Following:
Death is your gift.
Twiddling my thumbs…
For two and a half years I have had some sort of assignment, piece of work or report to write as part of my MA. It went in, all beautifully bound on the 17th December, a day to celebrate. But what to do now? Well have decided to knit a bull dog…think I will turn him into a door stop with sandy legs…if he works out.
Well it would be nice to say I have my own beach. Instead I have just moved into a little house with my lovely daughters, in land locked East Midlands. We have nearly unpacked all the boxes and until we do, they remain stacked in the shed whilst the bikes rust slowly under a very poorly fitted tarpaulin.
I have out the front of my little house an expanse that was probably, at some point, some one’s beautiful garden. Then they must have got fed up with endless weeding and turned it into off-road parking. They have filled it with enough gravel to stop an articulated lorry descending on a mountain pass in the highest gear without even a glimmer of the foot compressing the break pedal…its a deterrent to be sure, as not only do I hear cars turning into the driveway, but hear the crunch of pebbles and the noise of acceleration, the revving of engines and sound of stuck wheels as they try and drive their car through the gate and onto the beach.
I think I might get one of those signs that are words painted on a bit of driftwood that say “gone to the beach”…
It’s called the “Cupboard of Dreams”…or the “tuck shop” depending on how strongly you feel about chocolate. I found it, at work. You put your money in a box, and take the chocolate…simple. All is not lost in the new world of my employment…yet.
I’ve spent nearly the whole of my adult working life, working in the same building. 18 years and a week to be precise. I know every short cut, most of the staff, where to go for everything from a bag of sweets, a good coffee, and stationery supplies. I am now working in a ‘new’ environment, an open plan office, where some peoples’ voices travel more than others…its a bit like “white noise”. Its a funny new world to me, two weeks in. I am adjusting to a whole set of new rules: Where eating is not permitted at your desk unless its a piece of fruit or a dry bar of some description; where you have to tidy your desk at the end of the day; where you can’t hang your coat on the back of your chair but in the cupboard; and for goodness sake…don’t even contemplate throwing a can or plastic bottle into the general rubbish bin. I am finding all the rules a little overwhelming, and feel more like a naughty school kid for unknowingly ‘flouting’ them, rather than a well educated, over qualified, experienced in my profession, 40 year old woman.
I am ‘Super Mum’ (well who am I trying to kid?) I made these at 7am
My mum came to help make sandwiches for my daughter’s birthday part. She kept saying “I don’t know what this Hooomus thing is, what is Hooomus?”…”I’ll put some of this stuff called Hooomus in the sandwich”, “what does one eat with Hooomus?”.
Oh god, please don’t ever say I will be like her?
*I sometimes laugh at the words I use to Tag my posts: today’s tagging: mothers, chick peas and sandwiches*
I’ve just googled “most stressful things in life”…I got a list of ten, which I have done more than half in the last year. So, some of those things were bought on by my own actions, and life changing decisions…but it doesn’t make it any easier you know.
So there you, I am in a perpetual state of shock and fatigue and have taken to drinking Crabbies and Pimms (not together) to attempt to get through it all. I bore myself with the words “I am SO tired”, which I seem to be saying at ten minute intervals. I have almost too much to blog about, but its a very good way of emptying the head space, don’t you think?
I’m not a huge believer in God, but sometimes wonder if someone is looking down on me. The morning I got summons to the office of the Director of Human Resources to talk about my ‘future in the organisation’ (yes, that was the title of the email I received)…I looked in the Times Ed for a potential job, but this was in a jokey way with my team of staff - “oh I better check the jobs before I go upstairs!”…two hours later and I am sitting at home in tears in a sense of disbelief that they haven’t offered me a job on the same salary, same sort of terms…so I look again and up pops a new job which has my name written all over it (not literally because that would look silly). I apply and get called for an interview which is taking place two days before I am due to go on holiday. It went well but had to do two presentations and download some free trial software which isn’t compatible with a Mac then create a lesson on this software I’ve never used and borrow the bf’s laptop, which has a bloody cat on his desktop amongst a thousand other items which project on the big screen behind me during my interview (I could go on…not to mention the knee…I will mention the knee in a mo)…
Anyway, day before the holiday, I get it.
I’ve spent practically all my adult working life, well since I was 22 and a half years old, pretty much in the same building. Its come to an end. I was offered a post to stay, but a load of money less than I am on now, and with no recognition of the qualifications I have been taking for years and years and years. Its been a bonkers grieving process really, on day one I couldn’t stop crying, from 10:00am when they told me to probably about 4am. The following day anger. The weekend was spent in a trance like state of disbelief, and on the fifth day I felt like I needed to take control of the situation as I negotiated my redundancy package. Its now a week on, and as I apply for my second job, and try and finish off my final dissertation for a Masters I have been slowly plodding through for the last two years, I hope my judgement was right. I tell people all the time to ‘take the risk’, ‘step outside your comfort zone’, all very well when you walk through the corridors of a building where you have been for 18 years and you know practically everyone you walk past.
Here’s to new beginnings, one more, in the scale of things that have happened this year really isn’t going to make that much difference!
I have just spent the last three hours in a room of strangers watching some powerpoint presentations on speeding. I got caught doing 39 in a 30 area…on the day I picked up my new car. It watched the people around the table, introducing ourselves by telling each other what speed we got caught doing and why. I will never see these people again. We got a pen, a bloody expensive one mind, £90 it cost, oh and small pack of biscuits and some free coffee. I did learn that only a few of the group knew what the national speed limits are on a single carriageway, dual carriageway and the motorway. (It’s 60, 70 70 by the way!). But what I learnt most was not to speed so that I won’t lose another three hours out of my life I can never reclaim.
