Disputes

I had rather a bust up with my dad on Friday night. I had gone over for dinner (G was away) because my nephew was there. My dad and I slightly rubbed each other up the wrong way not along after I got there because he started to give a lecture on how I needed to make it clear to mum if I needed a lift home, so that she didn’t drink too much. Seeing as mum never drinks too much and she also knew that I had come straight from work so would need a lift home made me think this was all a bit unnecessary and I (a bit stroppily) said so. My day then walked off and then came back a few minutes later and, rather angrily, said not to lay him a place for dinner because he would not be joining us. We told him not to be so daft and to have dinner at the table. He then made a few digs at my nephew (who is five years old) and I told dad to leave him alone.

Then my nephew and I went and played ludo and snakes and ladders and about an hour later we all sat down for dinner. Dad kept getting angry during dinner and made a few more digs at my nephew, and both mum and I told him to stop. Dad then got really angry and shouted at us and told us not to tell him to stop it. My nephew said to dad not to get annoyed and, as dad kept saying things with his mouthful, my nephew said to him to stop talking with food in his mouth.

Then dad got really angry with me and kept making mean comments to my nephew, and then dad started to swear at me – and these were definitely not the sorts of words you would want a five year old to hear. I was just so angry with dad about the things he was saying to my nephew and him then swearing that I stood up and walked round to where he was and really shouted at him to tell him to stop. I have to say I was reminded quite how scary my dad is and I did rather think I had bitten off more than I could chew by going over to him. The shouting match didn’t last very long, maybe 20 or 30 seconds, and it came to a very abrupt halt on my part because I turned and saw that my nephew was really shocked by what was happening. I went over to my nephew (who had gone over to my mum) and apologised to him for shouting and I said that I shouldn’t have done it. We talked about it and he was fine with me. But he was talking to me a little while later, after dad had left the room, and told me that he was scared of granddad and didn’t understand why he kept being mean to him. Then he said that he thought it was his fault that granddad was so angry i.e. because of what he had said to dad. I explained that it wasn’t his fault – he is five whereas dad is 69 and therefore dad is the one who needed to behave better. My nephew said it all just made him feel very sad.

I managed to cheer him up and we wrote G a letter and ate ice cream etc, but mum tried to get him to say goodnight to dad, but he refused and said he didn’t want to talk to granddad. I had thought it was a risky strategy on mum’s part as there was high chance dad would have just ignored him. In fact, later when my nephew had gone to bed, dad turned out the light that was left on for my nephew because he doesn’t like sleeping in the dark. Very, very mean.

I also heard dad (rather loudly) telling mum that he didn’t know why I came round and that she should go round to mine if she wants to see me. It’s like turning the clock back a decade to when he and I were on such bad terms and we didn’t speak for a couple of years because he thought I was such a waste of space.

Anyway, I explained to my sister what had happened and that I shouldn’t have shouted in front of my nephew but that I was just so angry at the way dad was speaking to my nephew and that he was swearing etc. My sister was fine with me about it and was concerned that some of the things dad did were very reminiscent of how he treated us when we were children i.e. threatening to take things away from us – be that physical things or emotional things, and that there was no way she was going to let dad treat him in the same way.

I spoke to my sister again yesterday and asked what had happened when she went to collect my nephew. Dad had told her that he and I had an argument and that it was over what he said about getting a lift home and that I had reacted badly to it. He didn’t say anything about having a go at my nephew or swearing – and he didn’t point out that there was about an hour and a half between the conversation about getting a lift home and the argument.

My sister knows that he wasn’t telling the truth (not least because my nephew had also told her a bit of what had happened!) and we discussed why he might have done that. The most obvious explanation, of course, is that he wanted to cover up what he had done, but actually another possibility, that is equally credible, is that he really believes that is what happened.

On a number of occasions dad has come up with stories and we have suggested to him that we were dubious about whether that is actually what happened. Several times mum has said that she has never heard the story before and dad then looks confused and then no-one, including him, is sure whether what he has said is actually true. He rewrites history to make it show whatever suits him – you’d have to see him in action to quite understand what I mean. So possibly after a night’s sleep he had a different view on the previous night’s events. Thus meaning that the argument was down to me and that he had said nothing inappropriate to my nephew etc. You can’t reason with someone like that.

I also wonder what will happen next time I see him. He can hold a grudge for a very long time and be very malicious. I do feel like this is a massive step backwards, and I also feel sorry for mum, as she will have to pick up some of the pieces of it. But it also reminds me why we have had a very acrimonious relationship for so long – he is a bad tempered man, not very trustworthy and will say what he needs to try and get out of a tricky situation. Ultimately he is only interested in himself.

I know he is getting old though, and he has already had two strokes, so I need to decide what to do next. That’s not going to be an easy decision.

Summer

We had a barbecue at the weekend. Despite the best efforts of the weather to dampen it for us, we all seemed to have a good time. My carpet looked less than pleased, what with all the mud trampled on to it, but I managed to get that cleaned up. The only problem now is that we have far more alcohol than we had when we started the day and nowhere to store it all. We might have to start giving it away to people at any possible opportunity.

Over the weekend, I also managed to find a way to change my broadband provider that means that we won’t have to pay anything for it for the next year. I do like to be able to track down a good deal…

Someone at work has leant me a book by Tove Jansson called Travelling Light. I will try and read that soon (although I have a large number of books already waiting to be read). However, if you already like her as an author or want to find out what she is like, tonight is your perfect opportunity. At 9pm tonight on BBC Radio 3, The Hothouse, a short story from her book Travelling Light is being broadcast. There is also a programme on at 7.45pm about Scandinavia called The Summer House and that will also have excerpts from some of her books (I think primarily The Summer Book). Have a listen if you get the chance. Enjoy.

Deception

I am still in a Swedish phase in my reading. I am actually reading a book by a Finnish author at the moment, but she wrote in Swedish, although I am reading it in English.

Anyway, the book is The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, and it is a really good book. A very readable and light read, and yet has a distinctly dark undertone.

I shall give you an excerpt from chapter 14.

Anna stood by the telephone for a long time and stared at the snowdrift through the window without seeing it. A great sadness gripped her. It can be sad having a friend you’ve admired too much and seen too rarely and told too many things that you should have kept to yourself. It was only to Sylvia that Anna had talked about her work – without reservation, boasts and cruel disappointments all jumbled together, everything. And now all of it was there with Sylvia, unloaded on her over the years in a dense clot of rash confidences.

I shouldn’t have called, Anna thought. But she’s the only one who knows me.

