Final "Before" photos:
One last look at the ceiling. See the chink of daylight?
I am so excited!
- Pam
Saturday, 30 November 2013
Sunday, 6 October 2013
Crisis
Looks like we are going to need some more gin....
There is still 1kg of sloes requiring gin, currently lodged in my freezer.
A couple of weeks ago, my dear friend AJ and I played golf and, inbetween holes harvested the nearby blackthorn bushes. We liberated 1.8kg of sloes, which I brought home, washed and froze (splits their skins so that you don't have to stab them with a skewer). Tonight, DH and I made sloe gin, following the recipe from www.sloe.biz .
Should be ready to drink in three months.
- Pam
Wednesday, 21 August 2013
View from my commute
Thursday was a long day. Thanks to two meetings, I had to work in our London office, so left home at 6.30am to get the bus then the Tube. The view on my walk to the office certainly made up for it...
That's right. I spent the day looking out if the window at Tower Bridge, with the Tower of London in the background.
Sometimes, I feel very lucky living on the outskirts of London.
- Pam
Sunday, 18 August 2013
Tuesday, 13 August 2013
Oops!! I slipped
I'm knitting a Five Hour Baby Sweater out of Stylecraft Baby Aran in the shade Baby Lemon for the newborn daughter of one of DH's colleagues. With 20 rows to go on the body, I know I will run out of yarn. I always knew it would be tight, even after inserting the reminants of some white aran yarn into the yoke to pad out the yarn as a styling detail. (Photo below.) I can't do another stripe of the white - I've used all that I had - so this morning, I unwillingly went searching online for some more.
(I really didn't want to go yarn shopping. Even with the Fashion on the Ration challenge, my stash is approaching epic proportions.) Below, is the exact transcript of a conversation I had with with DH…
ME: Just to let you know that I've ordered some more of the baby yarn from a shop on line. It'll arrive over the weekend (probably).
DH: Cool. So I assume you order lemon/yellow?
ME: Yes, same shade. Probably a different dye-lot, though, so I'll have to wait for it to be delivered and then alternate rows in order to ensure the change in dye lots doesn't show up.
[ cough ]
In order to get free P&P, I had to buy some other wool. Some 4-ply in French Navy. [ cough ] And it made sense to buy 12 balls because a) I don't know how much I'll need to knit the jumper I want (I'll be knitting "off-piste"), and b) it got me an extra discount. (I only paid for 11.)
[ cough ]
I'm sure it'll squish down into nothing....
[ / cough ]
DH still hasn't responded.
- Pam (another 16 coupons spent)
Sunday, 11 August 2013
Nickle and Dime-ing it
(How annoying - I wrote this post and then lost it.)
Have I ever mentioned to you our coin collections? How, every day or two, DH and I empty our wallets of 1p, 2p, 5p and £2 coins and pop those coins into various jars and a money box. The coppers (1p and 2p) go into one Celebrations sweet jar; the 5p pieces into another; while the £2 coins, aka the "Running Away Fund" goes into a Maltesers phone booth money box.
The coppers jar holds about £22 and takes a year or two to fill. Ditto the Running Away Fund, which holds £600. In the thirteen years since we started filling it, 5p jar has never been emptied. The above photo is at least three years old and, even though we have been adding to the jar assiduously since then, it took forever to fill.
A couple of weekends ago, the jar was finally full. And heavy (once they were bagged and tagged, I weighed the coins: 10.2kg). It took the two of us over an hour to count them all. 5p coins are small, about the size of a dime, and the instructions from the bank was to put £5 in each bag - i.e. 100 coins. We filled 32 bags. DH lugged them into the bank on the Monday and added them to our Running Away Fund (holiday money) savings account.
Thirteen years of saving 5p pieces netted £160.
- Pam
Have I ever mentioned to you our coin collections? How, every day or two, DH and I empty our wallets of 1p, 2p, 5p and £2 coins and pop those coins into various jars and a money box. The coppers (1p and 2p) go into one Celebrations sweet jar; the 5p pieces into another; while the £2 coins, aka the "Running Away Fund" goes into a Maltesers phone booth money box.
The coppers jar holds about £22 and takes a year or two to fill. Ditto the Running Away Fund, which holds £600. In the thirteen years since we started filling it, 5p jar has never been emptied. The above photo is at least three years old and, even though we have been adding to the jar assiduously since then, it took forever to fill.
A couple of weekends ago, the jar was finally full. And heavy (once they were bagged and tagged, I weighed the coins: 10.2kg). It took the two of us over an hour to count them all. 5p coins are small, about the size of a dime, and the instructions from the bank was to put £5 in each bag - i.e. 100 coins. We filled 32 bags. DH lugged them into the bank on the Monday and added them to our Running Away Fund (holiday money) savings account.
- Pam
Saturday, 27 July 2013
66 Coupons? Not a problem.
I am feeling a bit like a fraud. You remember my fashion on the ration experiment? I've just been updating the box on the right to include all my purchases since I last wrote about it. And it's left me feeling rather fraudulent. Why? Because, a) I have a lot of clothes in my wardrobe, and b), when I have made purchases, they've been second-hand from a charity shop which doesn't cost coupons (5 balls of Sirdar Calico, an M&S t-shirt with the tags still on but labelled "donated goods").
So why does that make me feel fraudulent? Unlike my WW2 sisters, I'm not suffering for my fashion. To be fair, I gave up on trying to be fashionable a long time ago, when the fashions stopped suiting my body type, so I am not desperately chasing the next big thing. I don't care if my suit is 6 years old, as long as it still looks smart and fits in with my late-1930's/WW2 fashion style. Additionally, in Wartime terms, I have quite an abundance of clothing, yarn and fabric stashed away. Even shoes. I suspect that level of abundance puts me in the league of the Wartime upper-middle class.
