full price for it.

I was watching a programme on TV called Shrink Rap, which was Pamela Stephenson interviewing Heather Mills. I have no idea if I genuinely believed what Heather Mills said, but it certainly gave an interesting insight into her. Anyway, one of the things that Heather Mills was talking about was her need to help other people and Pamela Stephenson explained that the reason why that help would sometimes be rejected is that the very offer of it highlights the lack of something or inadequacy in someone else’s life, which they don’t necessarily want highlighted to them. I thought that was an interesting point and I can see an element of truth in it, although I don’t think it applies in all situations. I shall ponder that further.

Chores

I was at work at 5pm yesterday. It seems as though no-one else was though. I looked up from my desk and could only see one other person at their desk and all the rest were entirely empty. Maybe everyone else knew something that I didn’t. That’s the story of my life…

I got home with a great long list of things in mind to get done during the course of yesterday evening. But other things intervened, such as watching TV, and they didn’t get done. Although we did manage to do 25 minutes of chores, which involved me hoovering - and I think maybe waking up the baby that lives next door. Oops. I haven’t met my neighbours yet, but I don’t really want to meet them when they are irate. Although I don’t think 8pm is that outrageous a time to me hoovering. I do think that crying in the middle of the night is more anti-social.* It’s probably not entirely healthy to be comparing your level of anti-socialness (surely not a word…) with that of a small child though. Perhaps I need to get out more.






*if you’re a baby, it’s probably more of a sign of something not being quite right if you’re an adult. But it is the baby, not me, that has been doing the crying in the night of late.

Progress

Another weekend over, and quite a busy one at that. On Saturday, we went to see some friends of G’s for brunch. It was quite a trek to get there, as they live on the other side of London, but it was worth it. One of them is Mexican and we had home made Tortillas with eggs and Mexican sauces, plus Mexican hot chocolate. It was so good. I am not sure that we would be able to come up with anything quite so good to reciprocate.

On Sunday morning, we went for a long walk around the local area. It was so nice to be out for a walk in the sunshine and we were out for over two hours in the end, even though it was initially meant to be a fairly leisurely stroll.

We also sorted various things out, like car insurance, flights to Scotland etc etc and generally got lots done. I did also manage to watch a few programmes that had been sitting waiting to be watched, but the list of programmes continues to grow. I did watch one programme about 7.30am on Saturday, but even after such an early start, I still haven’t really made a dent in all the programmes there are to watch.

I am finding it useful to be awake and doing things at odd times of the day because the baby next door is certainly not mindful of such things.

Images

I have realised that having a Freeview box with a recordable hard drive is quite a commitment. It is so easy to record things entirely on a whim and the list of programmes to watch gets ever longer. It seems to be stuck at around the 80 mark, even though I am watching programmes that we have recorded. That is hour upon hour of viewing (at least 160 hours at a guess). I am going to have to set aside a week that involves no sleep or work and having someone wait on me hand and foot in order to catch up – except it is like holding back the tide because the list keeps growing.

Of course, that plan would also mean less time for reading books. It seems that I would not be the first person to go cold turkey though. I have to ask thought, if you were going to write an article for a national newspaper about your reading habits, would the first thing you mention be that you always read on the toilet? I am thinking I might want to portray a slightly different image of myself.

Rage

On the way home last night I changed trains at a different station to normal and as I walked up the steps to the platform and a teenage boy ran up the steps that were for people walking down from the platform and as he did so he shoulder barged an old man with a walking stick walking down the steps. The old man got knocked backwards and a person behind managed to steady him. The boy carried on oblivious.

I was so angry and when I got onto the platform I was going to have a word with him, but then I realised that he was actually with a group of people who were going to the football match*. I decided that this was probably not the best time to intervene and instead internalised my rage. He looked like a harmless enough lad, but it wasn’t the right circumstances.

Then, last night, I saw this story and decided that this perhaps showed it was the right thing to stay silent.



*I think he was Czech (who Scotland were playing) rather than Egyptian (who England were playing).

Restful

Yesterday, new neighbours have moved in next door – a mere 14 months after the freeholder started to renovate the flat. This should presumably mean no more building work (how it takes anyone using professional builders 14 months to renovate a two bedroom flat is beyond me…), so peace should descend. Or perhaps not.

I have not met my new neighbours, or even seen them for that matter, but I would put money on them having a very young baby. A young baby that cries late at night and early in the morning for long periods of time. Loudly. But not loudly enough or long enough for it to encourage a parent to go and check the baby or do anything to stop it crying.

I was very tired all day yesterday. I bought ear plugs at lunch time.

Imperfect

I went for a walk to the supermarket on my lunch break yesterday. It was nice to walk in the sunshine. However, it also seemed to bring out all the bad cyclists as well. In the half an hour or so that I was out I saw:

- A man cycling along talking on a mobile phone with a small boy standing on the front of the bike.

- Three cyclists go the wrong way down one way streets.

- A woman walk out into the middle of the road pushing her bike and then proceed to slowly get on her bike as a van rapidly approached and then she just gently cycled off down the road oblivious to the van that was directly behind her.

If only everyone was as considerate and reasonable as me. *cough*

I heard back from the woman I was at school with and I think we are going to meet up at some point. Should be interesting!

Austere

My weekend was good and involved lots of food once again. I think March is going to have to be a month of austerity to try and put a stop to a potentially increasing waistline. It was worth it though... We did bring some of my sister’s birthday cake back with us, so I don’t think it is going to be too much of a shock to the system.

When I was at my parents’ house yesterday I was reading my sister’s “Old Girls” newsletter from school. I never bothered to sign up for it, but always read my sister’s newsletter. Anyway, there was some rather interesting information about someone I knew who was a couple of years below me. So I had a quick search in the interweb last night and found a way to get in touch with her. It would be good to hear from her and given the way her life seems to have headed, there are some things I would like to have a chat with her about. Perhaps my school years might prove to be of more use than I had previously thought.

How can it be March already?

Late

Words cannot describe how tired I was yesterday. I ended up not going to bed until about midnight because G had arranged birthday drinks after work on Wednesday and they went in until quite late and were in the centre of London. I left at about 10.30pm and this involved deserting G, who was in for the longer haul. G got home about an hour after me and so was even more tired than I was.

Even though G’s birthday was last Sunday, the celebrations are not over yet. Tomorrow we are going out for dinner at a posh restaurant and will do various nice things in London during the day probably. Then on Sunday it is my sister’s birthday so there will be more home cooked food from my mum and another birthday cake to consume. It’s a hard life.

Fail

Things have been a bit hectic over the last few days, but hopefully they will calm down a bit more now. This has not been due to anything overly exciting, just general busy-ness.

Anyway, I was somewhat amused by this blog that catalogues radio fails. There are some seriously dodgy things that go out on the airwaves it seems...