Ages

I had a good birthday. We went to my parents’ on Saturday night and had a very nice meal. I also told my nephew a rude (by five year old standards) joke about a bear and a rabbit. I had made him promise to laugh, even if he didn’t find it funny, because it was my birthday. I think he was genuinely amused though. He then told us a somewhat bizarre joke he had just made up about a chicken that crossed the road…

I got some nice presents, but the best one was from my sister, which was afternoon tea at a posh hotel in London that I have wanted to go to for ages. Now I just have to decide who to take with me.

There were other highlights, such as fitting a new flush to the toilet. We served that joy until Sunday. The holiday really is over.

Celebrations

It’s been a shock to the system going back to work. So has the downturn in the weather. I am still reading Swedish books in a bid to cling on to my summer hols feeling. Anyway, it is my birthday tomorrow and so I will be celebrating and coming to terms with officially reaching my mid-thirties. Whilst life has had its ups and downs, I can say that being in my thirties has been better than the years that preceded it. Although I guess if I looked back and thought my twenties, or teen years had been better, the prospect for the future would be rather depressing!

So I shall be celebrating by eating my mother’s homemade goulash and dumplings (mum can never quite understand why I would want to eat that in July…) and last night I went out for a very nice meal with G and a friend from work. I think there might be a few other things planned as well, including some presents. Anyway, happy birthday to me (tomorrow)!

Note to self

You can tell your holiday is over when you spend the evening cleaning the fridge.

Returns

Sweden was great. We loved Stockholm and went on a boat a few times and saw the sights and went on The Millennium Tour.

Then we went to Gothenburg, which we weren’t so keen on (as a city), as it was very busy and seemed to primarily be about shopping. But then we went out to the archipelago and we really liked being out on the islands and that rather changed our experience.

We then moved on to Karlstad, Orebro and Uppsala and all of those were nice cities (and very small cities by British standards). We did all our travelling by train and that was pretty straightforward, although not very well air conditioned.

It was a really good holiday though and we now want to see more of Scandinavia. I am already coming up with ideas for another holiday!

I haven’t uploaded our photos yet, but might put some on my blog soon.

Away

I am so pleased that we are about to go away on holiday. I cannot describe how tired I feel. Due to the combination of not getting enough sleep due to the hot nights and working in an office that is like a mini furnace, I just wanted to curl up under my desk and go to sleep yesterday afternoon.

Anyway, we are off to Sweden on Sunday for two weeks. We are going to Stockholm and Gothenburg and a few places in between. I have my Swedish books to read (they’re not written in Swedish, you understand) and at some point I might get round to packing some stuff for the trip. I am looking forward to two weeks of relaxing and escaping the high temperatures here.

Have a good couple of weeks.

In the balance

I got an e-mail from a friend a couple of days ago. We e-mail each other very regularly. In fact, until a few years ago, I would have called her my best friend. Things have changed though and we have drifted a bit. But we are still in regular contact, in fact we e-mail each other pretty much every day.

Anyway, this e-mail, in passing, said that her baby is being dedicated on Sunday (the Free Church equivalent of a christening - without the water etc). Only I haven’t been invited. We are actually going on holiday on Sunday, so couldn’t go anyway, but I was surprised not to even be invited. I mentioned it to a friend at work who said that if a good friend had done that to her, she would end the friendship and that I was far more forgiving than her, but it seems a bit extreme to throw away many years of friendship over something like this. But even if I couldn’t go to something, I would still expect to be asked. I haven’t said anything to her about it, but I was not very happy to find about the dedication (and therefore my lack of invite) like this.

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.

CS Lewis

I wonder at what point it is lost?

Dip

There hasn’t seemed to be much point in posting here of late. Sometimes I wonder why I blog, I don’t get many comments and I don’t really get much sense that my presence here was missed. I am not feeling sorry for myself, I think I am just being realistic. But there you go.

Anyway, I might post a few things this week and then I am off on holiday for a couple of weeks, so won’t be about.

I have had a busy week or so. G’s sister and niece were down from Scotland until the middle of last week. Babies just seem to eat up time and the weekend and evenings flew by. I went to see Tony Bennett with my mum and sister last Thursday and that was good. I had been forewarned that he doesn’t do encores, and despite people cheering and him coming back a couple of times and waving, the prediction was true. This is probably a sacrilegious thing to say but he danced a couple of times and I thought that you had to be Tony Bennett to get away with it – if your dad danced like that you’d cringe. But if you’re Tony Bennett somehow it is much cooler.

Work has also been interesting. We had a massive power failure last week and so I had to work from home for a few days. I hate working from home and so was glad when I got to go back to work. But we still have no air conditioning and so on Monday it was really hot at work. Then some air conditioning units were delivered that are primarily humidifiers really and now it smells and feels like we are working at the local swimming baths, except we don’t have a poll to dip in to cool off.

One of my bosses left a couple of weeks ago and I got a really lovely card from her yesterday, which was I was touched by. I brought it home in case it shrivelled up in the damp atmosphere at work. I feel that I might go into work one day this week and find that everything has mould growing on it. I dread to think what my work will be like by the time I get back from my holiday.

Presentable

It felt like a very busy weekend, primarily because having a six month old around seems to fill the day up very easily. I don’t know how people who have young children have time to do anything other than look after them.

It is amazing how good having people arriving with very late notice is at focussing your mind and energy though. This meant that we had to get the place tidied so that it looked presentable. Everywhere except the main bedroom got sorted out in about an hour – but this involved turning the main bedroom into an absolute bomb site. So keeping the door closed on that bedroom, and only going in there under cover of darkness, have proved to be the solutions to that issue.

I watched the England match yesterday, even though I had not planned to do so, and it reminded of all of the very painful reasons that mean that I don’t normally bother.

Vague

G’s sister and niece are coming down to stay for a few days (or longer, it’s all a bit vague at the moment). There seems to be “trouble at mill” (you have to say that with a northern accent, even though they are Scottish). They are driving down today from Glasgow, which will be a long old drive and then we’ll see how long they are staying for.

Their visit was unexpected but it will be nice to see them. It was G’s niece’s christening that we missed due to the ash cloud, so it will only be the second time we have ever met her.

Anyway, have a good weekend.

Fuss

The cat has returned! She strolled back in in the early hours of yesterday morning and was totally unfussed about her time in the wilderness. That's cats for you.

So, England play today. I have no interest in watching the match, but am looking forward to the tube being really quiet when I head home.

Tomorrow, I am off somewhere really early so there will be no post. Have a good couple of days.