(On the shoe, thing. After a conversation with Tall, when he claimed his wife had over 150 pairs of shoes - turns out she has 154 pairs and a database of them(!) - I went home and counted my pairs of shoes. Before I tell you the total, please remember that I am a woman who generally wears the same pair loafers to work, lives in sandals in the summer and trainers in the winter. So.... You'd expect me to have maybe a dozen pairs of shoes, right? I have 35 pairs of shoes. And I probably missed a pair or two in the counting. And that includes my site boots, my gardening shoes, several pairs of boots, my slippers, etc, etc. There were even pairs I'd forgotten I had.)
Perhaps I'd better keep this challenge going for a few years, instead of one?
- Pam
So why does that make me feel fraudulent? Unlike my WW2 sisters, I'm not suffering for my fashion. To be fair, I gave up on trying to be fashionable a long time ago, when the fashions stopped suiting my body type, so I am not desperately chasing the next big thing. I don't care if my suit is 6 years old, as long as it still looks smart and fits in with my late-1930's/WW2 fashion style. Additionally, in Wartime terms, I have quite an abundance of clothing, yarn and fabric stashed away. Even shoes. I suspect that level of abundance puts me in the league of the Wartime upper-middle class.
(On the shoe, thing. After a conversation with Tall, when he claimed his wife had over 150 pairs of shoes - turns out she has 154 pairs and a database of them(!) - I went home and counted my pairs of shoes. Before I tell you the total, please remember that I am a woman who generally wears the same pair loafers to work, lives in sandals in the summer and trainers in the winter. So.... You'd expect me to have maybe a dozen pairs of shoes, right? I have 35 pairs of shoes. And I probably missed a pair or two in the counting. And that includes my site boots, my gardening shoes, several pairs of boots, my slippers, etc, etc. There were even pairs I'd forgotten I had.)
Perhaps I'd better keep this challenge going for a few years, instead of one?
- Pam
Friday, 28 June 2013
Categorise us
These things are givens: my blue-green eyes; the brown curly hair that refuses to be tamed (I joke "it wears me"); that I am a musician; that I'm Mensa-level bright; that I like puzzles and solving problems but can't do crosswords; my need to create and craft; that I'm a damn good cook and love entertaining; that I am a bookworm; that even though my father worked in a factory and my mother trained as a dressmaker, I am inexorably middle-class.
While some a physical attributes or accidents of history, many of the above are labels I stick on myself. The human tendency to categorise people always amazes me. As a species, we are awfully judgemental. We go about consigning our acquaintances to labelled boxes, e.g. "shelf stacker" or "nice but dim" or "arty" or, my favourite from a friend, "so common they'd make TOWIE look posh". It can be funny watching the reactions when the labellee doesn't conform to the labeller's expectations - have you ever had someone protest to you, "But you're not like that!" when you do something that doesn't agree with their preconceptions?
I've mentioned before that I hate to be labelled, hate the assumption that just because I like one thing, I will dislike another. In any given scenario, you can only possibly present part of yourself to the world. The core "you" will always be present but it's highly unlikely that your closest loved ones will see the same version of you as your colleagues. I am aware that pretty much everything people might know about me depends upon where and how we met, for example, at work most of my department do not know that I play RPGs on the weekends. I'm not ashamed of it but it's only ever come up in conversation once, at which point, I out geeked the guy who thought he was the resident geek. They know I sing in a choir but it's taken some of them years to reconcile my taste in classical music with going to rock concerts. Wonder what they'd say if they knew the last band I listened to live played bluegrass and the one before that played skiffle?
On the flip side, if you knew me through role-playing or choir, it is unlikely my profession would have an impact on you. At most, you'd know I'm an accountant in an engineering firm. If pushed, I'd tell you about the business I look after now, possibly about the project I looked after for 5 years. There are days when I re-read some of the emails I've sent at work and think, "my God, I'm good at what I do" but, outside the recipients, only another accountant would get the impact of what I've written. Maybe that's why many of my dearest girlfriends have a connection to my profession and the job I do. When the "Ladies of A" get together, we trade war stories about segmental analysis, complain about revenue recognition, share the triumph that comes from finally being able to take the static figures from the management accounts as presented in Hyperion and drill all the way down into the ledgers to find the primary transactions.
If you were watching us from a nearby table at a restaurant, you probably wouldn't notice until after the second or third cocktail since the conversation is always interspersed with stories about husbands and children and football and holidays and houses and hobbies and homemaking. Until that point, from the outside, we probably look like any other group of middle-aged "ladies who lunch". After that point, when the alcohol loosens the volume controls, you might notice the lack of conversation about hair and make-up while we dissect the technicalities of the accounts we manage (although we might make the occasional detour into shoes...). Another case of appearances deceiving. Not fitting in to neatly labelled boxes.
I am not a stereotype. Don't try to make me one!
- Pam
(Incidentally, one of the funniest assumptions that has ever been made about me is when my Head of Project Controls and I went to check into a hotel in Glasgow and walked up to the reception desk together. Having told the desk clerk that I'd booked two rooms, indicating my male colleague as I did so, the clerk promptly asked me if we'd like two keys to my room! J's face was a picture. I hate to think what mine was like.)
While some a physical attributes or accidents of history, many of the above are labels I stick on myself. The human tendency to categorise people always amazes me. As a species, we are awfully judgemental. We go about consigning our acquaintances to labelled boxes, e.g. "shelf stacker" or "nice but dim" or "arty" or, my favourite from a friend, "so common they'd make TOWIE look posh". It can be funny watching the reactions when the labellee doesn't conform to the labeller's expectations - have you ever had someone protest to you, "But you're not like that!" when you do something that doesn't agree with their preconceptions?
