I have been back at work since October. It is ghastly in parts. People we have been killing ourselves for have decided they hate us. They decide that the best way to tell us about this is to have a great long list of perceived faults that they dont tell us about until the end of the financial year. This is when we send out stupid surveys asking people whether they love us at which point we get a torrent of bile. This needless to say comes as a bit of a shock.
Interestingly a bunch of these people's colleagues think we are splendid and totally marvellous - not sure how we can be both that and totally crap. This doesn't make for a happy working environment as too much time is spent sitting in rooms and swearing at the injustice of it all.
Add to that the fact that we aren't allowed to recruit to fill yawning gaps and that we have resorted to buying our own bloody pens thanks to the cuts the workforce is a tad disillusioned. Doesn't help that they will get no pay rise for the foreseeable. Shame that only bankers are considered worthy of being motivated by money. Anyway to get over the grimness and ghastliness of the Coalition we are spending every last penny supporting some builders from Essex who are currently tearing our house apart and rebuilding it.
We have decamped a portion of our belongings and ourselves to a flat around the corner and watch with slight horror as walls are removed and the house is apparently supported on thin air.
A mini excavator has taken up residence in the back garden and the eldest boy is dreaming of Bob the Builder moments. It had better be the thing of beauty the architect has promised when they finish as this whole thing is somewhat stressful. Of course there is one good lesson from all this which it is entirely possible to live totally satisfactorily with only a quarter of your stuff.
Makes me wonder what the containers in Chelmsford actually contain that we really need. Oh and it is also possible to live without tv too much to my surprise. Despite my despair at my new overlords I have been doing a bit of Big Socie. I think I provide a useful counterpoint to the usual lay involvement which is from doulas and NCT evangelicals - look over here for cheerleading on highly medicalised conception and gestation.
So there you are. A blog. No pictures I'm afraid as a we still after over 2 weeks here have no bloody broadband so are using a super expensive mobile gongley thingy and 2 my Mac is in storage with all my pics on it and 3 the husband is in the States for the week and I can't work out where the pics are on his.
Next time. Posted by Betty M at 7 comments:. Sunday, 3 October More items. Yet again nearly two months have passed. And the lovely May has prodded me into doing a few more itemettes. So what have I been doing? In no particular order. I have been spending too much time on rolling news and the Labour leadership election.
Nothing like a bit of Greek tragedy in the afternoon. I've started doing a few afternoons back at the office where things are slightly fraught and everyone is holding their breath for 20 October. I'm phasing in my return so not back to full capacity until November but better to be there than being some "on maternity leave" statistic. My team are better placed than most to survive the cull but even so troubling times. I thought about getting into a huge row about a hot topic issue with a VIP blogger but cowardly decided against it.
Sometimes life really is too short to point out that someone is wrong on the Internet. We went to France on our hols which was lovely. We stupidly stupidly stupidly drove down in the day to a permanent chorus of "are we there yet? On our return we drove through the night experiencing the joys of the Eurotunnel at am and then the Hackney 24 hour Tesco for supplies which was way way better. So you can guess how dreadful the way out was.
We were in the Poitou Charentes half way down on the left hand side for non-Europeans inland for a week and very near the coast for another week. Inland there were acres of sunflowers and lots of cows but not many people. The coast was crammed with French campers and oysters. Both places awash with Brits. In one town inland there was even a very popular English cake stall in the market where the locals gathered to buy brownies, fruit cake, scones and other exotic delights whilst the English ahhed over the goats cheeses at the next stall.
We made an interesting discovery on the coast: forget the little village bakeries, all the best bread was from bakeries out of town on roundabouts on the ring roads and bypasses. School is back. She has 5 years of primary school to go. Bit early for parents to be angsting about secondary school you'd have thought.
You thought wrong. Not sure I can take years of this. Everyone is obviously making a lot of sharp elbowed middle class calculations about moving into good catchment areas in London this tends to be code for let's find a nice middle class white area or robbing a bank for an eye wateringly expensive private school.
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