Loss

My parents are back from their holiday, the cat has not returned. Perhaps it will turn out that the cat has just been in a strop since my parents went away and that she will return as though nothing has happened.

I’m pretty miffed that Portugal beat North Korea 7-0. I think this make it less likely that Honduras is going to end up with the worst goal difference. Life is very cruel. Although the North Koreans might argue that it has been more cruel to them than to me in this World Cup, particularly given its human rights record and so on. It would have been nice to win a tenner though.

Charity

It was a mixed weekend. G was ill and so that limited our plans. I went out on Saturday morning to see if I could help to track down my parents’ missing cat. No progress on that one, but my parents are home from their hols today, so perhaps she will turn up then. I also went to a friend’s on Saturday night (G was too ill to go) and we ate lots of nice things and I was given leftovers to bring home for G.

After I was at my parents’ on Saturday, I decided to walk to their local high street to try and pick up a few bits. I went into their local Oxfam to have a quick glance at the books and there was this chap who was in there who was just acting a bit oddly. I couldn’t quite identify what it was that he was doing, but it seemed to involve rustling carrier bags. He saw that I had twigged whatever he was doing was unusual and he walked closer to the door, then he turned and looked at me and I looked at him. Again I wasn’t quite sure what it was that was odd, but I knew it was something. Then he took a swift exit out of the door – and, to the best of my knowledge, walked out with a couple of books he hadn’t paid for. I think it was in the back of my mind that it looked like he was trying to do something like that, but I wasn’t quite sure. When he went out the door, I still wasn’t 100% certain, but didn’t really feel that I could accuse a stranger – and if I had, who knows what he might have done. So I said nothing, which I wasn’t terribly impressed by, but the woman in the shop, who was well over retirement age didn’t really look the sort to be able to do much either.

I do sort of feel as though I should have done something because that chap probably got away with stealing from a charity shop (not that it is any better to steal from anywhere else). If he did, he will now possibly think he can get away with it again. But there’s not a lot I can do now.

Pet

My parents are away on holiday at the moment. My mum phoned me last night to say that their cleaner, who has been feeding their cat, phoned to say that the cat has been missing for several days. I wasn’t entirely sure that this was a great thing to phone my parents about while they were on holiday (as there is nothing they can do), but the woman is over 80, so perhaps I should be a bit more charitable.

Anyway, I phoned their cleaner to talk to her about it and to reassure her a bit, and it does seem that she is very worried, has been losing sleep over it and spends a lot of her days there in the hope that the cat will reappear. She even put a note through the door of several neighbours in case they had seen the cat.

The thing is that there is a cat flap, so the cat can go in and out as she pleases and the cat doesn’t really like it when people are about so hides. I suspect that she will reappear when my parents are back. I’m going over there tomorrow morning anyway to meet up with their cleaner to try and stop her worrying so much and in the vague hope that the cat will probably appear from somewhere.

I am glad I don’t have pets.

Performance

A new manager who started a few weeks ago is growing on me. She is a bit like a whirlwind at times, but with a bit of work, she does listen. I think. We had a long chat a couple of days ago and I managed to persuade her that now was not the time to put some of her team on performance plans i.e. for underperforming. They have all been set a hard task until the end of July and so I managed to make the case that this was the way for them to up their game, and if they don’t so it, there’s still the opportunity to take further action in August. I am more into carrot than stick (although there are times when a “stick” is the only way), so I am now hoping that her team manage to up their game over the next few weeks.

Fail

G and I both did some volunteering last night (separately). It was reasonably successful, except that with mine, one person failed to turn up and the other arrived very late. I could have just done with an early night as well. I have to go back next week to see the person who failed to show up last night. I feel I will be tasked with tearing a strip off them.

I am reading a good book at the moment by William Trevor – The Story of Lucy Gault. A somewhat sad tale, but very readable and a speedy read at that.

Relief

Things have been somewhat quiet of late concerning G’s wayward niece. G phoned her yesterday though and it turns out she has got engaged. At 16. Interesting. In some ways it is a relief though. She has got his name tattooed on the back of her neck (which was done only a few weeks after they got together). So it would have meant a life of only being able to go out with blokes with that particular name. Every cloud and all that...

Sweet

Time seems to be flying by. Another weekend passed and another week ahead. We did various things over the weekend, including me baking some cake to try and eat something sweet that doesn’t have any sugar in it. We will see if it worked, particularly as I changed one of the ingredients and didn’t have a couple of the others!

I seem to have an ever-growing list of books to read. I keep seeing things on the TV or hearing about various things and wanting to learn more about them. The latest thing I want to know more about is Operation Mincemeat, which was a British plan in World War 2 to mislead Hitler about our invasion plans. Very interesting. But so are many things that I keep learning about.

On Saturday, we also watched the film The Lives of Others, which was a really good film. It one the best Foreign Film Oscar a few years ago and I can see why. So if you are ok with subtitled and very un-Hollywood films then it’s well worth watching.

Support

So, the World Cup starts today apparently. It’s not really something that interests me. In previous major tournaments, I have seen the times when England plays as a really great opportunity to go out and do things because everywhere is so quiet. That is probably terribly unpatriotic. I will be (sort of) supporting Honduras - in the sense that I hope they lose every badly because then I will win some money in the sweepstake at work. I might find a new interest in football for a few moments if I win a few quid.

This weekend is a blank canvas at the moment. I have a very bad habit of sometimes waking up rather earlier at the weekend than I do during the week. I usually use that extra time to either catch up on the mountain of programmes that are waiting to be watched or possibly read a book. The books are piling up and there seems to be so little time to read them. So, hopefully this will be a fairly lazy weekend with a lot of “catching up” going on.

Busy

I am going back to my old office today (as in where I used to work before I went on a secondment) to help them out with something for most of the afternoon. I have to say that, whilst the people I used to work with were really nice, I don’t miss the work itself. It will be good to see them again though.

Work has been really busy this week. My team have had to take work from another team to help them out, so I have taken on some of the work myself because I thought there was too much to split it amongst the people in my team. I currently seem to have a complete lack of time to deal with this work myself though. This is not ideal. I will be glad when the weekend gets here.

History

Yesterday when I went into work I took the lift to the floor where I work. As the lift ascended I momentarily thought it sounded a bit odd, but then it arrived at my floor and I stepped out of the lift and thought nothing more of it. About two hours later, someone I work with got stuck in the lift. As it turned out, others had thought the lift sounded a bit odd as well and had thought nothing more of it. I guess at least we were all equally deficient. I actually still have no idea quite what it was that I thought was odd. But perhaps I should pay more attention to my instincts in future.