I've mentioned before that I hate to be labelled, hate the assumption that just because I like one thing, I will dislike another. In any given scenario, you can only possibly present part of yourself to the world. The core "you" will always be present but it's highly unlikely that your closest loved ones will see the same version of you as your colleagues. I am aware that pretty much everything people might know about me depends upon where and how we met, for example, at work most of my department do not know that I play RPGs on the weekends. I'm not ashamed of it but it's only ever come up in conversation once, at which point, I out geeked the guy who thought he was the resident geek. They know I sing in a choir but it's taken some of them years to reconcile my taste in classical music with going to rock concerts. Wonder what they'd say if they knew the last band I listened to live played bluegrass and the one before that played skiffle?
On the flip side, if you knew me through role-playing or choir, it is unlikely my profession would have an impact on you. At most, you'd know I'm an accountant in an engineering firm. If pushed, I'd tell you about the business I look after now, possibly about the project I looked after for 5 years. There are days when I re-read some of the emails I've sent at work and think, "my God, I'm good at what I do" but, outside the recipients, only another accountant would get the impact of what I've written. Maybe that's why many of my dearest girlfriends have a connection to my profession and the job I do. When the "Ladies of A" get together, we trade war stories about segmental analysis, complain about revenue recognition, share the triumph that comes from finally being able to take the static figures from the management accounts as presented in Hyperion and drill all the way down into the ledgers to find the primary transactions.
If you were watching us from a nearby table at a restaurant, you probably wouldn't notice until after the second or third cocktail since the conversation is always interspersed with stories about husbands and children and football and holidays and houses and hobbies and homemaking. Until that point, from the outside, we probably look like any other group of middle-aged "ladies who lunch". After that point, when the alcohol loosens the volume controls, you might notice the lack of conversation about hair and make-up while we dissect the technicalities of the accounts we manage (although we might make the occasional detour into shoes...). Another case of appearances deceiving. Not fitting in to neatly labelled boxes.
I am not a stereotype. Don't try to make me one!
- Pam
(Incidentally, one of the funniest assumptions that has ever been made about me is when my Head of Project Controls and I went to check into a hotel in Glasgow and walked up to the reception desk together. Having told the desk clerk that I'd booked two rooms, indicating my male colleague as I did so, the clerk promptly asked me if we'd like two keys to my room! J's face was a picture. I hate to think what mine was like.)
Friday, 14 June 2013
How many meals?
This morning, I skived off work*, scooped up the contents of the meat fund and went to the kosher butcher. It had been six months since my last visit, I had £230 to play with and a freezer that looked half full. In the end, I spent £199.35 and bought the following:-
2kg roasting chicken - 3 meals plus stock
3 x 350g packets of chicken livers - 3 meals
2kg rolled turkey leg roast - 3 meals
marinated Tuscan lamb roast - 1 meal
1lb marinated stir-fry beef - 2 meals
4lb minced (ground) beef - 8 meals
Shoulder of lamb - 2 meals
5lb cubed steak - 5 meals
9 chicken breast fillets - 9 meals
Lamb spare ribs in honey - 1 meal
2 packs beef sausages - 2 meals
700g turkey schnitzels - 2-3 meals
6 packets stock cubes
So that's 41 or 42 meals where each meal feeds a minimum of 4. The only thing I didn't buy was steak. (I forgot.)
Let me restate it: that's four roast dinners plus leftovers; three pre-prepared Chinese meals (just add veg and rice); nine large chicken breasts (250g each) which will make nine stir-fries/ risotto/pasta dishes or curries; five assorted beef stews or curries; 8 meals of minced beef and other possibilities; three of chicken livers; plus a bag of "I don't feel like cooking what have we got to eat?".
It will take us through to December by my reckoning. Sometimes my ability to stretch out food amazes even me. Of course, we eat the odd vegetarian meal - less frequently than you'd think - and a reasonable amount of fish (maybe 2lb a month if you include tinned tuna and pilchards), but we don't go hungry by any stretch of the imagination. Nor do we eat out a lot.
Hmmm..... Do you remember back in October when I was toying with doing a Wartime Experiment but wondered about whether we could survive the food rations? Dealing with the meat ration was really what was putting me off trying the experiment. Well, www.whatsthecost.com's UK inflation calculator tells me that £200 today is the equivalent of £3/17/9 in 1941 money (£3, 17 shillings and 10 pence). In 1941, the meat ration was 1s2d per week. Therefore, I reckon I've just bought 15 weeks' worth of meat ration for two people. Food for thought.
- Pam
* More to the point, since I have done at least 40 hours unpaid overtime since the start of May, which includes unwilling working 5 hours on Saturday and our timesheet week runs Saturday to Friday, I told my bosses that I was booking that time in my regular 40 hours and not working today. (At my grade, I can't claim paid overtime.)
2kg roasting chicken - 3 meals plus stock
3 x 350g packets of chicken livers - 3 meals
2kg rolled turkey leg roast - 3 meals
marinated Tuscan lamb roast - 1 meal
1lb marinated stir-fry beef - 2 meals
4lb minced (ground) beef - 8 meals
Shoulder of lamb - 2 meals
5lb cubed steak - 5 meals
9 chicken breast fillets - 9 meals
Lamb spare ribs in honey - 1 meal
2 packs beef sausages - 2 meals
700g turkey schnitzels - 2-3 meals
6 packets stock cubes
So that's 41 or 42 meals where each meal feeds a minimum of 4. The only thing I didn't buy was steak. (I forgot.)
