The week so far

It's Wednesday already - amazing how time flies when you're having fun! Obviously I missed the fun. What is getting me down at the moment is the heat. I like hot weather - say a gentle 22deg C - that would suit me all year round. This is too much. They keep promising us rain - but no signs of it in this neck of the woods. A good night's sleep would help.

Work is as ever somewhat fraught with various people who should know better spreading doom gloom and misinformation. Our employer does not insist we have a driving licence as part of our contract. They do not dictate how we get to work. Yet one poor woman had been scared half out of her wits and into the bankruptcy court by someone saying she'd have to buy a second car to get to work as her husband uses the family car. They tried this on me 3 years ago - and failed - so I knew the answer. If you normally travel by public transport etc then that is how they assess your journey to the office they want you to go to. If people don't know the answer they should not make it up rather than admit they don't know!

Books - a somewhat neglected subject of late. I have finished Judy Astley's latest - 'Other People's Husbands'. This is the aga saga - can't call it chick lit as it's mainly older women - at its best. The story revolves round Conrad and Sara, and their two adult daughters - Cassandra and Pandora. Conrad is going through an existential crisis as he approaches his 70th birthday and Sara - in her 4os is going through a mid life crisis. Can their relationship cope? What happens if Sara's artistic career takes off when Conrad's is fading? Lots of sub plots and warm and lovable characters.

I've also started Ken Follett's 'The Pillars of the Earth' - a huge saga about the building a medieval cathedral. So far so good - but it's about 1000 pages and too heavy to carry around. I'm also reading one of Alison Joseph's Sister Agnes crime novels - 'A Dark and Sinful Death'. with Agnes being just as disobedient and iconoclastic as ever. A lady after my own heart.

Off to catch up on the internet and then a cold shower for me.

What's in a name?

I've just been reading this http://timesonline.typepad.com/alphamummy/2008/07/20-strangest-ba.html about weird names. I've come across Teresa Green and Arran Cardie but nothing else terribly notable. I knew of someone who called her children both girls Ocean and Summer which is hardly remarkable today. I also worked with a girl who was always known as Gina but was actually Georgiana and her sister was Xanthe. I also worked with a woman called Isora though she was always known as Is. Everyone thought her parents made a mistake and it should have been Isadora.

Ghost bikes

I saw something on one of the online newspapers the other day about some organisation which is buying up old bicycles, spraying them white and depositing them at strategic places to remind people that cyclists are vulnerable. I was idly speculating about whether they'd bother to put them in rural Lincolnshire after I'd read the article. Then this morning I saw one chained to a lamp post in the middle of the market place when I was walking to work. News come to life! I haven't a clue where I read it so I can't post the link to it.

Market day

It's market day in Spalding. I love walking through the market place after I get off the bus and seeing everyone setting out their stalls. They all have their allotted pitches. There's the one that sells all sorts of rugs and doormats; the second hand books stall - not as interesting as you might think - with his ingenious trailer which folds out both sides to display shelves of battered paperbacks; the people who have the 'foreign' food stall - must be Latvian or Polish - something vaguely east European anyway; clothes stalls - designer or otherwise - mainly manned (womanned) by immigrants; the fresh fish stall; 2 birthday card etc stalls; net curtains; cushions; haberdashery; bicycles; DVDs - probably illegal copies; many and varied fruit and veg stalls; fresh meat and of course the obligatory snack bar - selling at that time in the morning bacon butties!! The smell is gorgeous! I usually stop at one of the fruit and veg stalls - today I bought Braeburn apples, clementines and some cherries - delicious. It occurred to me as I was buying them that cherries must be some of the few things that defy the saying about anything nice must be illegal, immoral or fattening.

Once through the market place I have to walk down a narrow passage by the civic centre dignified with the name of Buttermarket, and come out by the river Welland. The ducks haven't woken up yet and they're all in little huddles with their heads under their wings. Because there are a few white ducks on the river the mallards are starting to look very strange with lots of white feathers mixed in especially on their chests. I have yet to see an all white duck with a green head but I'm sure it's only a matter of time. This morning the weather was a bit dull but on a sunny morning this walk to work is idyllic. I often take the river path and then across a footbridge coming out opposite the office. A great start to the day.

Friday at last

It has been a very long week. But I did get an unexpected compliment today - thank you Tracey - from a work colleague. She'd appeared at my desk to ask a couple of questions and then said she really couldn't make up her mind what to do and explained her thinking so far. I simply said to her that I would check everything myself - by actually making the journeys at the appropriate times and timing them. After about 5 minutes discussion she gave me a big grin and said 'I'm glad I came to talk to you - you always make me see sense!'

Today I'm feeling all right - a bit along the lines of 'Don't let the bs get you down'. Everyone else is much the same. We'll cope - nothing's over until the fat lady sings. Yes - sorry for the cliches but I do like both of those and there are occasions when only a cliche will do.

It's the weekend so I can put my feet up and relax at least for some of the time. Have a nice weekend everyone.

Today was D-Day

Today I can finally reveal that the office I work in will be closing - though not yet. We now start a whole round of meetings with our managers to discuss our personal circumstances and precisely why we can't travel to various points of the compass on a daily basis. Fortunately there is something called RDT - Reasonable Daily Travel - an hour each way. They can't make you use a car if you normally travel by bus etc. There are lots of rules and regulations surrounding the whole thing fortunately. My next nearest office is also for the chop. I can see lots of confusion and misinformation being spread by all and sundry. Basically the whole thing is not much fun and I suppose I really shouldn't be saying anything more about it in public so I'll stop there. I'm not too concerned for myself as I have various options being fairly close to retirement, but for others this is desperately serious stuff, especially as wages round here are on the low side as it's a rural economy. Ho hum.

Above and beyond the call of duty

I had a good example of excellent customer service this morning. The road on which my bus stop is situated is closed for essential maintenance. Something I wasn't aware of when I walked to the bus stop at 7.00am this morning. They hadn't put all the road closed except for access signs up at that point but they had further up the road. This meant the bus had to do a detour from its normal route and would have missed out my stop. As I am a regular on the bus, the driver and the passengers obviously realised I didn't know about the road and the bus came and got me even though it had to turn round and go back again the way it had come!! Now that is service - even though the driver did tell me off because I didn't know about the road - it had been in the paper apparently. I shall have to walk about 5 minutes further to the next stop, which is on a different road, tomorrow, and I had to walk from there tonight. I shall be ringing the bus company tomorrow to suggest they put up notices to say the bus stops aren't being used.