I found the latest government announcement of asking the public to decide where the cuts should fall to be somewhat concerning. I thought we had elected a government (or not quite elected a government…) to make the decisions, but, in another example of sloping shoulders, the decision making is up to us, the public. So that in years to come the finger can be pointed at us as being responsible for the ensuing problems.

I was concerned to see mention of “star chambers” though. The reading of my history books has already paid dividends as I read about those recently. It is not encouraging though. Star Chambers lasted until the end of Charles I reign i.e. when he was beheaded. Various monarchs used them, and Charles I did it in the most extreme form. Star Chambers were undemocratic ways of hand picked individuals to make secret decisions where those issues could not perhaps withstand public scrutiny. In other words, they were highly dubious decisions which did not stand up to the rule of law. Charles I used this system the most. He refused to let Parliament sit during his reign and used a star chamber to make the decisions instead. I can’t imagine why he ended up having his head cut off. Still, if that is what brought the star chamber system to an end, maybe there is hope – perhaps the beast that is out current government will face the same fate.

Experience

On Saturday morning, I watched a very small portion of a programme that had Sophie Dahl on it. She was creating a very indulgent meal just for herself. She went and selected her favourites of all sorts of products, down to picking a cheese that she absolutely loved to finish off the meal.

Whilst I am sure what she made was delicious, I couldn’t really get my head around the concept of truly enjoying a meal, however delicious it was, that I consumed on my own. Part of the enjoyment of a really great meal, for me, is to be able to share it with someone else. To me, it would be like going on holiday and seeing the most amazing sights and having no-one to turn to and say “wow look at that” and share the experience and the exhilaration.

Perhaps that is a reflection on my character. Perhaps it shows that I, generally, would rather have someone to share things with, and that, whilst I am fine with my own company, ultimately I would rather have someone else about to truly enjoy an experience. So, maybe I slightly envy Sophie Dahl’s ability to truly savour something in that way – be that food or some other experience – but for me, however great the food or the sight, having someone to share the experience with is a whole part of the enjoyment. So maybe that is a useful thing that I learned from Ms Dahl.

Reading

At the moment I am reading a number of different books. As it turns out, but perhaps not unsurprisingly, this is a very ineffective way to get your reading done, but that hasn’t stopped me. One is a fiction book – The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins - and the other two are both non-fiction – one on civil liberties and another on politics since 1918.

For some reason, I seem to have a need at the moment to understand how we have got to where we are as a nation, primarily on a political front. I am not someone who is very political really, but I see how much politics impacts our lives. One of the things I have noticed over the last few years is that we lack real characters in politics these days – and I think that character is generally represented by someone having a strong ideology. They are known for having a strong view that impacts the way that they operate. But actually over the last few years, the main motivator for politicians seems to have been staying popular – primarily with the media and secondly with the public. It makes for very tedious and directionless politics in my view.

There is also an old adage about history repeating itself and so I wonder if, in uncertain times, it is possible to have some idea of what the future might hold.

On a more minor note, one of the things I have learned though is that until about the middle of the last century some people had more than one vote. It seems that it was a way of giving the working class the vote, but allowing their “betters” to have more of a say. If you were a graduate, right up until the 1940s you could vote twice in an election. How very democratic.

Development

Today I am going back to where I used to work to help them out with something and then next week giving a talk. My “personal development plan” for the year, as identified by my boss, is to spend time keeping in touch with where I used to work. To which I said “so basically you’re telling me I have to go and drink coffee with people”. Of course, I think it is also a bit of a double edged sword because the underlying message is that at some point I might need to go back there if the money runs out. So probably I shouldn’t be spending too much cash (my own, I might add. It isn’t that generous a development plan) on coffee in case I need it for other purposes at some point.

Sombre

It was only about 5pm yesterday that I saw there had been that shooting in Cumbria. What a terrible thing to have happened to so many people who were just going about their ordinary lives. G and I went out for a walk for half an hour last night and, despite walking along quite back streets, saw three different policemen either on bikes or in cars. I wondered if they were out to show a visible presence and reassure people (not that it happened anywhere near London).

It was hard to get back into work mode yesterday. I pottered my way through the day and got everything done, but really I was still in holiday mode. We’d also had some office moves over the weekend, so it was a bit chaotic at times, but during the course of the day, various things got sorted out. One of the other teams had their monthly meeting and when one of them came back from the meeting early I briefly explained why things had been moved about a bit. He absolutely bit my head off, and it was only when the others came back that I found out he had walked out of the team meeting. As much as my team might get miffed about things at times, I have never had that happen. I feel there is a bit of tension in the office at the moment and today I need to have a word with someone from my team who sent me a very stroppy e-mail last week. The joys of management.

Offensive

We had a really good time away in Poole with my sister and nephew. We went to the seaside, Monkey World, Brownsea Island, ate fish and chips and much more. Unfortunately there were no waves for my nephew to run away from. Possibly not helped by the reef that was recently installed.

Monkey World was great. We saw lots of moneys (unsurprisingly), and it was hard to choose between the orang-utans, chimps and gibbons for cuteness. I am not sure if the orang-utans won or totally lost it when one of them drank the urine of another and then spent the next several minutes licking up all the urine it had missed. Very, very amusing. But not generally recommended as a cleaning technique.

Here is the offending orang-utan for your perusal:

Brief

In a bid to not eat sugar, but still being able to eat sweet stuff, I baked a cake last night. I am going to have some today. I hope it is ok. It has strawberries in it. What could possibly go wrong?

We are off to Poole this weekend with my sister and nephew. My nephew seems to hope that the main feature of the weekend will be running away from waves. It’s the simple things… We might try and do some other things as well, like go to Monkey World.

We’re not back until Tuesday, so I’ll be back here Wednesday. Have a good weekend.

Robust

I came very close to losing my temper with a colleague yesterday. She only started three weeks ago, but let me tell you what I know about her so far. There is one way to do things, and it’s her way – and she is always right. We were in a managers’ meeting yesterday and it is fair to say that we had a very robust discussion.

After the meeting, I found out that the reason someone who is a good friend of mine has been off sick is due to stress – and this new manager is her boss. It’s not a good start. She is due to be back in the office today and so I am going to have a chat with her and see if I can do anything to help to reduce her stress levels.

The new manager and I will be sitting opposite each other as of next week. I can hardly wait.