Let me restate it: that's four roast dinners plus leftovers; three pre-prepared Chinese meals (just add veg and rice); nine large chicken breasts (250g each) which will make nine stir-fries/ risotto/pasta dishes or curries; five assorted beef stews or curries; 8 meals of minced beef and other possibilities; three of chicken livers; plus a bag of "I don't feel like cooking what have we got to eat?".
It will take us through to December by my reckoning. Sometimes my ability to stretch out food amazes even me. Of course, we eat the odd vegetarian meal - less frequently than you'd think - and a reasonable amount of fish (maybe 2lb a month if you include tinned tuna and pilchards), but we don't go hungry by any stretch of the imagination. Nor do we eat out a lot.
Hmmm..... Do you remember back in October when I was toying with doing a Wartime Experiment but wondered about whether we could survive the food rations? Dealing with the meat ration was really what was putting me off trying the experiment. Well, www.whatsthecost.com's UK inflation calculator tells me that £200 today is the equivalent of £3/17/9 in 1941 money (£3, 17 shillings and 10 pence). In 1941, the meat ration was 1s2d per week. Therefore, I reckon I've just bought 15 weeks' worth of meat ration for two people. Food for thought.
- Pam
* More to the point, since I have done at least 40 hours unpaid overtime since the start of May, which includes unwilling working 5 hours on Saturday and our timesheet week runs Saturday to Friday, I told my bosses that I was booking that time in my regular 40 hours and not working today. (At my grade, I can't claim paid overtime.)
Sunday, 2 June 2013
Stopping for breath
Hello. How was your weekend? Mine was very productive. This is the first weekend since the start of May that I didn't have work to do, and I made the most of it. Friday, I finished work at 12, then met a friend for lunch and a very l-o-n-g chat (lunch finished at 6pm!). Saturday, we went to the farm shop, the supermarket, then hit the garden. Today, I collected Howard from the airport, cleaned the house, cooked up a batch of base, prepared dinner for tomorrow night as well as tonight. I even snatched an hour or so sitting in the garden today, knitting and listening to the cricket on the radio.
It might not sound like a completely fun weekend, but compared to the previous few it was bliss. I've spent so much time working in May, that just getting a few hours to potter around the house was lovely. There are two bank holidays in May, after the first - Monday 6th May - I worked 50 hours in 4 days. You know how I normally work half days on Fridays? Well, I left the office that Friday after 9pm. We went on holiday on the Saturday - Malaga in Spain, I may tell you about it sometime - got home the following Saturday at 4pm and by 6pm, I was back logged on and worked until midnight.
And so the cycle continued. Early mornings. Late evenings. Back and neck rigid with tension. Two more weeks. Two trips to Glasgow. Two reviews with the Big Boss. Final submission date was Thursday. I went home on Thursday night, leaving my work laptop in my desk, feeling lighter than I had even while on holiday. And being able to take this weekend off was a joy - housework or not. We haven't quite finished, tomorrow has the potential to be nasty but, thanks to this weekend, I can face the day relaxed.
I hope your weekend has left you in a similar state.
- Pam
It might not sound like a completely fun weekend, but compared to the previous few it was bliss. I've spent so much time working in May, that just getting a few hours to potter around the house was lovely. There are two bank holidays in May, after the first - Monday 6th May - I worked 50 hours in 4 days. You know how I normally work half days on Fridays? Well, I left the office that Friday after 9pm. We went on holiday on the Saturday - Malaga in Spain, I may tell you about it sometime - got home the following Saturday at 4pm and by 6pm, I was back logged on and worked until midnight.
And so the cycle continued. Early mornings. Late evenings. Back and neck rigid with tension. Two more weeks. Two trips to Glasgow. Two reviews with the Big Boss. Final submission date was Thursday. I went home on Thursday night, leaving my work laptop in my desk, feeling lighter than I had even while on holiday. And being able to take this weekend off was a joy - housework or not. We haven't quite finished, tomorrow has the potential to be nasty but, thanks to this weekend, I can face the day relaxed.
I hope your weekend has left you in a similar state.
- Pam
Tuesday, 7 May 2013
Marry the man = Marry the job
Once upon a time, I had a friend who was dating a sports journalist. After a few months, she started getting very sulky about him spending most weekends of "the season" working. Her complaint was that you didn't date someone in order to spend most weekends alone; you dated them to have someone to spend weekends with! At the time, I was a bit mystified - surely she knew what his job entailed before they became a serious item? Hadn't she considered how it might impact on their time together? To not do so seemed to me to be as silly as those Army or Navy wives who complain when their husbands are sent abroad on a tour of duty. You knew that their job was their life when you got involved with them, so why exactly are you complaining?
A couple of weeks ago, a colleague asked me whether DH minded the long hours I put in and the travel that I do. The question surprised me*. It could be interpreted on several levels, although I am sure the original intention was just curiosity and a chance to compare someone-else's circumstances to his own. Of course, in a male dominated industry, there is always the sexist angle that we expect wives to put up with travelling husbands but vice-versa is rare enough to be an object of curiosity. However, I don't think that was his intention. Still, he got me thinking - what are the assumptions we make about our relationships? And that reminded me of my friend, above.
Maybe I am different from other people, but I have always assumed that you have to accept your partner as they are - and that includes accepting the impositions of their job. Marry the man; marry the job, as it were. Then again, I started my working life doing shift-work, in a job that required a degree of obsession to enable you to do it (nursing). Perhaps it has given me a different perspective. I don't understand when women (and it is usually women) complain about the hours their husbands put in, but they're happy to enjoy the benefits of the income his hard work pulls in. You can't have it both ways.
In engineering, there often isn't much of a choice - you want the job, then you have to work at site, miles from home. It isn't a lifestyle choice; it's a choice between earning an income or being unemployed; paying the mortgage or worrying about where the next meal comes from. Even if you are a permanent employee, there are only so many times you can turn down working away before it damages your billability and your career. Oh, and marks you down as dead-wood for the next round of redundancies.
