Another Airport; Another Trip

Heathrow.  6.30am.

I'm heading "up north" for my seventh Forecast Review.  No travelling companion this time - my business Head of Operations is flying from a different airport and Tall hasn't been invited to play.  (Dark has never been on the invite list.). While there are friendly faces in the office up there, my favourite Cheeky Chap had his job terminated a week ago.    For this three day trip, I am berift of playmates.

Bored, I am left pondering the inexplicable:-

1). Why had the flight time moved again? I'm catching exactly the same flight as on all other trips, but the departure time has changed for the third time.

2). When did businessmen stop wearing ties as standard?  I can see one man in a tie on this plane.

3). Why is that man on the same flight as me, again?  Must be the third time I've travelled with him.  I'm 99% certain he is a journalist (or some political talking head), which is why I recognise him.  Can't remember his name - think he's from ITN, which we rarely watch.

4). And, finally, the most inexplicable:  why do I always get one tiny drop of make-up on my tee shirt whenever I wear a white one?  Also, why do I never notice until it is far too late, even when I've checked immediately after making up?

- Pam

PS:  half way into my flight and I have another question:  why do BA's insist on teasing me by showing destinations in Africa and Europe as part of the cycle on the inflight map?  I'm only flying 300 miles north. [ pout ]

Dear snail

Whatever made you think climbing up the picture window in our kitchen was a good idea?

I admire your bravery....

- Pam 

The Force is Strong in This One

Up early to watch Match of the Day.  Got to love the BBC's announcer, who said "Good morning.  May the Fourth be with you!"

Is this thing on?

[ cough ]

Hello?  Is there anyone out there?

OMG!  There is!  [ Jumps up and down ]

Hello, how are you?  What's been happening in your life?  How is work for you?  And the family????

Errr.... The Blog?  Well...err... I didn't mean to go silent...Um....I lost my mojo.  It's not that I didn't want to blog - I just couldn't put one word in front of the other and...well.... time just got away with me.  (What do you mean it's April?  Surely, we're still in February?)

Sooo.... What has been happening?  When I look back over the last few months, all I seem to do is work, eat, sleep, go to the odd football match and occasionally knit.

The kitchen is finished.  And I love it.  And I need to take some photos to show you.  It is a joy to cook in.  Seriously, even washing up is a pleasure.  Did I tell you that it's got underfloor heating?  Sheer bliss to walk on at 6am.  As part of the work on the kitchen, we've installed an outside light on a movement sensor.  I walked into the kitchen one morning in February and saw a local black cat get the shock of his life.  He was walking across the patio and must have seen movement in the kitchen, so walked towards the picture window and triggered the movement sensor.  Poor cat look stunned when the light came on.  (Very funny though.)

What else? I'm still singing every Monday. My choir had a very successful performance of Bach's B-Minor Mass at the Cadogan Hall back in March.  It was so intense that I didn't register we'd finished when we sang the last movement and was expecting more music.  Our next concert is on 14th June, a mixture of Tippett and Benjamin Brittain.

As to everything else... I've played a couple of rounds of golf with my good friend, AJ - we're managing to get in a round a month.  That's probably the most frequently I've played in years.   I do think I need at least a couple of lessons - my swing is dreadful and my grip is all over the place but I don't mind playing embarrassingly bad in front of AJ - we don't keep score and really just use the golf game as an excuse for a chat.  (It's lunch, followed by a walk with golf clubs, followed by coffee...)

On the work front, well.... I joke that it is "all about the social life, really..." but it isn't.  I'm averaging 50 hour weeks.  During February and the first half of March, there were a few that were 55 hours.  My pregnant colleague's maternity cover lasted a week before he jumped ship and I had to throw my toys out of the pram before the situation was sorted.  I was still not allowed to hire anyone, but there is now someone responsible for her work in Glasgow, who I actually trust to do the job.

On the work social-life front, I did get to play in Glasgow with Tall when I was last up there for the quarterly forecast review.  Surprisingly, he got an invite to the meeting, too. (It was just like old times.)  We travelled up together, went out for drinks and a meal afterwards and talked until 2am.  A couple of weeks later, we teamed up with Dark and had another late night drinking chatting session, followed by meetings the next day.  We are a great team; we work really well together and we're friends.  If only the three of us could come up with a viable business idea....

