Date:	2007-01-09 12:41
Subject:	OUR YOUNGER DAUGHTER AND HER ROOM
Security:	Public
Mood:	determined

So she promised to have the carpet visible before she moved out (flatshare with her boyfriend) at the beginning of July last year. Of course she didn't clear her room, but spent some time without a job and kept saying she would sort the room but didn't. About September she started working and, naturally, did not have time to spare to come back home and tidy up.
So last night on the phone I told her that I am moving into her room with lots of bags and sorting it all out. I'm not intending to throw things out, apart from rotting food etc (teenagers etc), but I am going to bag it all up and put it away in cupboards. We will then be able to see the carpet, not to mention finding out where all the missing cutlery and crockery is. The carpet will be cleaned and a new bed bought so the room can be used by her if she wants to and also as a spare room for visitors.
I am not asking her to clear everything out of her room - her shelves can keep all her bits and pieces and the wardrobe can be full of her clothes - but just to make the room usable.
Of course she was horrified at the idea and tried to convince me that I didn't ought to do it, but I pointed out that this was her last warning and that I needed to see some action after all this time. She cooed down the phone, telling me I must know she was good for it, but I had to say that I didn't.
She's ringing me back tonight to make arrangements for her to come and do it but she has a couple of weeks at most and then I am in there!!
I should, by the way, mention that her stuff is also occupying her elder sister's old room and the landing outside both rooms, but not for long................
Does any of this by any chance sound familiar to those of you out there who are parents of children who have sort of left home?

Date:	2006-12-19 00:36
Subject:	CHRISTMAS CARDS
Security:	Public
Mood:	accomplished

Hooray - I have managed to get last of the posting ones all written and ready to go into the postbox tomorrow, which is a good thing since it appears that is the last day for guaranteed delivery! The joys of working away till the end of last week and not being home for long at the weekend.
Still, a couple of weeks off now before work starts again but next year looks like being another busy one, which is a bit odd since it's now a year and a half since the same people employing me made me redundant. On top of all that they have agreed an increase in my daily rate so if I do have a bvusy 2007 I may be able to wind down and retire somewhat sooner.

Date:	2006-12-11 16:55
Subject:	DOWNSIDE OF GAMING
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

So our son-in-law has a Wii, which is apparently great.

My husband tried it out yesterday when he went to collect them and really enjoyed it. Today his arm is very stiff from the unaccustomed exercise, not that he minds - he wants one of his own now!!

Date:	2006-12-04 17:59
Subject:	DAY 8 OF 13
Security:	Public
Mood:	tired

I am now on day 8 of a 13-day working stretch getting another newsroom on air with their new (to them at least) technology.

Last Monday-Friday were the last 5 days of the dry runs and then we went on-air on Saturday, so I was in then plus Sunday. Today is the first full day; it's a regional newsroom (Cardiff) so they do a reduced service at the weekend. As a result I have been here from 0545 and I will finish at 1900. Tomorrow is the same schedule but after that we only cover the main bulletins so my day becomes 0900-1900. And on Saturday all I have to do is to drive the 250 miles home.

Sadly on Monday I drive the 250 miles back, do on-air support till after Friday lunchtime and then drive for the final time the 250 miles back home to start time off.

No, I am not leaving the Christmas shopping till then; what was the internet invented for? But M and I both have the week off so for the first time for more years than I care to remember we have a week rather than 24 hours or so to prepare for Christmas.

Date:	2006-11-20 16:00
Subject:	I THINK I AM IN CARDIFF
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

I am continuing my life as a freelance trainer and have just realised that by the time I finish here I will have spent 4 months of this year in Cardiff.
However since I drive up and down from home (250 miles each way) and train while I am here I have actually not seen Cardiff at all. I am very good at where to eat around Mermaid Quay, good hotels in the Bay, the road between the Bay and the TV station, the TV station and the hotel near it and nothing else.
When I used to go to fancy foreign places training when my old employers let the people making the stuff borrow me (for a hefty fee, most of which they kept) people used to offer to carry my bags, obviously under the misapprehension that I was going for a holiday. Most places I have flown into on a Sunday night, trained Monday-Friday and flown out again on Friday evening. So much for travel broadening the mind!
I must come back to Cardiff some time for a few days and actually look round the place.