Improvement

I have decided that I really need to improve my handwriting. I often have to handwrite notes for my team and sometimes have to then translate my handwriting for them. I would have made a great doctor, if it wasn’t for the blood and gore involved in that.

I was looking at this website and that seems to suggest that a problem for a lot of people is that they “write with their fingers” rather than with their arm and shoulder. I am certainly someone who does that because when I write it is my hand that does all the work and my arm and shoulder remain pretty still. I have also sometimes wondered if I am actually left handed, despite using my right had to write. I am very ambidextrous and do a lot of things with my left hand and have always just assumed that I am right handed. I am not proposing learning to write with my left hand, but it could explain a lot if I have been using the wrong hand. Or perhaps I am just clutching at straws!

Anyway, I think I am going to make some effort to improve my handwriting and see if it makes it more legible.

I am not going to be about here tomorrow. I am away with work on some managers thing that none of us want to go on. I shall return on Thursday.

Sweet

We spent this weekend doing various things for G’s birthday. On Saturday, we went for a walk on Hampstead Heath, which was not ideal as the tube wasn’t running properly so it was quite a trek to get there and the walk in the book we have seemed to keep taking us close to very busy roads, but it was pleasant enough. We were aching by the end because we covered several miles. It was a nice day though and it was good to go for a walk in the sunshine.

The day had actually started very early because the freeholder turned up at 7.30am and started doing various very loud things, like putting various together with a noisy electric screwdriver and digging very loudly in the garden. I don’t think either of those things seem as though they would be very loud, but believe me they were. I bumped into the freeholder when we got back from the walk and he said that new tenants are moving in next week, so we’ll see how that goes. He also said that he would miss all the work that had been going on. I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from, in no uncertain terms, telling him that we certainly wouldn’t.

Anyway, yesterday we went to my parents’ for lunch and my sister and nephew were there as well. My dad was in such a bad mood all day, and it seems he has been for several days, so we just ignored him. Mum had made a really nice lunch and had got some champagne and had baked G a cake, so that was all good. My nephew thinks G is absolutely great and had written a very sweet birthday card saying that G is his best friend. Awwwww...

Slow

If I am tired, I am grumpy. If I am hungry, I am grumpy. Therefore if I am tired and hungry, I am very grumpy. We went out for dinner last night with my family and we had quite possibly the worst service ever. We got there at 7pm, they didn’t take our order until 7.40pm, starters turned up just before 8pm, the main course at 8.30pm (my four year old nephew getting his rather later than anyone else), desserts about an hour later. The waitress walked off before taking the menus when we first ordered, so we had to collect them up ourselves. We had to point to exactly what we wanted on the menu and explain to her any additional details she needed to note down e.g. if there was a choice of accompaniments. We finally left the restaurant at 10pm. We were lucky to escape. Fortunately we were using Tesco vouchers to pay for the majority of the meal or else it would have been even more galling to have to pay for the evening.

We did get a free bottle of wine and lots of profuse apologies, but I think we can safely say we will never go back again – and this was Prezzo which is a reputable chain. Even G, who s is normally very placid and polite (well relatively polite!) got very annoyed and had a word with the manager. That tells you it was a bad night.

Anger

I have started a new book. It is non-fiction – The Angry Island by AA Gill. So far, it spears that he was born in Scotland lived there for the first year of his life and then moved to England. His book is about the English, and it seems he is not really a fan.

Whilst I am English, I was born and raised in England, if someone asked me what nationality I am, I would say I was British and am not a massive fan of knocking the various parts of the Union. I am not sure how I will get on with this book and might have to abandon it if it makes me angry, which would be an ironic turn of events given the subject of the book.

Pace

Yesterday the bad weather was just what I needed. For a variety of reasons, I just needed to step away from my desk and go and clear my head. It was pouring with rain at lunch time, but I went out anyway. I walked in the wind and the rain and walked at a pretty fast pace, not because of the weather but because the pace and the rhythm were what I needed. After 40 minutes of walking in the rain, the world seemed a better place and I went back to my desk and saw things from a new perspective.

I bumped into G on the tube on the way home. We are both reading books of almost identical length – about 560 pages each. We therefore were in a race to the finish, despite there being no real purpose to this at all. Although, having said that I am not a fan of the book I have been reading so it has been a good incentive to get it over and done with. Who won the “race”? Well, I shall leave you to work that out for yourself.

Timing

It is G’s birthday at the weekend. I have already sorted out some tickets for a concert, so to that degree I have sorted out a birthday present. However, the concert isn’t until November, so I feel it is a little ungenerous to not give something that will be for now. Delayed gratification is not always a bad thing, but this might be taking it to an extreme. The only problem is that G is seriously lacking in present ideas. The main one at the moment is an egg timer… although I have suggested a couple of DVDs that might be suitable.

Anyway, I went to see if I could find an egg timer at the House of Fraser yesterday and was wandering around the home wares department and there was this man who was wondering around with a woman and it seemed that he had just bought a one bedroom flat. I couldn’t quite tell what their relationship was. At one point, before studying them at all, I thought they might be mother and son, but then when I looked at them properly they seemed to be much nearer in age than that, but I wasn’t convinced that they were a couple – or at least I hope they weren’t. The woman would suggest items for his flat and the man would just reply and make some really jokey, but rude in that it was always putting her down or a dig at her taste, comment in response. In the end I wanted to ask the woman why she put up with someone talking to her like that. What he said was way beyond a joke and it was like she could say nothing without her belittling her in some way. But she seemed oblivious to it. Nobody needs someone like that man in their life constantly running them down in the name of humour. I was so unimpressed. I also didn’t manage to find an egg timer.

Change

For once, I cooked this weekend. I made a very nice lasagne (with meat!) on Saturday, which we also ate yesterday. It was very good, even though I do say so myself. I also made breakfast on Sunday (bacon on soda bread. Nice…). Seeing as I don’t normally do any of the cooking, I rather exerted myself this weekend.

On Friday the big boss told us that he is leaving. This was rather sad news and I will be sorry to see him go. He has been very good to me over the years, including helping to arrange for me to go back on a secondment last year, which, all things considered, has been very good. So there are changes ahead and it will be interesting to see who the new big boss turns out to be.

You'll Do

We had a very nice dinner last night and it was a really good evening. The food was excellent and the staff were such pleasant people to deal with, and they really helped to make it a nice evening.

We have a fairly quiet weekend planned. I might actually do the cooking for once this weekend, which I think is what I have agreed to do instead of going out for a meal for Valentine’s Day (only because we have been eating out so much recently and might explode). I think that might be about as romantic as I get, as it is not really my forte! If Valentine’s Day really isn’t your thing then this is the perfect place for you. I did ask G if it would be ok to send the one that says “You’ll do”. It seems it would not.

Due

There seems to be yet more cold weather on the way. I did manage to find a way of making myself going out at lunch time yesterday. I might up with someone I used to work with and we went for a walk for an hour. I hadn’t seen him for ages, so it was good to catch up. But today, more forecast is (maybe) due, but it all depends on when you catch the weather forecast as to what is likely to happen, of course.