- Pam

Don't Brood

If I have rules that I live by, then one of them is "Don't brood on the might-have-beens".  I have never seen the point of constantly re-hashing events in your mind, wishing the outcome was different to reality, while just reopening old wounds in the process.  After the first or second time - when you might possibly identify any mistakes made and figure out how to correct them in future - it seems to me that brooding becomes more about reinflicting pain upon oneself than a learning process.  Ultimately, it gets to the point where you think so little of yourself that you consider yourself such a loser, such a failure, that reinflicting old pain is deemed appropriate. (Or so it seems to me.)

So what has triggered my rant?  One of my team is starting maternity leave shortly and two weeks ago, I conducted interviews for her maternity cover.  Three interviews in, I found the perfect project accountant - absolutely wonderful, would hire her in a heartbeat.  Then my line-management pulls the plug.  Can't be done - we have spare capacity in Glasgow that has to be utilised first, etc, etc... 

I argue.  I lose.  I speak to the boss's boss.  I still lose.  I wander around furious for a few hours.  The implications to me are clear:  ever since we moved regions there has been a looming power struggle over my project accounting team, because we aren't based in Glasgow and not part of their project accounting hierarchy.  I know this.  I have always known this.  (I also know that regardless of what happens to my project accounting team, my job is safe because my business will still need a Finance Manager and that role is outside the power struggle.)

Reluctantly, I break the news to my team and deal with the fallout.  Suddenly, I have three people worried about their jobs and a battle of attrition as work drifts north.  If I have any say in the matter, that won't happen, but I know it is a battle I won't be able to win if the bosses decide it is to happen.

Firmly, I remind myself that there is no point brooding.  Brooding over whether I will eventually lose the team is just counterproductive - it won't help me stop it.  I can't control what will happen; I can only ensure that I do my best to demonstrate why it is important to keep my team together, by providing the best support for our business.  With that in mind, I consciously turned my thoughts firmly to how to best maintain business as usual.  The job goes on...

You can't always control what happens to you, but you can control how you think about it and how you deal with it.

- Pam

Going walkabout

Good morning (I think - although it might be another 24 hours before I post this).  Greetings from somewhere over Asia.  No idea where as the in flight map isn't working.  I think we have an hour to go before we land in China, en route to Oz.

I've just spent the most uncomfortable night I've ever had on a plane.  The seats on this one are hard, rock hard.  Had some difficulty over our seating at check-in (I worked out that we had not been seated together on the flight plan, so surprised the staff when we said we are travelling together. This airline gave no choice of seats).  Anyway we scored a rank of three seats between the two of us, so could stretch out, but it doesn't mitigate feeling like you're sitting on/snuggling into concrete.  My head has obviously been in a weird position because my neck is complaining. 

So far the airline is scoring (out of 10):

Cleanliness 10

Service 5 (OK but don't collect dirty cups or towels)

Comfort 4 

Food 9.5 (would have been 10 except for the sabotage prawn in the dim sum)

There were no passenger comfort bags, ie with ear plugs, eye mask and tooth brush.  I'm desperate for a toothbrush - my teeth are furry and horrible.

The crew are a bit unenthusiastic.  Better on the second flight than the first, but they remind me a bit of theChinese  crew on the last Qantas flight out of Beijing in April 1986, which coincided with my only trip to Beijing.  (There was some deal and China Airways took over manning the route.). Anyway the Chinese crew were rather obnoxious and demanding and did not endear themselves to the Qantas crew (one of the Qantas stewards grumbled to me about them).  It was obvious that they weren't air crew because they liked helping people.

I hate being at the mercy of people like that!

Anyway, we'll be landing in Melbourne soon.  Can't wait.

-Pam (written Saturday night)

Doing the laundry

Probably the most annoying thing about having the kitchen gutted is not being able to use the washing machine.  Currently, it has no waste pipe.  Although we'd done two loads last week, before the builders started on Saturday, it's amazing how quickly the dirty laundry builds up again.  This afternoon, I loaded up the laundry trug and headed out to find the nearest laundromat, 3 miles away.  They've almost disappeared - we had to find this one on Google - and when I set out, I'd never been near this one before.  Drove passed it twice before I spotted it.  