Dessert

We are still continuing with our sugar purge, but given that we went out for dinner on Friday night (no dessert), went to some friends for dinner on Monday night (including dessert) and out for dinner last night (no dessert), we are maybe not setting ourselves the easiest task. I have been pretty good at not falling off the wagon, although I did have two white chocolate ferrero rocher last night. *sigh*

It has been so hot at work recently. We have air conditioning that switches off it the temperature outside gets too high. I am not sure who designed the system we have, but I am thinking that maybe they hadn’t finished their qualifications before they were let loose on the real world.

Late nights and early mornings do not a working brain make. I was doing nice things I might add.

I'll be back tomorrow.

Awe

On Saturday, I opened the back door of the car to get a bag out and there was a photo of a small baby on the floor of the car. I had no idea who the baby was or where the photo had come from. I showed the photo to G, who also had no idea. I mentioned it to my sister and told her some of the details of the photo, including the baby’s bedding and she said it is my nephew – although it isn’t very recognisable as him if it is. However, that doesn’t explain how the photo of him as a baby appeared in my car, particularly given that he is five years old now. Very odd.

We went with my mum and sister to see Ruby Wax on stage last night. It was quite good, but also a bit hit and miss in places. I didn’t feel worthy to be there though, given that in the audience close to where I was sitting, I saw Celia Imrie (who I think is marvellous, in case I haven’t made this clear before), John Sessions, Ronni Ancona and Richard E Grant. We were all in the dress circle, so the mind boggles at who was in the stalls.

Write

Do you know what today is? Well, yes it is 21 May 2010, but it is also National Letter Writing Day. According to World Vision, one in five children in the UK has never received a letter. How terrible is that? So today, is a day to put that right!

As I have mentioned here previously, I am wanting to get back into letter writing and have made a bit of a start on that. There is so much that can be conveyed by taking the time to hand write a letter, so if you can think of someone to write to today, be that a child or an adult, then give it a go. I think I might write to my nephew.

Or don't you like to write letters. I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something.

Ernest Hemingway

Denial

I am currently on a regime to try and avoid eating sugar. I have a
very sweet tooth and so it is not an ideal plan for me, but I am hoping
that it will reap rewards – not least avoiding a bit of a rush of sugar
followed by more of a plummet. But, I have to make sure that I am not
denying myself things – so it isn’t about going hungry, it is about
instead of having something sweet, finding something savoury to have
instead.

It isn’t just sugar in things like chocolate bars, it has also meant
(for a while at least) re-evaluating my breakfast. I have marmite on
my toast, so that is ok, but I have had to search about for a cereal
that doesn’t have much of a sugar content – and that primarily boils it
down to All Bran.

Have you looked at the back of a box of All Bran? It is primarily
filled with ways to disguise that you are eating it. It suggests you
put a couple of handfuls into the cereal you normally have or that you
put it in a lasagne, chilli con carne or bran muffins. It is hardly a
way to encourage purchasers to feel that All Bran is something to be
enjoyed in its own right. I am not quite sure how much they paid their
marketing people to come up with that strategy.

It was, therefore, with some trepidation that I opened the box of All
Bran. But I need not have feared, it is nowhere near as bad as their
marketing strategy might suggest. Perhaps that is the way they work
though, make people feat the worst and then it can only get better.

I shall soldier on with my (relatively) sugarless life, but am going to
have to find something to guy with a nice cup of tea in the evening
sometimes. Needs must.

Delete

A while ago there was a programme on BBC 4 called Dear Diary. Richard E Grant presented one of the programmes and he was looking at the power of the diary. Unfortunately, the programme isn’t on the BBB iPlayer or YouTube, but if it ever gets repeated, it is worth a watch.

Anyway, he made some really interesting observations on diary keeping. I don’t see my blog as a diary, but I thought some of what he said had echoes and similarities to writing a blog. So I shall with you a couple of things that he said. Make of them what you will.

All diaries are about dealing with loneliness. No matter who or how much you are in love with somebody or how many friends you have there is part of you that is always alone and I think keeping a diary is companionable in that way.

If no-one else has understood you, you are trying to understand yourself in writing it down.

Then at the conclusion of the programme he said this:

I’ve realised now at the end of my journey that I need to be very careful with what I have written in private. I’ve had to be honest in my diary. But however true and authentic it may be, it has power over the innocent bystanders in my life, and I risk betraying myself and them in the words that I leave behind. I’ve realised that my diaries are potentially powerful, possibly hurtful, in that they are open to interpretation. I can feel my hand hovering over the delete button as I speak.

A diary is your control of what you want to say about things. How other people read it, interpret it or use it then you have no control any more, unless it is completely secret and you press the delete button or you burn the lot.

Asides

Two years ago, G and I went on holiday to Cornwall. While we were there, we listened to The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. A Canadian book. Last year went to Canada on holiday.

Last year, while we were in Canada, we listened to another talking book. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. A Swedish book. This year we are going to Sweden on holiday.

Make of that what you will. I will make sure I am careful about any talking books I choose though and perhaps will avoid any set in a prison or hell.

Feedback

It was a busy weekend. We sorted out our holiday to Sweden. The itinerary is finalised, train tickets are all booked, after finally having to resort to calling the Swedish rail company and booking the tickets over the phone, and hotels are booked. I am just hoping the train tickets are right because the only way to get confirmation of the details is when I get the tickets out of a machine in Sweden in July…

We went to Southampton on Saturday to see a friend and meet her new baby, which was very pleasant. I then had to meet up with the freeholder on Sunday, who wants lots of money to do various bits of maintenance. I rather picked up that one of my neighbours has lied to them, by telling them she doesn’t have a job, to explain why she hasn’t been paying any maintenance charges. I just stayed silent on the matter, as I know full well that she is working. None of my neighbours turned up to the meeting, so I went for a coffee with the freeholder and her husband, which was a weird concept, as I have very mixed feelings about her, but it was pleasant enough.

As part of my wanting to write more letters, I wrote to a local councillor who lost his seat at the recent elections. He had been our independent councillor for years, but, somewhat surprisingly, lost his seat. He had been really helpful over the years and so I had written to him to say that I was sorry he wasn’t going to be our councillor any more. He dropped round yesterday afternoon to say thanks for the letter and we chatted for a few minutes. I felt rather sad after the conversation because he is a good chap and it is a real shame he won’t be our councillor any more. I was glad that I wrote to him though, and I got some rather speedy feedback on how much he appreciated getting the letter. So, I should take that as impetus to find other suitable moments to drop someone a few lines.