Tonight we are going out for a nice dinner. I think it must be quite a posh restaurant as they phoned me yesterday morning to confirm the reservation. I can’t think of a time when I have had to do that before. I am not that keen on places that are very posh, so I am hoping that this is going to be a pleasant experience. We are using Toptable points, so aren’t actually paying for the meal, so I guess that will help to ease any “pain”.

Amused

G phoned me somewhat red faced (or as red faced as it is possible to be on the phone). G had been in meetings at work all day and spending time with various people doing work related things. It was only at 4pm that G’s jumper was identified as being inside out, having been so all day, including in front of some very senior person from work. I am not sure that G would have been able to get away with it as a fashion statement. I was very supportive and at one point was crying with laughter while G told me.

Organisation

We seem to be eating out a lot at the moment. We have Toptable points to use up and Tesco restaurant vouchers and G’s birthday in a couple of weeks (for which I am actually hoping that my mum will do the cooking and bake a cake...). Given that the weather has not been great of late and this seems to be taking a turn for the worse, this is not an ideal combination. I need to get more exercise!

Tonight I am doing some more volunteering. I wasn’t actually certain that it was going ahead because I hadn’t been sent any paperwork for it. Scary man finally sent it to me at 8pm yesterday. I don’t think I will be challenging him about his organisational skills though. I’m not that brave.

Uncharitable

Yesterday I spoke to my friend who had the rather large baby and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it was rather a traumatic birth and what has followed hasn’t been that great either. She is normally a very positive person, so it was rather strange to hear her sound rather low. Anyway, I’ll give her a call later in the week to see how things are going.

I was feeling a bit bugged about something at work last week. All of the managers had put in some money to buy drinks for people at the work Christmas meal. There was money left over at the end and our boss sent us an e-mail to say that there was quite a sizeable amount of money for each of us to reclaim. One of the other managers replied and said to give hers to charity. Then another manager replied and said to do the same with his and the next day another manager said to do the same with hers. Each person copying everyone else in. There are some who have not replied at all, one of whom is me. I was rather miffed by this though. I feel that it has created a certain social pressure for everyone to say that the money should be given to this particular charity, and I don’t feel that my giving to a particular charity (or not) is anyone else’s business. But I also don’t like public shows of ‘generosity’ like that (not that I am doubting the sincerity of the gesture). For myself, I rather believe in a “giving in secret” philosophy because if you do otherwise it can call into doubt whether you are giving for the sake of the giving itself or for some other form of ‘reward’ e.g. recognition from others. So it rather irks me to see it being done in this way. I gave the money for the purpose of being used for drinks for colleagues and now find that I will have to ‘break ranks’ to reclaim the money that was not used. So sometime this week I shall attempt to get the money back, but without looking like some complete miser. Bah humbug.

Pain

Yesterday was an interesting day.

When I got to work there was an e-mail from a friend’s husband to say that their baby had been born. He weighed just under 11lbs. I’m not sure that I want to hear the story of that birth…

I then phoned to ask for an update on my pension, as I don’t think I have had an update in years. This was both a good thing and a bad thing. It highlighted that they had managed to ‘mislay’ 13 years of my pension contributions. But they are now going to look for them – and hopefully find them.

After lunch I went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea and this woman that I hardly know (I might have said hello to her once or twice) started to tell me about how a couple of days ago she got a small insect bite when she was in the garden and it had turned into a massive infection. THEN, she undid her trousers and pulled them down a bit and proceeded to show me the infection. It did indeed look very, very nasty and I would never have understood how bad it was without seeing it, but there was nothing right about that scenario! I really need to stop asking people how they are.

Score

Recently a contestant* on Mastermind got the lowest score ever. He got four points on his specialist subject (Ataturk) and one point on general knowledge. All things being equal (i.e. not being recorded for TV or sitting in the back chair under the glare of the lights), I would have scored more on the general knowledge (but probably nothing on his specialist subject!), but he has my sympathies nonetheless and I don’t think I would have put in a particularly stunning performance either.

Anyway here were his questions:

Q: Which insects got their name from the ancient superstition that they crawl into the ears of sleeping people?

Q: One of the taglines of which 2001 blockbuster film was "December 7th 1941, it was a Sunday morning"?

Q: In Greek mythology what did Prometheus steal from the gods? He was punished for this by being chained to a rock where an eagle ate his constantly replenished liver.

Q: Pierre is the capital of which American state?

Q: What do people suffering from trichotillomania have a compulsion to do?

Q: The American ambassador's London residence Winfield House was sold to the United States for $1 by which chain store heiress?

Q: The "Heroic" in a Flat Major Opus 53 is one of 16 of Chopin's works in the form of which dance?

Q: In women's gymnastics, the uneven bars on which swinging routines are performed are also known by what name?

Q: Whose 1770 poem The Deserted Village describes the appalling effects of the enclosure acts on the rural poor?

Q: Ursus Maritimus is the scientific name for which bear?

Q: Le Maillon Faible is the French television version of which British quiz show?

Q: The Halle Orchestra is based in which venue in Manchester?

Q: A device capable of storing electricity consisting of conducting plates separated by a layer of insulating material is given what name?

Q: Which Warwickshire town granted its royal prefix by Queen Victoria in 1838 claims to be the home of England's first lawn tennis club?

Q: What word can mean a joint of pork, to pawn, or a German white wine?

You can get the answers here.


*I say “contestant”, but apparently they are always referred to as “contenders”.

Contrite

The tube on the way home last night was very busy. All the seats were taken and then a man stood up right next to where I was standing to get off the train. I moved the very small distance to sit down in the seat and this arm reached round the (admittedly quite large) man who was disembarking and put a rucksack on the chair. Then the owner of the bag “appeared” and I said a somewhat dry “thanks for that”. He looked at me and somewhat contritely and humbly said “Sorry, I didn’t see you there. I’m not that mean.” Then he moved his bag and let me have the seat. I then felt somewhat rude, but being a typical Londoner, just took the moral high ground and sat down in silence. I did rather feel that the man was probably a very nice chap and thought that he was somehow going to end up in a confrontation over a seat (which he wouldn’t have with me). I think he had been rather cheeky, but I did feel rather bad that he had been so sheepish.

Judgment

I went out at lunch time yesterday to sort a few things out. One of those things was to try and find a book on Jersey. It appears I have found a gap in the market. There are very few books about Jersey and any that do exist tend to be rather slated by the people who have used them. Perhaps I should now turn our trip away into a book writing tour and write a guide to Jersey. I could make my fortune.

On the way back from lunch I was walking along an alley that is by a school and got whacked in the head with a football. The first time I was aware of it was when it hit me in the head. I didn’t chuck it back over the wall, but neither did I stab it or pick it up and march up to the school door and demand an explanation. I think I was *very* restrained.