Once inside, I was gobsmacked to discover the price of a wash. The last time I paid to do laundry was 1990, when it was a couple of Pounds to do a wash AND dry.  Guess how much it is now?  £5 for a small machine.  £6.60 for a large.  Talk about expensive!  At that rate, a family doing two washes a week could pay for their own machine in four to five months.  

Both large and small machines only took £1 coins or 20p pieces.  I'd planned to do a light wash and a dark, but ended up shoving everything into the one large machine - I didn't have the change for two.  (DH - aka "Keeper of the Laundry" - will go spare when I tell him.  Mixed washes are one thing he doesn't tolerate.). Reviewing my resources, I had 6 x £1 coins, 4 x 50p and 3 x 20p. (I'd already had to pay 60p to park.  Thank heaven I hadn't used all the 20 pences.)

Settled down to read my latest book, leaning against a dryer.  The wash was surprisingly fast, just over half an hour including prewash.  

It was only when I emptied the washing machine that I remembered how laundromats make their big money: from the dryers.  The dryer is 50p for 5 minutes and only takes 50p pieces.  However, even after it had been through the industrial spin, my wash was very wet - not sopping but more like twice as wet as it would have been at the end of a cycle in a domestic washer.  I split the load into 2 and put 2x50p into each machine.  I'd thought I'd had more but it wasn't the case.  I sat there praying the big industrial dryers dried really fast because I was out of 50p's and there was nowhere to get more (I tried buying something at both local shops but they were out of 50p's).

10 minutes later, they both ground to a holt.  Gingerly I opened the closest door. Inside was a pile of hot, streaming laundry.  The other dryer, with the sheets, faired better. The sheets were almost dry.  

With no other option, I bundled the wet washing back into the trug, put the almost dry stuff in a bag, and headed home. Every radiator now has it's garland of washing carefully positioned thereon and the house smells like an old-fashioned laundry.

Unless our washer is workable, I'm not doing any more laundry until I get to Melbourne next weekend.  I'd rather turn up at my sister's house with a suitcase full of dirty clothes than pay those exorbitant prices again.

- Pam (did I mention we're spending Christmas in Oz?)

Angel of Death

One of the constant descriptions you hear about nurses is “they’re angels”, which would be rapidly followed by a comment about how “nursing is a noble profession”. When I was nursing, there were times when both statements would annoy me. I remember snapping at my dad once, saying “there’s nothing noble about watching a dying man trying to tell his wife he loves her when she won’t damn well listen!”.

Because I spent much of my nursing career working on cancer wards, together with a year working in Radiotherapy And Oncology Outpatients, I rapidly came to the conclusion that, if I was an angel then I was an angel of death, since I spent most of my time trying to make the dying comfortable.

I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. It can’t be helped - several of my friends have either lost a parent this year or are experiencing the pain of watching a parent undergo life-prolonging treatment for terminal cancer. Perhaps it’s our age. It’s the alternative mid-life crisis; not so much “life is passing me by -what do I do with myself?” but instead “I’m not old enough to lose my mum/dad! How can this happen to me?”.

As a friend, I have learned that the best thing to do is listen, hug your friend and ply them with tea/suitable beverage. Offers of help need to be specific: “do you need me to collect your brother from the airport?” is easier for a grieving mind to process than being asked “is there anything I can do to help?”.

On Saturday, I will be singing in a service to celebrate the life of a dear friend’s dad; a lovely man who recently lost an 18 month battle with pancreatic cancer. I consider it an honour and a privilege to have been asked. It is my gift to my friend and her family. I hope they gain a level of comfort from it.

- Pam











PS: The other life lesson I’ve learned is that marriage makes things far easier if your life-partner dies – from organising the funeral to dealing with the deceased’s estate, being married to your partner will make things much, much easier. There is no such thing as de facto marriage in this country, so if there isn’t a will the surviving partner will lose everything. Even if there is a will, they won’t be sheltered from inheritance tax on the estate. (And don’t get me started on hospitals/doctors who refuse to give spouse status to the non-married life-partner of a patient….Red rag to a bull, that….)

It's started!

Finally, after a 3 year delay, work has started on my new kitchen!  

Final "Before" photos:

One last look at the ceiling.  See the chink of daylight?

I am so excited!

- Pam 

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

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

And so the season begins

You can guess where I am.

Come on Chelsea!!!

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)

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

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