Trips

We’ve come up with a tentative plan for our holiday in Sweden. We wee going to try and travel up towards the Arctic Circle, but every idea seemed to involve having to route back through Stockholm. I am sure Stockholm will be nice, but I don’t think we want to see it several times on the same trip. So we are going to stick to the south and go to Gothenberg and some places in between. We plan to travel by train and I have discovered that booking directly with the Swedish Railway is considerably cheaper than doing it via Rail Europe. It is more responsibility though… Anyway, hopefully it will all be booked by the end of the weekend.

We are off to Southampton tomorrow. A friend had a baby in January and we are, at last, going to visit to meet him. We are only going down for the day, so we’ll get up early to make the most of it. I might have to see the freeholder on Sunday, which is not ideal. She and her husband want to charge us all more money, so we are meant to be discussing it. However, one of my neighbours won’t be about, so I think I will decline to discuss it in any detail. I also intend to prevent them from coming into my home. I really don’t want the freeholder coming in to where I live and so I shall have to learn to say no without sounding overly rude. It could be a challenge knowing what my freeholder is like.

Cool

When I was about to leave work yesterday, there was one member of my team left in the office. I had shut down my computer and was about to put my coat on when I overheard her talking to her husband on the phone, and she was clearly very upset. When she finished her phone call I asked her if she wanted to have a chat and so we spent a while talking about what was going on and cam up with a short-term plan (which included her going home, as it was quite late already and she clearly wasn’t in any state to do more work anyway). My team just seems to go from one problem to another, and I am not unsympathetic, but I do find the scale of things that happen quite hard to keep up with!

It’s been rather cold the last couple of days. In fact, ever since the Tories gained power. I was wondering if this was the first sign of hell freezing over.

Plans

I was saddened to see Gordon Brown resign as Prime Minister. I was even more saddened to see David Cameron become the next Prime Minister. I think we will see interesting times ahead, not least because it will take time to see if the Tories can truly get another party to co-operate with them.

Things have moved on in terms of holidays. I sent G an e-mail yesterday (because we aren’t allowed to actually speak to each other obviously) and said that I thought a lot of the reason why I was having trouble coming up with holiday plans was because what I really wanted to do was go to Scandinavia. G rather agreed and so last night we booked flights to Stockholm. We have no idea of what we will do in Sweden, where we will stay etc etc etc. But we do have flights. I guess we’d better get on with coming up with more of a plan.

Times

I was quite late into work yesterday morning. I got on the tube that was hit with various delays and then changed (earlier than normal) to another tube line. Four times, I repeat FOUR TIMES within five stops we had to wait several minutes before we could set off again because someone had set off the passenger alarm on the train in front. Each time, it was because someone had passed out on the train. At one point the train driver even said to us “unbelievably, someone else has passed out on another train in front of us, so we’re going to have to wait here until we get a green signal”. I am guessing it was not a good start to the week for a number of people, particularly those who passed out, but I just decided to get on with reading my book in the hope that at some point I would get to work.

It’s an interesting development that Gordon Brown is going to step down as the Labour Party leader. I won't go into my thoughts on this matter, although I do have quite a few! Instead, here’s a photo I took yesterday when I went and had a nose and had a look at all the various media broadcasters reporting from outside Parliament. (It’s John Sopel and Laura Kuenssberg in case you can’t see it very well!)

Result

We had a busy weekend. On Friday night, we went to a quiz at my nephew’s school. We came second by one point. We was robbed.

Then, on Saturday, we went on the Orient Express to Deal. That was really good and felt very decadent. We left at Victoria at 10.45am and by 11am we were being the first course of our lunch, having already been served champagne. It was a long lunch that lasted until about 1pm. Then we arrived in Deal and had a wander around for a couple of hours by the seaside before boarding the train back to Victoria with afternoon tea to help us to pass the time. It was a really nice day out and we are now going to have to think of other such things to keep us in the style to which we have become accustomed.

I find the election result fascinating – but the post-election coverage less so, particularly given that there is nothing, as such, to report at the moment, which doesn’t stop the 24 hour news rolling on. Given the state of politics these days, anything that might make politicians co-operate more surely has to be a good thing, but we’ll see if we can have any proper form of government, and what that government will look like, in due course.

Practical

So we voted and ate Chinese food to celebrate our anniversary. We know how to live. We even have leftovers from the Chinese for lunch today. A celebration and yet also practical. What does that tell you about our relationship?

A new manager started this week. She is the same level as me and seems nice enough – which is a good thing as we will be sitting opposite each other in about a month’s time. However, she phoned me yesterday. From her desk which is about 20 feet away. I felt I had to talk to her in a quiet tone because we would probably have been able to hear each other without the use of a phone if I hadn’t. I don’t think it’s normal to phone someone that you could either walk over to in about 10 seconds or just raise your voice and (anti-socially admittedly) speak to each other. I feel I am going to have to break her of this habit or else I will have to build a huge wall between our desks so that we can at least pretend we need to use a phone to speak. I will be keeping an eye on her for other strange quirks.

Politics

So it’s Election Day. Remember to go out and vote! I normally vote on the way into work, but G didn’t want to have to get up extra early to vote, so we’ll go together after work tonight. I am not hopeful that tomorrow’s result will be a good one. I have spoken to so many people who fear we will end up with a Tory government and I haven’t spoken to anyone who thinks it would be a good thing. But I don’t think the people I know are representative of the population as a whole.

Not only is today election today, but G and I have also been together for three years. G did ask if, in light of it being Election Day, if it might be an opportunity for a change of leadership in our relationship. However, I explained that our relationship is not a democracy and there will be no such changes and any votes cast for such a move will be declared null and void. Coups will also be severely punished.

Mind you, it is actually quite an achievement that we made it to three years given that yesterday G sent me this article. Everything has now become clear.

Boring

We are now thinking about further destinations for a holiday and have been wondering about Belgium? Does anyone ever really think of Belgium as a holiday destination? Is this a weird place to be considering? We will probably have ruled it out by the end of today and come up with somewhere totally different as a holiday idea by then.

I felt really out of sorts yesterday. I think the only word that I can think to describe how I felt was “bored”. I don’t know why really. I just didn’t feel inspired. Someone new is starting today so I will have to pretend to feel inspired even if I am not actually feeling like that. It’s odd because I don’t normally feel bored at work. Perhaps I need to find some new inspiration to liven things up a bit there.

