I am working on a client site this week (to remain nameless of course) and I witnessed something yesterday that I have never seen before. I think the collective stress that everyone is under with all the current uncertainty in the world is starting to show in the work place. I was in the client canteen yesterday staring at the same sandwich fillings as always and trying to decide between tuna and egg salad when I heard an irritated and slightly raised voice. When I turned I saw a man with a rather red face holding his arms out exasperation saying “was that the last banana?”. The very nice lady working the counter responded in the affirmative. The man started to tut and the poor woman who took the dreaded last banana looked embarrassed for beating him to it. This man just kept standing there tutting and waving his arms in what I assume was a vain hope that another banana would appear. The moral of the story is that when we start blowing a gasket about the lack of fresh fruit in our canteen there is something seriously wrong!
Category: Live, Love, Learn
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Never a Mother but now a Grandmother x2
I never thought I wanted children or maybe it was more that I never wanted to be pregnant and the whole giving birth thing was just not me. I would however, have liked to open my front door one day to find a little bundle on my door step. As you can imagine that didn’t really work out. I guess I’ve always been fairly maternal and kids do take to me most of the time but having one of my own seemed out of the question once I turned 45. As you may know, if you read my posts, I recently got married to my partner Pam. Pam has two wonderful sons and both are married with lovely wives. I have become very attached to the loving, crazy clan. In December 2010 Pam’s eldest son and daughter-in-law gave birth to Ellie, then hot on the heals of Ellie, Jessica arrived born to Pam’s younger son and daughter-in-law. We have been in both of their lives since the day they were born. So, last December when Pam and I got married this family suddenly and legally became my family too. I love them all to bits and don’t think I could love them more if they were my own. What a game changer…going from a single person to a married person with step kids and grand kids. Now that is the way to do it! I love being Nonna (Italian for grandmother) and I’m feeling things I’ve never felt before. My maternal and protective instincts have kicked it up about 10 gears. I would seriously hurt anyone who wronged any of our kids or grandkids. Having this family has been a life changing experience for me and I can’t wait to see what happens next!
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Okay, I’m impressed…
I had to travel to a new client in Kent this week. I didn’t fancy the drive down on Tuesday morning after the holiday so I checked what the trains looked like. Much to my amazement the journey times looked fantastic and with only the one change at St Pancras. Just in case the journey times were too good to be true I decided to go on Monday night. The trip from Kettering to St Pancras is always easy and takes just under an hour. I arrive on time into St Pancras and it was an easy 5 minute walk (and that is 5 minutes for me mind you), to the Southeastern Trains platform. The train is already there waiting so I hop on. I look around me and notice how nice the train is and believe it or not even trains have a “new train” smell like cars do. The carriage was lovely with loads of leg room and an electrical socket. Apparently this is not only a new train but a new high-speed line from London to Dover. 38 enjoyable minutes later I arrive at my stop. Since I always share my travel experiences and many have been negative I just had to shout about this very impressive service. I’m sure the upcoming Olympic Games were a driver for this new line and London can be proud of this piece of the rail network…don’t get me started on the rest of it!
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James Patterson…slow down a bit, your quality is suffering
I have been a huge James Patterson fan for many years. I am currently reading Private Games. I think that the speed in which the books are coming out is starting to impact the quality of the editing. I am just under halfway through and I have found several glaring editorial errors. Such as Knight’s bruised ribs changed from the left side to the right side within several pages. Also, the Olympic flame made its way from “Britain to Greece” instead of the other way around! There are a couple more but with each error I find the more upset I’m getting. This is not the quality of a James Patterson book. The audience appreciates how hard you work and we are always holding our collective breaths for the next in a series. But if it means that errors like this appear we would rather you take your time with the editing prior to release. -
How can it possibly be Easter?
Can someone tell me where the first quarter of 2012 gone? It truly seems like we were just taking a breather after Christmas and now Easter has snuck up on us from nowhere! I know they say that as you get older time begins to escalate but this is crazy. The best part of 4 months has gone by in what seems like a blink of an eye. My granddaughters are growing at a phenomenal rate. One is walking the other not far behind. My youngest niece just turned 1 and my oldest nephew is about to be 26! All this is happening and I still feel like I’m 18. One day you are worrying about acne and the next wondering if you should colour your hair because you are too young to go grey! Where has the time gone?
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OMG, we really are becoming the “cat ladies”!
I woke up this morning and as I passed the French windows I saw 3 cats queuing at the door for breakfast! My step son teases us that we are in danger of becoming like the cat ladies you see on telly…you know the ones with hundreds of cats all over the place. We always tell him that he is wrong and technically at this moment we don’t actually own a single cat. The cat we did have has decided she prefers living with Pam’s mum (yes, after nearly 12 years she has moved out and found a more understanding human who caters for her every need as I did just faster!). So, officially Pam and I are cat-less. You next door neighbours however have a multitude of cats and one by one they are migrating to this side of the fence. We started with “Tink” named because when we first moved in we would walk into our locked cottage and hear the tink tink of a bell and we would find this little cat in our house. It took us ages to figure out how she was getting in. At first she was very timid and flew whenever we found her. That of course made us feel bad so we wanted to let her know we wouldn’t harm her so that is the reason we first fed her. Yes, you can see where this is heading. After a while she started to let us stroke her for a few seconds before running off. Over the winter she seemed to always be out. Now we were pretty sure that she belonged next door but there were so many cats we were never quite sure and she was definitely at the end of the queue for food as she was very small. Mind you the competition next door must be fierce with 2 Labs, 3 chickens and at least 4 cats. So if she was out and it was going to be below freezing we would let her in to stay the night. Which soon turned into letting her stay whatever nights she wanted to. Within a few days of her getting to know and trust us, more cats started to show up. Pam would feel bad and put a bowl of food out for them. Hence this morning’s queue for breakfast at our back door. The word is obviously out now. Go to number 40 they are big softies! I still don’t think this put us in the realm of the “cat ladies” but I have to admit when you are buying copious amounts of cat food and you don’t own a cat that you are getting pretty close.