However, a marriage is a partnership. If a job offer or promotion comes through that involves longer hours/weekend working/working away/a long commute then you have to discuss it. When the job is a lifestyle, both partners have to have buy-in, even though reality is there may be little or no choice. It is what it is. But both parties need to accept that. And accept that, if you love your partner, then you need to love their job too.
- Pam
* The answer, when I asked DH, was "No" but he's a bit fed up with dropping me off for early flights.
A couple of weeks ago, a colleague asked me whether DH minded the long hours I put in and the travel that I do. The question surprised me*. It could be interpreted on several levels, although I am sure the original intention was just curiosity and a chance to compare someone-else's circumstances to his own. Of course, in a male dominated industry, there is always the sexist angle that we expect wives to put up with travelling husbands but vice-versa is rare enough to be an object of curiosity. However, I don't think that was his intention. Still, he got me thinking - what are the assumptions we make about our relationships? And that reminded me of my friend, above.
Maybe I am different from other people, but I have always assumed that you have to accept your partner as they are - and that includes accepting the impositions of their job. Marry the man; marry the job, as it were. Then again, I started my working life doing shift-work, in a job that required a degree of obsession to enable you to do it (nursing). Perhaps it has given me a different perspective. I don't understand when women (and it is usually women) complain about the hours their husbands put in, but they're happy to enjoy the benefits of the income his hard work pulls in. You can't have it both ways.
In engineering, there often isn't much of a choice - you want the job, then you have to work at site, miles from home. It isn't a lifestyle choice; it's a choice between earning an income or being unemployed; paying the mortgage or worrying about where the next meal comes from. Even if you are a permanent employee, there are only so many times you can turn down working away before it damages your billability and your career. Oh, and marks you down as dead-wood for the next round of redundancies.
However, a marriage is a partnership. If a job offer or promotion comes through that involves longer hours/weekend working/working away/a long commute then you have to discuss it. When the job is a lifestyle, both partners have to have buy-in, even though reality is there may be little or no choice. It is what it is. But both parties need to accept that. And accept that, if you love your partner, then you need to love their job too.
- Pam
* The answer, when I asked DH, was "No" but he's a bit fed up with dropping me off for early flights.
Saturday, 27 April 2013
Office memo
To: Tall and Dark
Cc: Handsome
=======================
Chaps
You come under the collective banner of "the men in my life". One way or another, I spend a considerable part of my waking life either talking with you or doing something with you in mind. There are days when I feel that I've acquired two more husbands: Tall and Dark (I'm married to Handsome). You two are my "office husbands", to listen to, cajole and worry over as necessary. I do appreciate being your sounding board. And I'm very fond of you both. (Right now, with all the changes that have gone on at work, I feel like I've also acquired an office "Dad" - our new Commercial Director who is responding to things in a bewildered, "Father of the Bride" kind of way.)
How did it all get to be so complicated? I remember at Christmas telling Tall that, daunting as the learning curve was, I'd loved every minute of the months since we'd changed regions and "long may it continue". I was considerably more involved in supporting Tall and it was fun. I did wonder how long it would last before something came along to spoilt it all because, as I said then, "I'm not that lucky". And I'm not. Turns out, the answer was less than six months.
It's been an interesting month since Tall, Dark and I met in Manchester (the "three amigos"). I can't talk about most of it on a blog - that would be both unwise and unfair - but I think that, if he is allowed, Dark will become a worthy successor to Tall in his (former) Commercial Director role. While I have a very similar relationship with Dark as I do with Tall, unfortunately, Dark hasn't been allowed to take over all of Tall's role. (It's been split, which is how we acquired Dad.) But, just as I did with Tall, I anticipate finding myself sitting on a hotel bed in the late evening somewhere in Glasgow, in my best Dana Scully mode, typing up debriefs to Dark on my laptop: downloading my brain into an email, setting out who said what and why, and trying to identify the relevant (and the logic) in what was discussed during a day of meetings.
I can't thank you enough, Tall and Dark, for the glimpses you've given me into the commercial aspects of running our business. Since our business had no financial management support until I came along 2.5 years ago, the majority of your colleagues just view Finance as transactional with nothing else to offer (and that includes your big boss). You know I've tried to change that - and you've tried to help me - but it's been like being stuck outside an invisible force-field, watching but unable to hear or participate in what is occurring inside. Dad was certainly of that view when he took over his new role, but you have both tried to persuade him that it is a mistake to exclude me. It may be working - at least he's decided we need regular, fortnightly meetings. We'll see what happens with them.
Will Dad succeed in his new job? I don't know. He seems to look at me (and you two, too), like a father confronted with his teen-aged children, wondering what-on-earth they're talking about. He hears the words, but they aren't making sense at the moment. Can we help him to understand? I hope so. But he has to put us in a position where we can help him. Keep me or Dark out of the information loop and there's not a lot we can do to save him when he starts to drown.
Only time will tell.
- Pam
Cc: Handsome
=======================
Chaps
You come under the collective banner of "the men in my life". One way or another, I spend a considerable part of my waking life either talking with you or doing something with you in mind. There are days when I feel that I've acquired two more husbands: Tall and Dark (I'm married to Handsome). You two are my "office husbands", to listen to, cajole and worry over as necessary. I do appreciate being your sounding board. And I'm very fond of you both. (Right now, with all the changes that have gone on at work, I feel like I've also acquired an office "Dad" - our new Commercial Director who is responding to things in a bewildered, "Father of the Bride" kind of way.)