Travel

We had a good weekend. We went to Stratford overnight (and stayed in a ropey, but incredibly cheap Travelodge) and that was pleasant, but we didn’t get to see a play because the RSC don’t have any performances on a Sunday night. I have to say that I am not someone who really “gets” Shakespeare and so don’t particularly feel as though I am missed out. Although, they are performing Anthony and Cleopatra at the moment and I studied that at A-level and did like it. Most Shakespeare passes me by though and I don’t normally have a clue what’s going on. Is that a terrible thing to confess?!

We still haven’t got a clue what we are going to do for our summer hols. We seem to be going round and round in circles about what we are going to do and have looked at a few options, but then when we have added up the cost, it seems to be crazy amounts to spend. At this rate, I think we will just decide it is less hassle to stay at home.

Shallow

Last July, I wrote to John Lewis because I was really unhappy with their customer service. I chased the complete lack of replies and did this most recently a week ago (which was my second letter to the Managing Director asking why I hadn’t had a response). I got a phone call earlier this week from one of their stores that I had expressed particular concerns about saying that this was the first time they had seen my letter. Apparently it was “nobody's fault” and was due to a “glitch”. Well, I am glad that they are breathing a huge sigh of relief that John Lewis is satisfied that no-one there was to blame for me waiting over nine months for a reply to my letter. I await their full response. I think it will make interesting reading.


Here’s a question for you. Can you complete the following sentence correctly? According to David Cameron “The most natural human instinct of all” is:

a) to reproduce
b) to show kindness
c) breathing
d) to pass on your house to your children when you die without paying inheritance tax
e) survival






In case you were not aware of your most natural human instinct – the answer is d apparently. Seriously, that man could be our Prime Minister next week. Let that totally shallow answer tell you what we could end up with for the next four years if you vote Tory. Use your vote wisely and at least vote for a party that isn’t just out for number one.

Disappointing

Sometimes I don’t like being a manager. Yesterday, we had a big meeting with all the teams to make sure that they knew what the targets are for the year and to give them the opportunity to ask questions and make comments. I have two bosses and one of them was off sick (she genuinely was sick, it wasn’t to avoid the meeting!), so I felt the need to make sure that my other boss was not left to take all the wrath. The meeting got a fairly negative response, although those who were fine with it didn’t really say a lot.

As we walked out of the meeting, I asked one of them how she felt about it all and she sort of jokingly turned to me and said “creep”. I was a bit speechless at this. First of all, this person is quite a good friend of mine. Second of all, I wasn’t being a creep by backing up my boss, we as managers had helped to shape the objectives and agreed them, and so to leave my boss to take the flack wouldn’t even have crossed my mind. When we got back to our office, she made some other comment and I just said something like “I’m not even going to bother to respond to that” and walked back to my desk.

She e-mailed me later to say she felt bad about how she had spoken to me and she had taken her stress out on me. I said that it was ok, but that I didn’t quite get why she was having a go at me, and that it hadn’t been ideal to do it when she did because I couldn’t really ask what was going on in front of other people. I also said we’d talk about her feeling stressed at some other point, as that seems, ultimately, to be what was underlying it.

I am not one to hold a grudge and I have had rather more acrimonious discussions with people at work before, but I can’t say that it isn’t rather disappointing to have a friend speak to me like that. But I guess that is what happens when you’re friends with people at work.

Helpful

So I think we have changed the holiday plans. We might now go to Germany and possibly Austria. This means getting out a whole new piece of blank sheet of paper to put together another potential trip. I am definitely going to need a holiday after all of this planning.

I was bemused by a story on the BBC about a woman whose mobile phone number accidentally appeared on EastEnders. The article says:

Mrs Edwards says she received 2,800 messages after the episode was aired in September, some of them abusive.

I really wouldn’t be paying enough attention to notice the number and then be able to text someone an (abusive or otherwise) message. Some people really do have much time on their hands…

The article does then add:

...the large volume of messages received by Mrs Edwards could in part be explained by The Sun subsequently reporting the story and carrying a picture of Ricky's phone which showed the number.

That was helpful then.

Right

I am not someone who normally expresses particularly strong political views, except perhaps occasionally to those who know me well, and I think I won’t get into an argument about it. However, there is a Tory that just sums up what that party is about and why it is dangerous to vote for them. Ultimately they are self-centred, out of touch and only interested in the middle-classes (or “above”).

They have announced a much hyped policy that if at the age of 65 you have £8000 in savings that can be used to negate the risk of having to sell your home to pay for going into a care home. On the surface that sounds like a reasonably good plan. Who wants to lose their home, particularly if they have invested of their mine and themselves in it? However, the reason the Tories advocate this plan is to reward those who have “done the right thing” i.e. saved up their money.

That is such a dangerous argument. It is putting a morality on people’s ability to save. This is the same Tory party who in the next breath have criticised the Labour government for their being two and a half million old people in poverty. I don’t think that statistic is actually true (having checked some of the data), but let’s carry through that Tory argument. Presumably, they would then have to say “Those two and half million people who are in poverty, do not have £8000 and this is because they have den the wrong thing”.

I am all for people taking responsibility for their own lives, but that people don’t have £8000 in savings does not equate to having done the wrong thing with money. What about people on the minimum wage? What about people who have had ill-health that has affected their ability to earn money? What about people who have never been in debt in their life, but have not had the capacity to save because they needed the money to keep a roof over their head and to feed themselves?

It is a policy aimed at the middle-class voter and is totally out of touch with the reality of many people’s lives. Nobody should unnecessarily lose their home, but turning it into a virtue for the better off to be able to pay a sum because they have “lived right” surely tells you all you need to know about how fair a country we will have if the Tories win the election. A scary, scary prospect.

Vivid

On Saturday morning I woke up early because I had a really sore throat. A few minutes later, I realised that actually I didn’t have a sore throat and instead it had, presumably, just been a very vivid dream. Very odd.

Yesterday, we put some major thought into our summer holiday. We plotted out a route that involves flying to Munich and then travelling by train through Austria, Switzerland and France and then home on the Eurostar. However, having costed it all out, it seems like a pretty expensive trip and would cost about the same amount as when we went to Canada last year (we only paid £100 for our flights to Canada though, so it isn’t entirely a fair comparison, but even so…). It’s the accommodation in Switzerland that is so expensive. I am now trying to think of a plan B, which will either mean finding a cheaper way to do this or thinking of a new destination. Much to ponder.

Eras

Last night was the leaving do for the big boss. It is his last day today and it will be the end of an era. I have worked for him twice in the last nine years (as I have returned to work somewhere I worked several years ago) and he certainly set the tone of the organisation and made it a decent place to work. We will wait to see what the future holds for us next.