Date:	2006-10-27 14:24
Subject:	CATS LIKE UNDERFLOOR HEATING - OFFICIAL
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

Using the best scientific methods for this experiment as follows:

Choose a slightly chilly and showery autumn day
Ensure the underfloor heating is on and make a note of the warmest places
Open door to that room and wait 10 seconds
Check the number of cats now spread out on the floor and fast asleep

Correlation between cats and warmest places was 100%

I so want to come back as someone's pampered pet cat in my next life!!

Date:	2006-08-10 14:52
Subject:	JUST A LITTLE PROJECT
Security:	Public
Mood:	accomplished
Music:	Hits from the Sixties (and I am dancing along)

Our building work is nearly finished and my mother has passed on her old settle (oak, lift-up seat to store my knitting wool etc) which I have wanted for ages and had a strop about when she said she was going to get rid of it. Having bullied her into keeping it, now it is safe with me (my mother was traumatised by clearing out her sister's place four years ago and keeps wanting to get rid of stuff so the house is clear and ready for her to die; I've told her to keep everything she likes around her and enjoy it and to stop being silly as we will sort everything when the time comes but it may be years away so she need to enjoy her stuff in the meantime).

Anyway, I've decided to do a new needlepoint seat for the settle. That will be 52" x 15" and with a 2" border round it on 12-count canvas. Given that I work away from home a lot and this will be much too big to fit in my suitcase, if I average 1 square inch a week it should take me about two and a half years to finish!!

It's a lovely Celtic knot design and will look wonderful; I only hope my mother is still around to see it when it is finished (she will be 90 years old then).

Date:	2006-07-02 13:14
Subject:	PUFFINS ARE FUNNY
Security:	Public
Mood:	giggly

Just back from a great week in Northumberland, which is an amazing place. The coast is fantastic, the countryside beautiful, the wildlife stunning and the history everywhere. And the puffins dance!!

Date:	2006-06-20 14:31
Subject:	IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

I've been aware that I haven't posted for a while, but didn't really realise it was 5 months!

Been a bit busy really, despite being redundant. The people who made me redundant have just re-employed me for the past 20 weeks at a freelance (i.e. nearly twice as high) rate, which probably makes sense to their accountants somewhere and is fine by me and my bank manager.

So that 20 weeks has been spent 2 weeks near Southampton, 2 in Birmingham, 10 in Cardiff and 6 in Bristol. The head of training (who gives me work) has just been in touch with 2 more weeks in Bristol, 3 in Leeds (home.....), 2 in Reading and 4 in Cardiff for the rest of the year, and frankly I don't want more than that; after all, I am supposed to have given up full-time work.

But we do have builders to support (more on that at another time).

Date:	2006-01-26 12:14
Subject:	SO MUCH FOR REDUNDANCY
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

When I took redundancy last summer one of the aims was to have more time, as in stopping the world and getting off from time to time.
However the self-same organisation which made me redundant (and paid me quite a lot of money as a result) is now paying me twice as much per day as they used to to come back on a freelance basis. I did have 4 weeks over Christmas (I am a trainer and getting training courses sorted over main holiday periods does not work - besides, I wanted the time off), but I am now working for them 5 days a week (and occasionally 6 if the site is so far away that I need travel time built in) until the end of June.
I'm not complaining as the extra money will help no end in our 5-year plan towards a debt-free retirement plus enabling us to have building/decorating work done on the house, a good holiday each year etc. What confuses me is where it makes sense for my old company? They had been lending me out to other sites as a trainer for my last 6 months with them and that was on my old salary, so where does it makes sense to pay me to leave and then twice as much to come back?
So after this week (which has been shared between Leeds and Abingdon) it's 2 weeks in Southampton, two in Birmingham, 10 in Cardiff and 6 in Bristol, after which we have a week's holiday booked, but then possibly back to Bristol for a couple of weeks in July.
And why is there no icon for "laughing all the way to the bank"?