How did it all get to be so complicated? I remember at Christmas telling Tall that, daunting as the learning curve was, I'd loved every minute of the months since we'd changed regions and "long may it continue". I was considerably more involved in supporting Tall and it was fun. I did wonder how long it would last before something came along to spoilt it all because, as I said then, "I'm not that lucky". And I'm not. Turns out, the answer was less than six months.
It's been an interesting month since Tall, Dark and I met in Manchester (the "three amigos"). I can't talk about most of it on a blog - that would be both unwise and unfair - but I think that, if he is allowed, Dark will become a worthy successor to Tall in his (former) Commercial Director role. While I have a very similar relationship with Dark as I do with Tall, unfortunately, Dark hasn't been allowed to take over all of Tall's role. (It's been split, which is how we acquired Dad.) But, just as I did with Tall, I anticipate finding myself sitting on a hotel bed in the late evening somewhere in Glasgow, in my best Dana Scully mode, typing up debriefs to Dark on my laptop: downloading my brain into an email, setting out who said what and why, and trying to identify the relevant (and the logic) in what was discussed during a day of meetings.
I can't thank you enough, Tall and Dark, for the glimpses you've given me into the commercial aspects of running our business. Since our business had no financial management support until I came along 2.5 years ago, the majority of your colleagues just view Finance as transactional with nothing else to offer (and that includes your big boss). You know I've tried to change that - and you've tried to help me - but it's been like being stuck outside an invisible force-field, watching but unable to hear or participate in what is occurring inside. Dad was certainly of that view when he took over his new role, but you have both tried to persuade him that it is a mistake to exclude me. It may be working - at least he's decided we need regular, fortnightly meetings. We'll see what happens with them.
Will Dad succeed in his new job? I don't know. He seems to look at me (and you two, too), like a father confronted with his teen-aged children, wondering what-on-earth they're talking about. He hears the words, but they aren't making sense at the moment. Can we help him to understand? I hope so. But he has to put us in a position where we can help him. Keep me or Dark out of the information loop and there's not a lot we can do to save him when he starts to drown.
Only time will tell.
- Pam
Sunday, 31 March 2013
Book Review - That Woman by Anne Sebba
This was a book that I'd wanted to read for a while, a biography of one of the most notorious women of the 20th century: Wallis Simpson. When I thought about it, what did I really know about Mrs Simpson? Only that she was the twice divorced woman Edward VIII couldn't live without and gave up his throne to marry. For that matter, what did I know about the King apart from that he was known as "David" to his friends and family?
Sebba does a good job at filling in the gaps in my knowledge of both lives. David is an insecure womaniser, a man of obsessions, a spoilt brat to whom only his parents ever said "no". His world revolved around him and his pleasures; while his parents world revolved around "doing your duty" and "putting the country first". He spent the 1920's deeply in love with one married woman, Freda Dudley Ward, before dropping her for another, Thelma, Lady Furness.
Wallis grew up as the poor relation of a wealthy family and Sebba demonstrates that the insecurity that caused never left her. She marries early, selling herself in marriage to a man she barely knows but one who offers glamour and some level of financial security. Win Spencer was a pilot, in the US's fledgeling Naval Air Service. He was also a cad and a drunkard, who set about boosting his own ego but undermining his wife's. The marriage fails and Wallis goes looking for a new man upon which to hang her dreams, eventually meeting and marrying Ernest Simpson. The rest of her story is fairly well known and is the focus for the majority of the book.
This is a book that is well written and well researched. Where Sebba loses me is her argument that Wallis' flirtatiousness and childlessness was driven by a totally unfounded claim - that Wallis suffered from a Disorder of Sexual Development ("DSD"), possibly pseudo-hermaphroditism, where the sufferer is genetically male but grows up female because her body is insensitive to androgen By advancing this argument, Sebba totally ignores the social mores of the time and the subsequent effects on all Wallis's girlfriends. Wallis belonged to a class in which, during the early 20th century, the only way to obtain security/wealth/position was to marry well. Having a career and creating your own financial independence was out of the question. Forget about marrying for love - those girls were bought up to consider a man's fortune and his prospects before they considered his personality. It is, therefore, no surprise to discover that few of her contemporaries/friends had successful first marriages.
How did you win and keep your man? You had to impress upon him that he was the most important person in your world, strong, handsome, the focus of all your attention. If you ever watch a flirt in action, that is what they do. They bewitch you with their charm by making you feel wonderful. As the poor relation in an upper-class world, Wallis had to master the art of flirtation because all she had to offer was herself. The flip side was that flirting gave her a sense of worth; as long as men fancied her, she had value. The only time in her life that Wallis felt fulfilled by things she did - as opposed to the attention she was paid - was during World War 2, when she volunteered for the Red Cross in France.
What about her childlessness? Sebba contends that birth control was unreliable so there must have been something physically wrong with Wallis. Rather than DSD, it is statistically more probable that either Win Spencer or one of her subsequent lovers gave her chlamydia or gonorrhoea, diseases which cause physical damage to the fallopian tubes and lead to abdominal adhesions, which may explain her later gastric problems as well as her inability to conceive. In addition, by the mid-1920's, Wallis would have been able to obtain reliable birth control in the form of a diaphragm either from one of Marie Stopes' clinics or from a sympathetic gynaecologist.
Sebba's final argument in support of DSD, that Wallis is rather masculine in appearance ignores something she argues later: that both Wallis and David suffered from anorexia nervosa. Through most of her adult life, Wallis kept her weight below 7.5 stone (100lb). If a woman has insufficient body weight, her ovaries will cease to function, causing infertility. Additionally, how can your body lay down "womanly" fatty deposits (i.e. to soften the face) when there is no fat to spare?