Yesterday morning on the tube on the way into work, I quite clearly saw a police officer reading a classified document. I did have the urge to lean across to him and suggest that a tube train was not the right place to be reading such things, but then decided that a police officer has more power than me and that maybe it wouldn’t be the best decision.

I wrote to Nick Clegg this week. He really miffed me with something that he said during the leadership debate last week. As it still bothered me this week, I decided that I should write. Do I think it will make a difference? Not really. But at least I gave it a go.

Write

Lately, a number of things have made me think about writing letters. I mentioned this last week actually. I have decided that this is something I should take action on, whether it be writing someone a letter or a card with a message in it.

It might help to make sure that when the postman turns up each day he is bringing more than bills. I have also decided that at least some of the letters need to be handwritten (in legible handwriting!) and that I need to look for opportunities to write to people. I know someone who is off long term sick and so I could write to her, as well as phone. There is also someone who I meant to write to a long time ago just to give them a brief bit of encouragement/ positive feedback on something, and doing it now will still be a relevant. I feel this might take a while to become a more normal thing to do, but taking the time to write to someone and to put the card or letter in the post to them strikes me as something that is important not to lose as a form of communication in the instant world in which we live.

Alternatives

One of the good things about the Icelandic volcano is that it has pushed the ever tedious election coverage further down the news rankings. It has meant that we have at least had some other things to think about than parties peddling policies and taking swipes at their opposition.

I have, however, raised an eyebrow on more than one occasion at what people have done or, more accurately, spent to get back to the UK. I have heard a number of tales of people who have spent about 2000 Euros on taxis etc to get back. Admittedly, some people probably have strong reasons to get back – if they are self employed or have serious commitments that they can’t break. I also know that some hotels have, somewhat cynically, hiked their prices. But it would take an awful lot of reasons to get me to spend ever mounting amounts to get home.

When we went to Jersey, there was the prospect that BA might strike, so before we went we talked about what we would do if we had problems getting back. We concluded that we would wait it out. We’d see if we could stay on at the B&B and wait until we could go home. We were not willing to get a ferry across the Channel and then a train or coach back to London.

Admittedly what has happened with the volcano was rather unexpected for the travelling public, but if it were me, I would stay where I was unless I had no alternative. Epic journeys at great expense just don’t do it for me, unless it is part of the holiday of a lifetime. I suspect there are some people who have made it home with a great story to tell of their intrepid adventures, but wondering why they shelled out all that money.

Plans

So it’s back to work today. It was really nice not to be in work yesterday, despite G using a lot of the time to write a job application.

The freeholder is being a pain again. Having out up with well over a year’s worth of building works, we thought being disturbed by them was now over. However, the next thing they are tackling is the garden next door, which is currently just mud. They have laid grass seed and it needs to be regularly watered in order to stand any chance of growing. The freeholder told my new neighbour to use our tap – for which we pay for the water supply. My neighbour did have the manners to come and ask and I did say how unimpressed I was with her landlord (who is my freeholder), but said it was ok. Then on Sunday the freeholder came round and asked to use it and ran a hose pipe for ages.

When I went outside later there was lots of mud outside my back door and they had also made it really wet, so it was impossible to step outside my back door without getting mud on my shoes or traipsing through the water. They had also left part of the hose-fitting on the tap, presumably so that it was easy to attach a hosepipe to it whenever they (or my neighbours) want to do so. The tap is right outside my back door and kitchen window, both of which have clear glass in them, so it means that, once again, we are having our privacy invaded by the freeholder (and now my neighbours, who I don’t even know) and are dealing with their mess.

At the moment I am dealing with it in a very passive aggressive way – by standing in the back garden and complaining to G about the mess that was left and detaching the bit of the hose that was left on my tap and putting on their windowsill for them. I really just want to be able to live undisturbed, without feeling that I might walk into my kitchen and find my neighbour standing outside my back door, or stepping over their hosepipe to get into my garden or dealing with the mess they leave behind. Grrrr…

I know I should perhaps just go and talk to my neighbour, but that would be too sensible and reasonable, so instead I shall carry on dealing with it in a passive aggressive way in the hope that they will somehow pick up from this that all is not well and go away. Somehow, I doubt this cunning plan will work.

Leisure

So, we didn’t get to go to Scotland. I was not desperately upset by this, but clearly it was inconvenient. We were going there for a christening (G’s niece), so we missed that, but might go in June instead. So we had a free weekend and we went for a really nice walk in the sunshine, bought a new vacuum cleaner and went to my parents’ for Sunday lunch. Neither of us are going to work today because we had already booked the day off, as we were due to fly back today, and so figured we might as well take the day off anyway.

I was wondering how much food we get by air? Are we going to start seeing panic buying at some point if this flight ban continues for a bit longer? Should we be stocking up on tins and learning to become more self-sufficient? I suspect we are a long way off from being a nation that starts to run out of staple goods, but perhaps I will buy extra supplies of tea bags just in case. It really would be a crisis to run out of tea.

Anyway, I hopefully have a leisurely day ahead. I might spend some of it reading – I have so many books that I want to read at the moment – or doing other such things. I could get used to a life of leisure.

Plans

So… tonight the plan was to fly to Glasgow. I hadn’t quite factored in volcanoes as a potential way to scupper this plan. It’s that Iceland again. First they don’t refund us our money when their bank collapsed and now they send plumes of volcanic ash in our direction. This beginning to miff me. I think I might not buy any of their frozen food just to get back at them.

I am reading The Wind Up Bird Chronicle at the moment, which I am really enjoying. I have found it really engaging and think it is a great book so far. Except in one part. One part that involved a very graphic description of a man being skinned alive. Oh my goodness. Skinned alive. I have to say that I skimmed read that part and skipped parts of it entirely. It was very descriptive, shall we say. It’s a good book though.

Praise

It has been a busy week so far. I have felt a bit like I had jet lag, which isn’t really possible given that Jersey is only a 35 minute flight away and is on the same time zone. I think perhaps I am just lazy then. I did, however, go back to a mountain of work and have done volunteering a couple of nights this week (which included being told off for having a clicky pen, but also getting some praise for my tough line that I took with someone I had to deal with. I got praise from scary man!).

I have noticed that the number of books I have read this year has seriously declined compared to the past two years. If I carry on at this rate, I will read half the number I did last year – only ending up somewhere in the mid-thirties. I have read one very long book this year (The Count of Monte Cristo), but feel that I need to up my pace because there are so many books that I want to read and so little time…

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?