Being

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

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

Dislikes

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

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

There are some people that I dislike in life:

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

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

Tethers

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

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

Adventures

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

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

Returns

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



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



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



Some highlights:

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

Some lowlights:

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



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

Alert

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

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


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

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

Clean

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

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

Conspiring

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hot

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

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

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

Heat

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

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

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

Assistance

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

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

Tests

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

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

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

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

Moments

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

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

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

Quotes

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

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

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

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

Sorted

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

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

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

Expenses

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

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

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

Confused

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

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

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

Territory

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

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

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

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

Monkey business

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

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

Excuses

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

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