I am currently reading the book Lolita at the moment. When I am reading it on the tube, I wonder if people look at me and think that I am reading a dirty book. It isn’t – it was never even banned when it was published in the 1950s, how bad can it be? But there is a part of me that thinks people will be judging me by my reading material. At times it is a good job that people don’t speak to each other on the tube.

Bookings

Yesterday we booked a holiday for Easter. We are going to Jersey for a week. Neither of us has been to the Channel Islands before, so it is somewhere new to try. So we’ve booked flights, a place to stay and car hire, which means it is pretty much sorted. It means we will be away for Easter itself, which I don’t think I have ever done before. Hopefully this won’t mean that I don’t get any Easter eggs though.

We’re thinking of going to Austria in the summer, and possibly by train. So that is going to take quite a lot of planning because I imagine we will be moving about a fair bit. Fortunately I like planning holidays, as they do all seem to take a lot of logistics that need to be worked out and costed and finding nice places to stay etc. I should offer myself for hire. Satisfaction guaranteed. Probably.

Despair

I was meant to do some volunteering last night, but it was cancelled because scary man was off sick. I think this is an incredibly rare event (in fact on Saturday he told us that he had only been off sick for three days in the last 20 years), but we may finally have found some ‘weakness’ in him.

I read an article yesterday about how one branch of Tesco has banned people from shopping in their pyjamas. I am not a big fan of Tesco, but hooray for them! What are people doing going shopping in their pyjamas? Pyjamas are nightclothes and should be reserved for that purpose. Personally, I wouldn’t even go into my own back garden in my night clothes, let alone somewhere more public than that. When I get up, I get dressed and the day starts, I’m not a fan of sitting about in my nightclothes. If people stop shopping at Tesco as a result of this, somehow I don’t think it will be that great a loss. I think it is fair enough to require people to get dressed before they go out. I despair.

Vague

My phone was indeed at work, so I got it connected again last night. So that was relief to get it all sorted so easily.

I am someone who likes their sleep and needs a lot of it. I felt rather chastened at feeling hard done by if I get less than eight hours a night, when one of my colleagues told me that she has not slept for more than two hours at a time since the birth of her daughter nearly two years ago. I just cannot comprehend going for such a long period of time without a decent night’s sleep. The very thought of it is hard enough, let alone the reality.

On the way home tonight there were these two men talking to each other on the tube. One of them worked in banking and his friend asked him how old he was when he left home. He replied “27, 28 when I got married”. He said this a couple of times and I thought it was very oddly imprecise. He wasn’t correcting himself, “27, 28” was the actual answer. Surely people would remember how old they were when they got married. Then he was saying that shortly after he got married he went to work in Hong Kong for a few months. His friend asked how long he had been there for and he said “Three to six months”. Three to six months? What kind of an answer is that? Given that he worked in baking, I think we now have an understanding of where our current financial woes stem from.

Home

I seem to have mislaid my mobile phone somewhere. It might be on my desk at work. Or it might not. On the way home I did wonder if I knew where it was. I had a search through my bag and pockets, but it didn’t show up. I know I had it at work, but beyond that I have no recollection. Although, if I knew where it was, I guess it wouldn’t be lost. So I phoned my mobile phone company when I got home and asked them to block the phone, just in case I wasn’t just incompetent and left it on my desk (although I guess a cleaner or some such might pilfer it. More fool them…). When I get to work today, I’ll see if I am reunited with it.

I read the article about the hostage Peter Moore’s account of his captivity and I could just imagine the moment he described when he was met by someone from the Foreign Office and the sense of relief he must have felt to be told he was finally going home.

"The first time I really believed I was being released was when I stepped out of the vehicle and somebody from the Foreign Office walked up to me and said they were from the Foreign Office and they were there to take me home."

Deficient

For once, I arranged to meet up with G after work so we could travel home together. This was for no other reason that that I looked at my watch as I was leaving work and realised we would be travelling home at about the same time. So we agreed to rendezvous part way through our journey and I was waiting for G to arrive at which point I realised there was some engineering work going on and this meant the trains were not running as normal. This did not make for a pleasant journey home (in that the train was very crowded, we had a nice chat though). Having never arranged to meet G like that on the way home before, I felt as though I had picked quite the wrong opportunity to be inspired to do so. Timing is everything.

I have really got out of the habit of going for lunch time walks. Yesterday I had to really force myself to go out. I actually had a couple of things in mind to do if I went out, but decided only to do one of them so that I could pace myself in order to have a reason to force me to go out tomorrow. I really do not think that 2010 has been good for me so far in terms of exercise and I need to get back into the habit of it or I will end up ten stone over weight and with a vitamin D deficiency.

Updated

My training is finished. Hooray! Now it is just the real thing to contend with. As part of the training, we have had to do role plays pretty much every week. Two people had never done the main part of it, so they had to do it this time. It is hard (and more difficult than the real thing in some ways) and you are being watched by other people in the group, who give you feedback at the end. The thing is that it did not go well… at all… and in the end the role play was stopped and we weren’t allowed to give feedback (which was a good thing because I was desperately looking for some positive things to say). One of the people looked entirely traumatised by it all and went very sullen and silent. She was one of the strongest characters in the group and it was difficult to see things go so badly for her and her reaction to it all. She had to have a word with the trainer at the end of the day anyway and I did wonder if she might say that she didn’t think it was for her any more, which would be a shame. It did go really badly though...

I have finally updated my book blog. I have done it without reviewing one of the books I have read, which is a shame because it was a good book and Sarah (at her newly renamed blog), in particular, would have wanted to know what I thought it, but to avoid being tracked down, I decided that silence was the best option! This blogging thing can be overly complicated at times or perhaps that is just me making it so!

Feedback

I did some more volunteering last night. It was meant to be easy, but actually the person we were dealing with was very cocky and it was not quite the simple process it was meant to be. At the end of the evening the trainer gave me and the other person I was doing it with some feedback and it was all pretty positive. I’ve noticed though that perhaps one of the things I have got from doing the training is the ability to take feedback, whether good or bad, and accept it and look for how to learn from it and not to take it personally as such. One of the things I need to do in the volunteering is leave my ego out of it all and perhaps I am learning to do that a bit. I don’t think that is the case for the rest of my life, but somehow when I deal with the very scary trainer I have learned to take the rough with the smooth and perhaps to get a bit of backbone!

Hopefully tomorrow is the last day of training and then I can get my Saturday’s back. I realised I am basically working a six day week at the moment and could do with having a two day weekend again. Volunteering is hard work.