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Feeling silly
I have just done something that I have never done before and I’m feeling a bit silly. I went shopping this morning and found a lovely joint of meat, free range and on offer for a brilliant price. I got home and was unloading my groceries and when I’ve put everything away I realise I am missing the joint of meat! I go back and look in the car but was sure there was nothing else in the boot. Nope, not there. Back into the house and take another look in the obviously empty bags. No meat to be found! So, I have to admit to myself that I must have left it at the checkout. I dig the receipt out and yes, the first item on the list is my lovely, great priced joint. How embarrassing! Now that I have admitted that I left it at the shop I have one other issue. I bought it while in Oakham this morning so I’m 20 miles away. I pluck up the courage to call the shop and see if they can hold it for me. When I ring it is an 0845 number so I know I’m going to have to talk to the call centre not just the shop. Oh this is going to be fun. I keep thinking how stupid I was and how could I have done it. When the call centre answers and their recorded message starts to give the menu options, much to my surprise Option 2 is for people who have left groceries in the shop! Are there really that many people who do this that it gets its own option on the phone menu? When the Customer Service lady answers the phone and I tell her about my missing joint of meat she says “oh I do it all the time, I have even left cash back before”. I have to admit that made me feel a bit better. She contacts the shop and they say they have my wayward joint and will hold it for me. So now I have to plan another trip 20 miles back to Oakham. So much for me buying local meat with a low-carbon footprint…I just blew that away driving 40 miles to go back and pick it up.
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You know you are getting old when…
A side bar to my earlier post about our adventure at A&E last night. You know the old cliché “you know you are getting older when the doctors and police officers start to look like children”. Well I lived this last night. My mother-in-law’s doctor fit the bill. At one point during our marathon wait someone asked him what time his shift ended. He said “midnight”. I wanted to ask if he had permission from his parents to be out that late! I swear the guy did not look old enough to have finished medical school…talk about Doogie Hower or what. Don’t get me wrong he was very kind, considerate, thorough and had a decent bedside manner. He just made me feel old. It reminded me of last autumn when we had something stolen and had to make a police report. The officer walked in and both Pam and I stood with our mouths open. It literally looked like this kid borrowed his dad’s uniform and boots! I guess I just need to accept that I’m getting older.
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Things that should never be seen together…
…an 83-year-old woman and a balance beam in a children’s playground!!
Yesterday however the two came into very close contact and you can imagine the outcome! My wonderfully lively and active mother-in-law was enjoying a sunny Sunday afternoon in the park with her 2 1/2-year-old great-grandson. She decided to demonstrate to him how to walk on the balance beam which stood about 18 inches off of the ground. (In the meantime said great-grandson toddled off to the slide and was not was even watching.) So, here is my mother-in-law up on the beam…oh did I mention she was still wearing her high heels?? Next thing she knows she is flying towards the spongy mat. Although the spongy mat broke her fall it also acted like a catapult and shot her sideways into one of those big spider web things with the nylon ropes and metal poles. She hit one of the metal cross bars impacting at her ribs. This was approximately 3:00 p.m. It took the ambulance one hour to get to her and then a trip to the A&E. Being a former emergency services person this is where I lose patience very quickly when I see that simple things just are not being done. I won’t name the specific hospital but let’s say if this hospital was a person then this man’s name would have been Lester!
Pam and I get the call at about 5:00 asking if we could come to the hospital after making a stop at mum’s to pick up an over night bag etc. We arrive at the A&E at around 6:15 to find that mum had just been assessed and was waiting to see a doctor. She was having trouble breathing and they gave her some pain killers while she waited and waited and waited. The A&E was like crammed full with people waiting everywhere. For the first 4 hours or so no one seemed to move out of A&E. They just kept piling up. Finally shift change came and a nurse ,who I wish I got her name came, in and saw the chaos. It did not take her very long to start sorting the place out. She got the staff moving and before we knew it we actually saw patients going to X-Ray, being moved on to the ward, getting discharged. It was an amazing transformation. Although grateful that this woman was making such an immediate impact it just underlined that fact that the chaos could have been avoided in the first place if someone had taken charge as she did! It still took a few hours to unravel this huge backlog and as a result we left the hospital at around 1:00 a.m. So just a few words to the NHS…overall I think you are very good however there is room to improve and having an organised A&E makes a massive difference. The ambulance crews were backed up 4 deep not being able to off load or handover their patients this in turn caused a shortage of emergency ambulances on the road. Patients need to be triage and assessed faster and X-Ray needs to support great capacity. I realise these are easy things to say but they are doable and would make the NHS a more efficient operation. So, thank you to the unknown nurse who took command and kicked butt. We need more of these people. My mother-in-law is resting at home with her cat.
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Well Done Mother Nature
Wow! What an awesome day. Mother Nature out did herself today with the sunshine and the lovely warm temperature. It made it to 17 today! I hope that you had a beautiful day wherever you are. It is amazing what sunshine does for the human spirit. Life is tough for most of us right now but when you get a day like today it is hard not to feel a bit more optimistic. Springtime is truly here. What perfect timing as we move the clocks forward tonight. (I hate to lose that hour in the spring but I do love it when they give it back to us n the autumn.) Let’s hope that we get a repeat performance tomorrow of today.