I wish that, rather than waste her time finding arguments to support her flimsy theory of DSD, Sebba had spent the time and word count focussing on Wallis's life after the War. Compared to the inter-war years, this period is glossed over completely. I doubt that it is less well documented.
On the whole, I give this book 7 out of 10.
- Pam
Sebba does a good job at filling in the gaps in my knowledge of both lives. David is an insecure womaniser, a man of obsessions, a spoilt brat to whom only his parents ever said "no". His world revolved around him and his pleasures; while his parents world revolved around "doing your duty" and "putting the country first". He spent the 1920's deeply in love with one married woman, Freda Dudley Ward, before dropping her for another, Thelma, Lady Furness.
Wallis grew up as the poor relation of a wealthy family and Sebba demonstrates that the insecurity that caused never left her. She marries early, selling herself in marriage to a man she barely knows but one who offers glamour and some level of financial security. Win Spencer was a pilot, in the US's fledgeling Naval Air Service. He was also a cad and a drunkard, who set about boosting his own ego but undermining his wife's. The marriage fails and Wallis goes looking for a new man upon which to hang her dreams, eventually meeting and marrying Ernest Simpson. The rest of her story is fairly well known and is the focus for the majority of the book.
This is a book that is well written and well researched. Where Sebba loses me is her argument that Wallis' flirtatiousness and childlessness was driven by a totally unfounded claim - that Wallis suffered from a Disorder of Sexual Development ("DSD"), possibly pseudo-hermaphroditism, where the sufferer is genetically male but grows up female because her body is insensitive to androgen By advancing this argument, Sebba totally ignores the social mores of the time and the subsequent effects on all Wallis's girlfriends. Wallis belonged to a class in which, during the early 20th century, the only way to obtain security/wealth/position was to marry well. Having a career and creating your own financial independence was out of the question. Forget about marrying for love - those girls were bought up to consider a man's fortune and his prospects before they considered his personality. It is, therefore, no surprise to discover that few of her contemporaries/friends had successful first marriages.
How did you win and keep your man? You had to impress upon him that he was the most important person in your world, strong, handsome, the focus of all your attention. If you ever watch a flirt in action, that is what they do. They bewitch you with their charm by making you feel wonderful. As the poor relation in an upper-class world, Wallis had to master the art of flirtation because all she had to offer was herself. The flip side was that flirting gave her a sense of worth; as long as men fancied her, she had value. The only time in her life that Wallis felt fulfilled by things she did - as opposed to the attention she was paid - was during World War 2, when she volunteered for the Red Cross in France.
What about her childlessness? Sebba contends that birth control was unreliable so there must have been something physically wrong with Wallis. Rather than DSD, it is statistically more probable that either Win Spencer or one of her subsequent lovers gave her chlamydia or gonorrhoea, diseases which cause physical damage to the fallopian tubes and lead to abdominal adhesions, which may explain her later gastric problems as well as her inability to conceive. In addition, by the mid-1920's, Wallis would have been able to obtain reliable birth control in the form of a diaphragm either from one of Marie Stopes' clinics or from a sympathetic gynaecologist.
Sebba's final argument in support of DSD, that Wallis is rather masculine in appearance ignores something she argues later: that both Wallis and David suffered from anorexia nervosa. Through most of her adult life, Wallis kept her weight below 7.5 stone (100lb). If a woman has insufficient body weight, her ovaries will cease to function, causing infertility. Additionally, how can your body lay down "womanly" fatty deposits (i.e. to soften the face) when there is no fat to spare?
I wish that, rather than waste her time finding arguments to support her flimsy theory of DSD, Sebba had spent the time and word count focussing on Wallis's life after the War. Compared to the inter-war years, this period is glossed over completely. I doubt that it is less well documented.
On the whole, I give this book 7 out of 10.
- Pam
Saturday, 30 March 2013
On Sleep
My internal alarm clock is screwing with me again and not letting me sleep in. Yesterday, Good Friday, I was awake at 5.30am. Today, I made it through to 6.15. Wow! A whole 30 minutes more than my usual, scheduled week day alarm. You can tell, I'm not best pleased to wake up early on two days when I don't have to go to work and could actually sleep in. Even on work days, I'm routinely awake half an hour before the alarm goes off.
What is it, body? What are you trying to tell me? Thursday, last week, I had to go to Manchester by train. The only unusual thing about this trip is that, instead of travelling solo, I was travelling with a colleague and he was picking me up at 5.45am, on the way to the station. So why did I wake up at 4am, instead of with my alarm at 4.30? I'd gone to bed late-ish so couldn't have had more than 5 hours sleep. Of course, you had to top that on Friday morning when, having gone to bed at 3am, you woke me abruptly in a panic 10 minutes before my alarm was due to go off at 7am, telling me I'd slept in. I felt absolutely shattered all morning. (Nothing whatsoever to do with the wine/whisky I'd drunk the night before or the fact that we only went up to bed because they closed the bar on us at 2.30am.*) Ten minutes! Couldn't you at least have let me enjoy those ten minutes in sleep?
Grrr.....
- Pam
* While the focus of the Manchester trip was to deal with some serious work issues, it was also the opportunity for the "Three Amigos" to get together afterwards, switch off and be sociable. The "Three Amigos" are me, my current Commercial Director (who is being shunted into Sales by management) and his chosen successor, our Head of Project Controls, who currently looks after my two major projects. We are good friends and would probably have talked all night, if the bar closing hadn't reminded us about the passage of time.