Sorted

I suffered my first work “defeat” yesterday. Not my first ever you understand, but I think it is the first since I started working where I do now. My team had come up with a proposal to change how some of our work is dealt with, and, as far as I knew, the other managers were in favour of this change and it was just a matter of agreeing the details of it. What actually happened was that they all just flat refused to do introduce the change, so in the end I said my team would do it for our own work and they could carry on as they were. The thing is that I am very hopeful that my team will reap some real benefits from this (relatively minor) change and I suspect other teams will complain that they were not allowed to do it too. I shall have to bite my tongue and not say that they had the chance but their managers said no. It’s times like this that I am very grateful for having such an enthusiastic and willing team.

Yesterday on the way into work I concluded that I really need to get my eyes tested. I have been feeling rather tired and have not been working as fast as normal as a result and have been wondering if it had been eyesight related. So when I got to work I phoned an optician to make an appointment. They fitted me in at lunchtime. I got my eyes tested. I found my eyesight had actually improved a bit meaning one of lenses was now too strong. I picked some new glasses. I went back after work and picked up the glasses. Sorted.

Predictions

We are due “heavy snow” for most of the day where I live and “light snow” for most of the day where I work. I have had enough of snow for this year, so am not thrilled by this prospect. The Met Office seem to be quite slow at confirming the snow (can you “confirm” something you are forecasting. I suspect not) this time around and I have heard rumour that they are nervous about forecasting the weather because they have got it wrong several times. I had noticed previously that the weather forecast has often seemed inaccurate, but this did not seem to have put off the weather forecasters from giving the actual forecast.

I can’t decide if this is a sign of humility from the forecasters, perhaps showing that we are less able to predict, let alone control, the elements or that, given their job is to predict the weather with a fair degree of accuracy and reasonably far ahead, it is a failure to do what they are paid to do. I think I would find it somewhat refreshing to hear them say “we simply don’t know”. The ability and willingness of someone to admit when they don’t know is something that I admire. But I do still come back to the rather difficult point: their job is to predict the weather. Somehow I think that if I kept saying that I didn’t know or couldn’t possibly comment as part of my job that in the end someone might think that I was probably not quite doing what I was paid to do. So, I think, for the sake of the forecasters, that I hope for snow, but also that it will soon pass.

Smell

Feeling better healthwise unfortunately means having to catch up on the chores. I spend an hour and a half last night doing various household jobs. Perhaps it was better being unwell. G helped with some of the chores and also cooked the dinner. I went into the kitchen while G was serving up the food and politely enquired why the side of the toaster had somehow got cooked. We now have a somewhat burnt looking patch on one side of the toaster. G had noticed a slightly odd smell, but somehow didn’t notice the source of it. Dinner was nice though.

“Smells” reminded me that yesterday morning there was a homeless man on the tube. He seemed liked a nice chap, but was very, very smelly. I felt quite bad for him though because he kept moving his bags in case they were in the way of anyone who wanted to sit down in the seat next to him, but everyone who approached the seat would suddenly clock him with his various bottles and cans of alcohol and also smell him and would then walk off. He even spilt his beer at one point and then he got out a tissue and mopped it all up. I thought that maybe it was quite hurtful to him that people were seemingly so repulsed by him, but I was no better than anyone else because I didn’t get too close.

Fine

I feel much better healthwise, but still haven’t shaken off the tiredness that came from being unwell last week. However, the training on Saturday went well and I have foolishly agreed to do some more volunteering on Thursday night this week – foolish because it means very probably taking the ‘lead’ on it, which given that I have incredibly limited experience and what I do has potentially legal implications, might prove to be unwise, but there you go…

On Saturday I was watching a programme and there was just a fairly insignificant comment in it that made me think of the friend I made on the first day of high school. We stayed friends after leaving school (many years ago now…) but over the last couple of years have not been in touch very much for a whole variety of reasons. The moment in the programme just made me feel very sad about our lack of contact and so I sent her a text apologising for being such a rubbish friend and telling her how important she is to me etc. She texted back and said she had been an equally rubbish friend and other such things. I miss my friend and we need to get back in touch properly.

In exciting news (for me rather than you, admittedly), we have just booked to go for a day trip on the Orient Express. It’s not until May, but we have a nice bit of luxury ahead and will go to the coast and back on the British Pullman. Incidentally, should you ever want to do this, you need to check whether you are going both ways on the Orient Express or one way by coach and the other on the train. We are going both ways by train and I think I would be a bit disappointed if we’d book one and had to go by coach one way. Anyway, this trip should help to satisfy our desire for a bit of luxury and some fine dining.

Teams

My team got assigned its new batch of work yesterday (we get a new batch of work on roughly a weekly basis now) and two people offered to take all of it on. Then when I was having a one to one with one of those two people she offered to take on the entire next allocation of work, which is a generous offer that I shall take her up on. It is interesting seeing how different people perceive ‘teamliness’. Some seem to think that if they aren’t being given as much work as everyone else that their colleagues will interpret that as them “not pulling their weight”, whereas others see that the work that has to be done is everybody’s “problem” so sometimes they will get more work than others and at other times less. I am really glad that the two people from my previous team came with me to the new one because they are really good at being good team players and just rolling their sleeves up and getting on with it.

This weekend I have more training for my volunteering. I could really do without it because I could just do with catching up on some sleep, whereas I have to get up at about 7.30am for the training. Anyway, hopefully the worst of my cold is gone and I will return to normal function levels.

Have a good weekend all.

Soon

Yesterday I felt really rubbish for the first half of the day. I’d been moaning to one of my colleagues about how bad I felt and at lunch time she disappeared off and when she came back she presented me with some cold and flu remedy that she absolutely swears by. I thought it was very kind of her, particularly as I don’t know her all that well. I work with some very nice people.

Productivity at work must be practically going through the floor. A lot of people have been working from home or working very short days. One person in my team took ages to get in and was then concerned she’d struggle to get home, so she just collected some files and went straight back home again. I am bored of the snow now (and in fact was bored of it by about day 2). I want my cold to go away and the snowy and cold weather is not what I need to be getting fighting fit. It hasn’t even been kind enough to make it impossible to get into work. I do seem to have a relatively positive outlook to my current ill-health and often I find myself thinking “I’m going to feel really great when this cold has gone away”. I’m hoping to feel better soon…

Productive

I did my first ‘proper’ bit of volunteering last night. It went well (not that I did anything other than sit there), but I did have to try and stop myself laughing at a few points, which was quite an achievement on a couple of occasions.

Yesterday I also started to have one to ones with my new team (although a couple of them are actually from my previous team). I think I managed to earn some brownie points with one of them by telling her I don’t plan to give her any more work for a bit and instead she should spend the time dealing with the work she already had. I think she was a bit shocked by this (in a good way) and then was concerned that the others would think she wasn’t pulling her weight, but I assured her that I really didn’t think that would be the case and it would all even out in the end. She has twice as much work as some of the others in the team so it is just daft to keep giving her more work to do. Hopefully this will also buy some goodwill from her for the future. I am hoping a happy workforce is also a productive one.

