Points

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

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

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

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

Perceptions

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

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

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

Tidy

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

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

Agreements

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

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

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

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

Life is cruel. Don’t mess with me.




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

Questions

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

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

Vote

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

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

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

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

John Quincy Adams

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

Louis L'Amour

Pains

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

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

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

Satellite

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

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

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

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

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

Errors

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

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

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

1 June already, how did that happen...

Acknowledgment

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

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




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

Excel-lent

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

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

Standards

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

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

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



John Lewis, I despair.

Trauma

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

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

G is now on Spiderwatch.

The kindness of strangers

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

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

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

Plummet

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

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

Ruffled

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

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

Press the Button

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

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

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

Strange Things

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

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

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

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

Spanners

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

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

Progress

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

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

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