Date:	2006-01-02 22:59
Subject:	NINE YEARS
Security:	Public
Mood:	melancholy

Today it is nine years since my mother and I found my brother dead in his house. This makes it very difficult for us to celebrate New Year, but I can't help but feel that it will be easier for me once my mother has died (not that I am wishing this to happen - just accepting the inevitability of the current situation). He was difficult to get on with, opinionated, self-centred and all sorts of other things, but he was her only son so she was always blind to his faults and he approaches sainthood more with every passing year in her eyes. Although he was my only sibling, losing him was nothing like as awful for me as it was for my mother but I do look forward to the day when I shall be able to move on.
May he rest in peace and may she find peace too one day.

Date:	2005-11-11 11:11
Subject:	HOLIDAY TIME
Security:	Public
Mood:	excited

So we are off later today to Laos and Cambodia, that is if my husband ever gets himself sorted out! He's not at his best at these times, but I am sure we will have him all ready by the time we need to leave. Younger daughter and her bloke are in charge of the house and the cats while we are away, so she has a (short) list of what I want recorded and knows how to turn the car alarm off if it decides it wants to be heard. They also know that the bin goes out on Monday night and apart from that they are old enough to sort it all.
We fly down to Heathrow, then overnight to Bangkok (which is 7 hours ahead of us so it will be afternoon when we get there), followed by an internal Thai flight up to near the Laos border. Thankfully the first full day of the holiday is not too busy to let us all recover and then we have two days cruising down the Mekong. Two days in Luang Prabang, two in Vientiane then into Cambodia with two days in Phnom Penh and three at Angkor Wat. Then the long flight home.........
So the travel to get there and back is not the highlight of the holiday but we will see some pretty amazing things while we are there and that is what matters to us. That and a little light shopping..........

Date:	2005-11-10 22:50
Subject:	REMEMBERING RICHARD
Security:	Public
Mood:	sad
Music:	Elgar's Nimrod

So today I went to Richard Whiteley's memorial service at York Minster - a very moving and special occasion. It was a service of thanksgiving for his life and the Minster was full; the only problem was that the man who would have loved it most of all was not there but his friends and fans paid a wonderful tribute to him.
His partner Kathryn spoke very movingly of him, as did his niece who opened a window on the private family Richard. It was an afternoon of poignant moments and much laughter, beautiful sacred music and Gershwin.
We will miss him but somehow we still don't really realise he has gone..............

Date:	2005-10-17 09:26
Subject:	IF BIRD FLU ARRIVES......
Security:	Public
Mood:	angry

My husband, a GP, was naturally delighted to find that he should be prepared to take on an increased workload if bird flu makes it to the UK.
This, of course, assumes that there is any space in his workload to increase it and that all GPs have an inborn natural immunity to bird flu themselves so will be available.
At present he regularly does a 10-12 hour working day and adds on some extra time on paperwork to that (e.g. all Saturday this weekend) and often arrives home almost too tired to put one foot in front of the other. Even on what is laughingly called his half-day he is rarely home before 6 o'clock. One in three GPs is over 50, they are already working very hard (don't believe the "they spend half their time at the golf club" story - it was never really true and is less and less relevant as time goes on), so I can foresee a point where bird flu is here, GPs are keeping going even when they think they may have it themselves, and a lot of them either become very ill or die as a result.
The Government will then congratulate itself on coping admirably with the crisis and turn round to find that there are lots of GP job vacancies. They will then tell the remaining members of each practice to cope with more patients each and look for new partners, something which already takes many months, even if they actually find one. In the meantime the Government is saving money as they will not have to pay the missing partner's salary to the practice while the remaining partners have to increase their workload (sound familiar?) to cope. They will declare an initiative to train more doctors to replace those lost to the flu, but it takes 10 years from entering medical school to becoming a GP...........
And they wonder why there are so many GP vacancies and why no-one seems to want the job.

Date:	2005-10-07 20:10
Subject:	WHERE BAGPUSS'S ANCESTORS LIVED?
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused
Music:	Once upon a time, not so long ago.......