Amusing

G is not in my good books. I have a cold and I got it from G, who was off sick from work for two days last week. I can’t be sick! My new team has just started its work and I am doing my first bit of proper volunteering tonight (as opposed to the training for it). I can’t possibly tell the man who runs it that I’m not well, as I think any condition I have might become somewhat fatal.

Anyway... I found a very amusing website and I feel the need to share it. Do you ever have those occasions when someone asks you a question and you wonder why they couldn’t just find out the answer for themselves? My neighbour asks me all sorts of things, so perhaps I should refer her here. So, nest time someone asks you one of *those* questions. Here’s your answer. So… next time someone says to you “The other day I was trying to remember when the Battle of Hastings was. Do you remember when that was?” Then here’s how you can respond. Brilliant. And somewhat passive aggressive... But very amusing.

Battles

Recently, I read an article in the Independent on Sunday. It was an opinion piece by the author Tim Lott about anger. Given that my level of anger seemed to reach whole new levels at the end of last year (levels that have, fortunately, since decreased), I was interested to read his thoughts on the matter.

Tim Lott acknowledged that there are different types of anger and that there are a range of sources, but his view was the majority of the anger exhibited these days comes from a sense of “insult” or “negation”

But much anger in the modern experience is neither righteous nor artistic, nor does it arise from the threat of physical harm. The anger that occurs most commonly comes in reaction to a purely symbolic threat, in response to a sense of insult, or negation. This threads through every day, through every life.

Mr Lott basically sees the anger coming from people feeling as though their identity has been undermined or belittled, their sense of self being removed. Of course sometimes this is only in the person’s perception, rather than some overt (or actual) attempt to do this by others.

I thought this was a really interesting take on the matter and that if I were to look at those things that make me angry often I think it can be boiled down to that sense of being undermined or ignored or not seeming to be acknowledged in some way or my voice being ignored – think of that person who pushes in front of you on the tube as though you aren’t even there and the sense of anger that can swell up. Over the weekend there was another story of someone who died following a queue jumping incident. Of course, there are probably all sorts of things that we don’t know about what happened, but on the surface it looks like it fits with Tim Lott’s assessment.

So that’s the diagnosis, but it isn’t the solution, which I think is probably pretty hard to achieve. I guess the answer, at least in part, is about people trying to empathise more with others or letting it go when they are slighted or learning that what others think of us is not really all that important in many circumstance. It’s more about mutual respect than trying to make sure people show us “respect”. I think there are real things to reflect on about what Tim Lott said – around looking at situations that make us angry and asking what the source of that anger truly is. We can’t usually change other people, but we can change ourselves, and sometimes learning to deal with our own demons and sense of self in different, less destructive, ways could save many a battle.

Honest Scrap

Well, Sarah over at Sarah’s Books tagged me to do this meme. It didn’t start off as specifically book related, but Sarah changed it to a book one and wanted a book related response from me too, so here goes.

a. ‘The Honest Scrap Blogger Award’ must be shared.
b. The recipient has to tell 10 (true) things about themselves that no one else knows
c. The recipient has to pass on the award to 10 more bloggers.
d. Those 10 bloggers should link back to the blog that awarded them

1. As a child, after I had been put to bed I would get up and sit on the landing and read. If I heard my parents come out of the living room I would dash back to bed. To this day, I have no idea if they know that is what I used to do.

2. I really, really dislike the defacing of books in any way. Be that bending the corner of the page, writing in it, highlighting words, underlining words or even damaging the spine through normal usage. Sometimes I want to tell people on the tube how badly they are treating their books.

3. However, once I did have a library book in my bag and a pen leaked on it. They asked if it was me who had done it and I said “no”…

4. I like to have a target number of pages in mind to read each day. It gives me a sense of achievement to reach or achieve the target. I find if I don’t have a target in mind I sometimes drift my way through a book and can take far longer to get to the end of it. There is no consequence for “failure” though.

5. For years and years and years I hated anything that could be described as “classic literature”. It reminded me too much of school and being forced to read books. I have started to overcome this aversion (I think this is illustrated by me reading War and Peace about a year ago), but I still take some persuading.

6. I have a printout of the books listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and can often been find wandering around various libraries looking for books on the list to read.

7. I find that the 1001 book list has really expanded by taste in books and has helped me to discover brilliant authors that I would never even have considered otherwise (Paul Auster and John Wyndham to name but two).

8. I often see people on the tube reading books and want to ask them what they think about it. But this isn’t allowed in London, so I have to restrain myself.

9. You are strongly advised never to lend me a book. I have a distinct aversion to returning them to their true owner. Once I have a book in my hands (apart from ones from the library) somehow I struggle to return them. If I really like a book I have borrowed from the library then I will go and buy a copy. Perhaps people who lend me books should threaten me with overdue fines to make sure that I return them.

10. My mum and I sometimes talk about writing a book. The plot often seems to revolve around killing my (fictional, of course) father and burying him under the patio. Perhaps we haven’t written it yet because we feel that we need to have more first hand knowledge before writing it…

I am rubbish at tagging people, but do give it a go if you would like to because I would really like to read your answers (if you don’t have a blog yourself feel free to leave it in the comments here).

Moved

So, I made it into work yesterday and I was only about 15 minutes later than normal. The desk move also took place – and it was a good job I went in given that there was no-one else there to sort it out from my team. I did go home early though as it was snowing a lot, and, as it happened, G left work at the same time so we met up and travelled home together.

I feel as though I haven’t quite caught up with the year as yet. What with having to sort out some of the logistic of moving desks and catching up on work from over Christmas and the snow, it has meant that things have not felt quite settled. I also have the scary training starting again on Saturday and I don’t really feel mentally prepared for that – not least because I have not constantly been memorising the ‘script’ we are meant to know. If I don’t know it properly I think I will get told off. This volunteering thing is rather hard work at times – and I haven’t even started it properly yet.

Anyway, it’s time to go back out in the snow again.

Ignorance

Wow, it is cold. And snowy. It’s cold and snowy. I am not sure if I will go to work or not. I really need to go in because we are moving desks today and I have a few things I need to do for that and it is also the first day of my new team. On the other hand, I have brought work home and having the time to sit down and get through it all would actually be very useful. We shall see.

My nephew is an inquisitive chap and he asked my sister two questions and she didn’t know how to answer them. The first was about why you can’t hear the food in your stomach when you jump up and down. He asked this because when he stayed with me he drank some Ribena and you could hear that in his stomach when he jumped. I feel the answer lies in some long explanation about digestion.

The second question was that he wanted to know how blood is made. I talked to G about this, who has lots of biochemistry knowledge, but we decided that words like haemoglobin were probably a bit advanced. So how to explain this to a child. I feel I need to find the answer to these questions. If I didn’t genuinely have some work to do, I could have devoted my day to coming up with the perfect answers. My poor nephew will have to continue wondering about these important life questions.