What is it, body? What are you trying to tell me? Thursday, last week, I had to go to Manchester by train. The only unusual thing about this trip is that, instead of travelling solo, I was travelling with a colleague and he was picking me up at 5.45am, on the way to the station. So why did I wake up at 4am, instead of with my alarm at 4.30? I'd gone to bed late-ish so couldn't have had more than 5 hours sleep. Of course, you had to top that on Friday morning when, having gone to bed at 3am, you woke me abruptly in a panic 10 minutes before my alarm was due to go off at 7am, telling me I'd slept in. I felt absolutely shattered all morning. (Nothing whatsoever to do with the wine/whisky I'd drunk the night before or the fact that we only went up to bed because they closed the bar on us at 2.30am.*) Ten minutes! Couldn't you at least have let me enjoy those ten minutes in sleep?
Grrr.....
- Pam
* While the focus of the Manchester trip was to deal with some serious work issues, it was also the opportunity for the "Three Amigos" to get together afterwards, switch off and be sociable. The "Three Amigos" are me, my current Commercial Director (who is being shunted into Sales by management) and his chosen successor, our Head of Project Controls, who currently looks after my two major projects. We are good friends and would probably have talked all night, if the bar closing hadn't reminded us about the passage of time.
Sunday, 3 March 2013
Musical memories
One of the things that set humans apart from the other animals is that we make music. There is evidence that we made music long before the Neanderthals died out - I think Howard Goodall's History of Music series on the BBC cites a 28,000 year old bone flute! Possibly, it's something we discovered early on, not long after the first ape decided it was better to live on the plains and sprint across them on two legs with your arms pumping hard.
However it came about, music can be evocative, triggering memories of people, events and emotions almost - but not quite - forgotten. How many of us tuck away the memory of a boyfriend together with the music you heard on the radio all that summer, so that when you hear a certain song again years later, all the memories of him come flooding back? How many couples have "their song"?
On the flip side to that, how many times do you find yourself remembering a particular song, after certain events have occured? I grew up by the beach, so a hot summer's day accompanied by the smell of the sea will always make me think of "Beach Baby" by First Class, and going down the beach with my mates during the long summer days of high school.
When the gloom and cold get to me and work seems to be one long day after another, there is a particular song that plays in my head. It's the words of Banjo Paterson's Clancy of the Overflow set to music by some Australian country singer. While I have vague memories of a single being released around 1980 (possibly this one), the version in my head is one which was played live to me and some classmates on our year 12 camp. We were high up in the snowy mountains near Gelantipy and the guy who performed it belonged to the campsite. I don't know how many times during a long and frustrating day at work, I've heard him singing in my head:-
Anyway, the above is all a longwinded way to explain why I've just wasted an hour trying to find a recording that matches - even vaguely - the recording of Clancy of the Overflow that plays in my head. There are dozens of recordings on Amazon: some performances that just made me cringe; others that reminded me of the Australian country dances craze that surfaced in the 1980's on the eve of the Bicentenary. I want the one that will evoke the smell of eucalyptus trees on a summer's evening mingling with the smell of wood-smoke from a fire that's just been lit because the temperature is dropping rapidly after sunset. I ended up with this version by "The Colonial Boys". It's not bad, but I can't smell the wood-smoke. I think I am going to have to keep looking.
- Pam
* Extracts from Clancy of the Overflow by Andrew Barton ("Banjo") Paterson, first published in "The Bulletin, 21 December 1889.
However it came about, music can be evocative, triggering memories of people, events and emotions almost - but not quite - forgotten. How many of us tuck away the memory of a boyfriend together with the music you heard on the radio all that summer, so that when you hear a certain song again years later, all the memories of him come flooding back? How many couples have "their song"?
On the flip side to that, how many times do you find yourself remembering a particular song, after certain events have occured? I grew up by the beach, so a hot summer's day accompanied by the smell of the sea will always make me think of "Beach Baby" by First Class, and going down the beach with my mates during the long summer days of high school.
When the gloom and cold get to me and work seems to be one long day after another, there is a particular song that plays in my head. It's the words of Banjo Paterson's Clancy of the Overflow set to music by some Australian country singer. While I have vague memories of a single being released around 1980 (possibly this one), the version in my head is one which was played live to me and some classmates on our year 12 camp. We were high up in the snowy mountains near Gelantipy and the guy who performed it belonged to the campsite. I don't know how many times during a long and frustrating day at work, I've heard him singing in my head:-
I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all.
......
It's my escapist fantasy poem. The music is little more than the hook upon which the poetry was reeled into my mind. I've lost count of how many offices I've sat in and recalled those words, wishing like the Banjo that I could replace the endless grind of "the cashbook and the journal" with wide open fields and the bush.And I somehow fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy, Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go, While he faced the round eternal of the cashbook and the journal - But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of "The Overflow".*
I don't get homesick often. But I was chatting with a colleague about Australia, trying to put into words how I feel about my homeland, and ended up quoting poetry to him, starting with Dorothea Mackellar's My Country (still under copyright so read it via the link) followed by Clancy of the Overflow. (Yes, I did find myself wondering whether I must be crazy to quote poetry to one of the guys at work, but it didn't seem to go down too badly.)And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars, And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended, And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.*
Anyway, the above is all a longwinded way to explain why I've just wasted an hour trying to find a recording that matches - even vaguely - the recording of Clancy of the Overflow that plays in my head. There are dozens of recordings on Amazon: some performances that just made me cringe; others that reminded me of the Australian country dances craze that surfaced in the 1980's on the eve of the Bicentenary. I want the one that will evoke the smell of eucalyptus trees on a summer's evening mingling with the smell of wood-smoke from a fire that's just been lit because the temperature is dropping rapidly after sunset. I ended up with this version by "The Colonial Boys". It's not bad, but I can't smell the wood-smoke. I think I am going to have to keep looking.
- Pam
* Extracts from Clancy of the Overflow by Andrew Barton ("Banjo") Paterson, first published in "The Bulletin, 21 December 1889.
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