So I am continuing my time in Abingdon (although the training job is nearly finished - they go on-air next weekend) but have only just found a village nearby where Bagpuss's ancestors must have lived - Kingston Bagpuize.
I think this must be the original Norman spelling of the name and the village was probably granted to Bagpuss's ancestor by William the Conqueror for his brave deeds at the Battle of Hastings. I expect the family lived there for hundreds of years but then were either on the wrong side in the Wars of the Roses, crippled by their loyalty to Charles I or just taxes out of existence after the Second World War (I can't imagine they did anything like losing it all by gambling debts) and so had to sell up. A sad tale but one common amongst the aristocracy.
For the terminally confused by the above (and overseas readers) the following may explain - it's a cult British children's TV programme
http://www.smallfilms.co.uk/bagpuss/
I think this is now probably my favourite English village name! And I don't care how the locals pronounce it - to us it is now known as Kingston Bagpuss.

Date:	2005-09-26 13:55
Subject:	DETERRING SQUIRRELS
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

My mother is having trouble with squirrels digging up her crocuses and eating them, so she was looking around for a way of putting them off the crocuses.

Which explains why that part of her garden now reeks of curry powder.......

And yes, squirrels are not fans of curry.

Date:	2005-09-13 17:25
Subject:	I AM STILL HERE.......
Security:	Public
Mood:	tired

I don't seem to have posted for weeks, but life has been a bit busy.

First there was the trip to Delhi (very very interesting and an assault on the senses) and then when I got back a wasp stung me on the lip and I had a nasty reaction which put me out of things for about three days - insects and I have never got on.( Read more... )
So I am still here, even if less active. I'm trying to read my friends' entries when I can, but apologise if I don't seem to be commenting etc. Perhaps in mid-October...... but then again we have just arranged to go away to Kent for a couple of days then to visit a friend with even more teapots than I have.

Date:	2005-08-06 21:10
Subject:	BACK FROM DELHI
Security:	Public
Mood:	tired

India is an amazing country. I've been to other developing countries but India is just more so and in every way. It is a total assault on the senses and an amazingly vibrant place.
I will write more when I have finally caught up on my sleep, but for now here are a few guidelines as to why you should never attempt to drive in Delhi and area unless you live there, but not to panic and think your driver is a madman - he is only one in a city full of them and it works for them because that is how everybody drives.
( Read more... )And on the one weekend I was not working yes I did go to the Taj Mahal and it was brilliant - probably the most beautiful building in the world!

Date:	2005-07-22 16:57
Subject:	OFF TO INDIA!!
Security:	Public
Mood:	confused

So I have now officially left my old job and gone freelance, which will make my visits to LJ even more erratic than they were as I will be completely away from my PC for a while and then back for a while. For instance, the first three days of this week were spent training at Sky TV, who probably win the disorganised employer award but still pay me lots, so I shan't complain.
And on Sunday I fly to Delhi for two weeks to do database design and training at an Indian TV station. This is good news as I get to go to Delhi at no cost to myself and will have the weekend in the middle free to do a little sightseeing and shopping; it is bad news as the weather in Delhi is at its worst, namely 90-100 degrees and bits of thunderstorms, seeing as it is high summer and still in the monsoon season.
However they will put me up at a very posh air-conditioned hotel, transport me in an air-conditioned car and take me to an air-conditioned TV station, so I will survive. I am, however, expecting to sweat copiously nevertheless as this is one of my less attractive failings. I have washed and ironed just about everything in linen and cotton which I own in readiness and will use the hotel laundry (which my employers cover in my expenses) a lot.
I really want to see if I can get out at the weekend as far as the Taj Mahal, especially as at this time of year there will not be too many people there and most of those who are will be Indians, which seems right somehow. I'm sure the concierge at the hotel will be able to arrange something; I would really like to book a car and personal guide for the day, even possibly for two days, doing Delhi itself on the Sunday. After all, who knows when I will go back there, so I may as well make the most of it.
But it is very scary......................

Date:	2005-07-07 11:20
Subject:	LONDON BOMBS
Security:	Public
Mood:	angry

So I am sitting in a newsroom watching news pictures and information come in and I want to cry.
Someone said if they had done this yesterday we would never have got the Olympics, but who suspects that they did it today so we can spend the next 7 years frightened?
There is never ever any excuse for this kind of action. This seems particularly cynical in that they seem to have targetted the Underground first, got it closed and then gone for the more than usually crowded buses.
Some people are beyond contempt.
And I will not spend the rest of my life frightened as in that way they win.