Oh and I will update my book blog, but I have had a dilemma over it because I accidentally mentioned it (in very vague terms to someone) and am now paranoid that if I update it they will find it and therefore this blog as well. I will find a solution to this (which I am hoping will not mean having to kill the person concerned. But no promises).

Superior

It’s been an exciting start to the year. One of the things that G and I have to do each evening is 30 minutes of housework (this is a not a permanent thing, it is merely to undo the chaos). Last night was the kitchen, which is looking pretty good now, and tonight is the bedroom. The bedroom will take more than an hour of collective work to sort out. I might also have to check the definition of exciting as well.

Over the weekend I watched the BBC adaptation of The Day of the Triffids. I imagine taking so long to comment on it (a week?) makes it old news in blog world, but I shall throw off convention. If I had never read the book I think I would have thought it was really good. Having read the book, it certainly strayed some way from the original, although was not entirely at odds with it. Bill Masen’s father does not appear in the book and the nun is puritanical rather than a bit deranged. I think ultimately what the TV adaptation lost was the sense of man’s weakness. Both a meteor shower and some plants get the upper hand in the book, but on TV you never got a sense of quite how many people were blind (about 95% of the population) or that it was truly a global phenomenon. The TV programme also implied that were it not for an error the Triffids might have been defeated – and they could actually be foxed by black magic – whereas the book shows the great toil that humans would have to face if they had to pretty much start all over again, whether that be in terms of building a population or laws or morality. Whilst the TV version gave food for thought, the book offered far greater things to ponder and was, in all ways, the superior.

Back

Christmas is officially over. We’ve opened all the presents, taken the tree down and it’s back to work today *sigh*.

Christmas was good and we had a nice time in Glasgow just after. We actually came back before New Year, as this seemed to be the best way to ensure that we got a peaceful New Year. Not that G’s family is argumentative, it just would have been the New Year they chose, not us.

Yesterday I set the alarm to go off just gone eight. I figured it was going to be hard to get going today if I hadn’t tried to get up fairly early yesterday. I then spent a lot of the day doing various chores that would mean that I could return to work feeling as though there wasn’t a massive list of things to do. This was pretty successful and the place was looking much better by the end of the day.

I should actually have a relatively interesting return to work. I have a new project starting on Wednesday and am losing four of my current team and getting three new people instead. The project should be really interesting and whilst we are likely to face some opposition (we are going to make various changes to the way the office works), the aim is to make people feel less burdened. The other managers described their teams as feeling as though they were “drowning” so we are going to try and come up with ways to help them to be productive but not as though they are constantly bailing out water. We have six months in which to achieve this…

Anyway, it is time to go to work. Life is very cruel.

Happy New Year, incidentally.

Away

We’re flying to Glasgow later for a few days, so I won’t be about for several days. We are flying with BA and this turns out to be a good thing given that, as there was the threat of strike action, they have given us 10,000 extra air miles to say thank you for flying with them. I already have my miles, G is still waiting but will hopefully get them after we have flown.

We are going to meet G’s new niece. She is two weeks old today. This is assuming we can land in Glasgow, as fog is expected tonight.

Christmas Day was nice. I got a Freeview Plus box, which has been put to good use already, and a new microwave.

The Day of the Triffids is on TV tomorrow and Tuesday night (BBC 1, 9pm). That is such a fantastic book and so hopefully the programme will be good too. If it is good then hopefully that will inspire you to read the book if you haven’t done so already. If it is rubbish then the book is much better and you need to read to read the book to undo the damage. Are you picking up on a message here?

Anyway... I will return here are sometime around the turn of the New Year. I hope you have a good few days.

Merry Christmas

We braved the supermarket last night. It wasn’t actually that busy, but it was busier than normal (there were *two* people in the queue in front of me at the till). I didn’t enjoy the experience though, but it was a bit of a bargain shop because Sainsbury’s had issued vouchers to be spent in Christmas week to get £14 off your shopping. So we used those and bought such exciting things as dishwasher tablets and other domestic items.

On the way home we were listening to the radio and the DJ made some comment about the weather being bad and for people to be careful “as everyone has somewhere to go for Christmas”. Except that not everyone does and so the comment rather annoyed me and made me think that the DJ was rather thoughtless.

Here are some recent things I have searched for on the internet:

I wanted to know how often it snows on Christmas Day in London. This was because when we were at the Royal Albert Hall, the programme had a list of trivia, one of which was said “On average snow falls on Christmas Day in London once every twelve years, while in Glasgow it happens every nine years”. My mum did not believe the statistic about London and said I had to find out whether it was true. The statistic is about snow fall rather than it being a snow covered Christmas. Anyway, I had a look about and this website says that there were seven snowy Christmases in the Twentieth Century (which works out at an average of about once every 14 years, although given that it is an average there could be significantly smaller and bigger gaps, as that is how averages work…). You can also see some slightly complicated statistics here (as they cover the Christmas period rather than Christmas Day specifically).

We were also debating the words to “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and whether the line is “good tidings we bring to you and your king” or “good tidings we bring to you and your kin”. G and mum were saying that it was the former, but said it was the latter. I was, again, commissioned to find out the answer. As we all know, the internet is never wrong, so I am pleased to say that I was proved to be correct and it is “kin” not “king”. You can checkhere, here, here, here and here.

I am unlikely to be about tomorrow, so I hope you have a Happy Christmas – and don’t forget to track Santa, so that you can be sure that you are fast asleep when he comes to deliver your presents. Merry Christmas.

Sleep

It has been a busy few days. On Friday afternoon I went out for lunch with people from work and, whilst the meal was decidedly average, I was sat with some really nice people and we had a real laugh. I don’t normally work with any of them, but we just chatted away and it turned what could have been one of those awkward work-bases social events into something much more enjoyable.

We went to stay with some of G’s friends on Friday night and then had a bit meal with them and some other people on Saturday afternoon. I made a steamed pudding and that worked out pretty well. There was also a really nice trifle and a chocolate log that put my efforts at such things (a Swiss roll with a bit of butter icing on it) to shame.

On Sunday my nephew came to stay for a few days. While my sister was still about we went to my parents’ house and ate home baked cake and then went to a carol service. On Monday we watched some DVDs (Elf and a Wallace and Gromit one) and fed the ducks in the local park. Then on Tuesday we went into London, to the South Bank. On the way in we had to see who could do the best impression of Elf on an escalator and we (fairly quietly) sang carols on the tube and went on a merry-go-round. Then we took my nephew to my sister’s work and dropped him off.

Yesterday evening G and I met up with mum and we went to the Royal Albert Hall for a Christmas Concert, which was really good. I liked all of it, but I particularly like the version of “Sleep, Sleep, Sleep”. If I hadn’t been in a public place, I might have shed a tear at it. I can’t find a version that is quite like the one last night, but the version below is fairly similar (apart from the bits in German… and Aled Jones conducting an interview for the first 2 minutes 20 seconds (you might wish to fast forward through that…))




As we were walking to the station after the concert, mum fell over and hit the ground really hard. She wasn’t really sure what happened and she does have a bit of a history of falling over for no real reason (it’s a balance thing rather than anything else). G was pretty shocked having never seen this before, but we picked mum up and all made it home in one piece.

We are going to try and brave the supermarket later. Fortunately we don’t need anything very major, so hopefully we will leave unscathed.

Elements

I waved my neighbours off on their trip to Australia last night. They are flying out this morning but what with all the snow they decided they should stay in a hotel by the airport so that they can make sure they get their flight. They went about 9pm and they knocked on my door as they were going to give me some contact details and it was only then that I realised it had been snowing during the evening and it was starting to settle. I did tell my neighbour not to put her bikini on until she gets on the plane.

Normally I would hope that it might be an excuse not to make it into work, but we are going out for a Christmas work meal this afternoon and so I am hoping I will make it in, particularly given that we have all paid already. It is also my last day before I finish for Christmas so I should go in to try and finish a few bits off.

It’s a busy few days ahead. Tonight we are meant to be staying with some friends and then spending the day tomorrow preparing a Christmas feast with them (which we will then eat). Sunday my nephew and sister are coming over for lunch and then we are going to a carol service. My nephew is then staying until Tuesday and when I have deposited him back with my sister, G and I are meeting up with my mum and going to a Christmas concert. I will probably sleep the whole way through it, as I will be totally worn out from looking after my nephew.

Anyway, it’s time to face the elements.

Conversations

It was snowing in London yesterday. My team asked if they could go home. I told them that they couldn’t but we should go and play in the park (even though the snow wasn’t settling at all) but they didn’t want to build snowmen (with no-existent snow), so we just carried on and did our work.

I was talking to one of my team later in the day and I was saying that I don’t like books or films that are violent to which she said “I love things that are violent. I don’t even really notice how bad it is and I can’t be trusted to take children to see films because I can’t tell if they are unsuitable. Do you see why some people say I have serial killer tendencies?” I couldn’t decide whether it was polite to agree or disagree. In the end we just agreed never to make film recommendations to each other.

Believe

Given my nephew’s recent query about how many Father Christmases there are I have been asking people who have children what the ‘professional’ answer is to this question. The consensus seems to be to explain that Father Christmas is very busy at this time of year and sometimes he needs other people to help him. But, you always should assume it is the real Father Christmas because you never know when it will be him. My nephew is coming to stay on Sunday, so I feel a bit more prepared for his difficult questions now. I do actually have a book called “How Santa Really Works” and I think I am going to have to take him through this book in order to ensure that there are no doubts left in his mind.

Action

I was so tired yesterday. On Sunday night it took me many hours to fall asleep and so I knew Monday would not be good. I expected to wake up feeling absolutely terrible, but fortunately that did not prove to be the case, it was still a struggle though.

The potential strike action by British Airways is not good news because G and I are due to fly with them to Scotland just after Christmas. Apparently when there is strike action like that, it is the domestic flights that suffer the most. I don’t think we will go by alternative means if we can’t fly with BA because it will be too short notice and likely to be very expensive. G has a new niece as of Sunday and so it would be a shame not to be able to get there to meet her soon.

I have been diligently doing the Radio Christmas quiz, working out what all the programmes are. I have about two programmes to go (out of 50), but am really struggling now. I think I am going to have to watch a lot of television over the Christmas period so I can get some inspiration.

Insight

I never really know what to make of my freeholder, but I feel I built some bridges this weekend. Her husband cut the hedge outside where we live. It is a massive hedge and took hours to cut and he had to use scaffolding etc. He did it Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning and I went out and cleared up all the branches etc. None of my neighbours came out to help (I’m not sure all of them were about anyway), but I think it made it all the more noticeable to him that I did help as no-one else did. It looks so different outside now as it had been completely overgrown. Now the only problem is getting rid of all of the garden waste.

Anyway, I thought I would give you a small insight into the workings of my brain. Here are some things I have looked up on the internet recently. I am one of those people who often thinks “I wonder why…”

I wanted to know why Frank Gardner was able to stand up on the news recently. In case you aren’t familiar with who he is, he is the BBC journalist who was shot and left for dead whilst reporting from the Middle East. It seems that he uses callipers and this allows him to stand and move about a bit but in reality he is still largely wheelchair bound. I think he is a very impressive person for his determination.

I also wanted to know how you can heck that someone who claims to be a solicitor really is one. The way to do this (in the UK) is to check via The Law Society. You can check a firm by looking here.

Another thing I wanted to know was about Teletext shutting down. It seems that today is the last day it will broadcast. This is due to drop in demand and the switch to digital services. Ceefax on the BBC will continue for now though – and actually I prefer that, as it is now filled with adverts. It’s still the end of an era though.

Carols

I went to a Carol Concert last night. There were meant to be three of us going from work, but one person was unwell. So I went with a chap that I don’t really know very well, but he is a nice chap (and quite posh). It was only when we got there that I realised that it is probably quite weird to sing in front of someone that you work with and I think we both felt a bit self-conscious about it, despite both of us being willing singers. It was quite a good concert, but they were a bit ambitious expecting the audience to sing along to the Hallelujah Chorus. It is quite complicated with various parts repeated and different parts being sung at the same time etc. I suspect it didn’t quite go as they had planned. At the end there was going to be wine on offer so some girls were pouring it out as the concert was coming to a close with a rendition of the Lord’s Prayer being sung by the choir. The girls were clinking the bottle so loudly that someone had to go over to them and ask them to be quiet. This all rather broke the spell of the moment.

Anyway, after work today I am going to visit someone from work in hospital as she had a big operation this week. The rest of the weekend is a blank sheet at the moment.

Have a good weekend all.

Battles

My freeholder has been driving me mad for ages – due to her complete inability to communicate about the work she was having done on one of the flats she owns and on my request to extend my lease. She finally wrote back to me yesterday (after me pointing out to her that I had been waiting four months for a reply, despite chasing letters!) and she suggested a price. The price is fine, but her reason for suggesting it is “to be friendly”. To be friendly?? Whilst I accept the sentiment (and I am getting a reasonably good deal), I think she sums up the problem with her understanding of her role as a freeholder. It’s a business relationship and therefore taking four months to deal with things is not acceptable. We’re not mates (and haven’t even been friendly with each other of late given her complete inability to deal with things or follow through on the things she has agreed).

Of course, there was a sting in tail because she also explained that she will be writing shortly to ask for the building insurance plus £7000 to carry out works. Fortunately, I will have to speak to a solicitor anyway about the lease extension so will seek advice on what I should be asking her for to substantiate a demand for that amount of money – and given that there is a huge deficit due to her failure to collect maintenance money for a number of years, I am wondering whether it should be for us to make up that loss. Very possibly yes, but a lawyer might have another view. I feel that I need to get the lease extended before I go into battle though.