All change - eek exciting!

Isn’t it funny how things can work out sometimes?

I’ve always been a bit of a risk taker, in a minor way. I don’t mean risk to life and limb (although I do drive rather fast and The Hubby says I have a heavy right foot) nor in terms of being very adventurous doing things which would make me uncomfortable (I’m a bit of a wimp about my creature comforts) but a risk in terms of doing something unconventional and different which doesn’t conform with the Surrey ‘norm’.

For instance I’ve married three husbands and dumped two of them for varying different reasons (The Hubby number three is doing OK so far, he’ll be glad to know) changed jobs and careers a number of times and not abided by the conventions of politeness when I think others are, quite frankly, stupid or need a few home truths telling to them. It hasn’t made me any new friends and on occasion has lost an old one, but I’ve almost always had the conviction in my head that I am comfortable with what I have said and done and have said or done it for good reasons with a degree of integrity. I have never set out to deliberately hurt or disadvantage anyone, although I know a few people have done so to me. I hope they can sleep at night. I have never had a great deal of interest in climbing the overpriced and overhyped UK property ladder (who needs a six bedroomed house with a posh postcode anyway? As long as you have a comfy bed and a warm partner to share it and your life with, what else matters?) and I want to go and live abroad in the next few years to get away from the miserable British climate with its rain and chilliness. I am a creature of the sun, I think.

Regular readers of this blog will know I have hated my job for quite a while. The sheer tediousness, expense and unreliability of the travelling, the thanklessness of the customers and the moaning and discontent of colleagues has pissed me off no end and made the whole thing pretty intolerable most of the time (although in fact I have had to tolerate it because it has paid the bills). So back in February, after a particularly bad meeting and appalling treatment by someone in a position of influence over my job and who should have known better, I wrote myself into a report on some restructuring as a redundancy. I wasn’t entirely sure it would go through and be accepted, but it was and a departure date of 31st March 2015 was agreed.

Doing so was an enormous risk; we have a mortgage and bills to pay. A decent redundancy payment will last a fair while, but I will need to earn some dosh and top it up if it is to last until I can access my pension.

So I have taken the opportunity to retrain to do something I have been interested in for some time but couldn’t really justify chucking in a perfectly good job with a high salary to do – beauty therapy. I’m doing a course every Saturday at a really nice little beauty school in Walton on Thames to become qualified to level two standard, and will do a couple of extra modules in popular stuff like massage, then set up my own mobile beauty therapy business. I will be qualified by January in the whole thing, and have already qualified to do manicures and pedicures. I’m loving it; it’s creative, with people and not a computer and much more relaxed.

But the Council is now trying to bring my leaving date forward. There is a significant financial cost to me if it does so, and I have to fight my corner. But there is a lot to be said for getting out of a place that you really don’t want to go to every day and moving on to a new stage of your life. So really, it’s just a case of what I can get out of it.

Goodness knows how we’ll manage financially. But we’re both resourceful, and we will manage even if it means we have to live on beans every day (if that’s the case, ours will be the house with the roof blown off – you won’t miss it). And overall even if we’re skint we’ll be happier. And I can be at home with my dog and cats every day, and we may even get another puppy.

Who knows?

What does your out of office say?

The out of office message is a dangerous thing, isn’t it?

We have a colleague in our office that is universally unpopular. He has upset or alienated almost everyone in his close team and a number of other people besides, including his Executive Director. He has had numerous public rows with people on a range of topics and is, to put it bluntly, not just a loose cannon but also a fruit loop of the first order. How he has survived this long is a mystery to all of us.

He is on leave at the moment, and has taken the opportunity to place a different message in his Outlook diary for every day he is away. Some just blandly say “I am on leave today, please contact Mrs X”. Others are more interesting:-

“I am being harassed at work and taking time off due to the stress. Contact someone else”

….and

“I am stressed out with the pressure at work and am having to take time off. My Manager might deal with your enquiry”.

Needless to say, so one was aware of this until a contractor sent him a message and got the day’s reply, then contacted his manager and reported it. Then everyone scrambled around trying to get access to his email account to change it, but because he is an IT geek himself he had protected it and that took ages.

Great amusement all round for colleagues, some embarrassment for Managers. He’ll be for it when he gets back, no question.

Of course the key issue here is that by and large we have to trust our colleagues to be responsible and behave appropriately in the office and when they are disgruntled or upset, many don’t want to play ball. They will leave inappropriate emails, blank out calendars to be unavailable and send ill advised messages to others without a thought for the consequences, or possibly not caring about them. And once it is in the system, it’s almost impossible to get it back and retrieve the situation.

I remember leaving a past organisation acrimoniously and putting a message on my Outlook which said “I no longer work for this dreadful organisation. Your message will not be dealt with. Try contacting someone else in the team”. My boss went ballistic, I refused to take the message down and stood my ground until I left later that day. By that time, several people had seen it and messaged back “don’t blame you”. Task accomplished, I think.

But at least I was leaving – this bloke has to come back and face the music. Possibly not for long. We’ll see!

Plain English, please!

It’s long been a bugbear of mine that people don’t use proper English in their everyday lives any more. And it’s getting worse; acronyms, abbreviations and colloquialisms abound. Many of them are due to text-speak, in itself a non word but completely descriptive of a pandemic which is sweeping our society.

Why get in a sweat about it, I hear you say, there are far worse things happen! Yes, there are, but as we become an ever more multi-cultural society being able to make ourselves understood to our fellow countrymen will become more and more important, and the best way to do that is to use a standard form of language that we all understand and which is grammatically correct.

I don’t mean that we have to be phobic about correctness to ‘A’ level grammar standards and that we should all be able to describe what a subjunctive verb is. Nor do I mean we should all be able to use fancy English or punctuate our speech with the odd Latin phrase which if anything, often obscures our meaning more than incorrect English.

All I mean is that we should use English properly and do not bastardise it due to laziness, a desire to be trendy or a need to show how clever we are.

Two things at the opposite ends of the spectrum have irritated me intensely this week.

The other evening, we were sitting in a restaurant and a couple arrived slightly later and were seated next to us. Not only did the young woman (American) have verbal diarrhoea but she also punctuated her sentences to her boyfriend (English) with frequent mentions of the word ‘like’. “It was like, really difficult because like, there were like, ten people in front of me and like, I was in a hurry”. Even worse, the guy, who as a Brit should have known better, did exactly the same thing.

This really is one of my pet hates – either there were ten people, or there weren’t. How can it be 'like' ten people? Either it was really difficult or it wasn’t. How can it be 'like' really difficult?

Then, when they ordered their food, instead of saying “Please may I have ….” They both said “Can I get….”. Yes, of course you can get it. Get up out of your chair, pop into the kitchen and help yourself.

At the over clever end of the spectrum of inappropriate or incorrect English, I have just finished reading the latest book written under the pseudonym of a very popular author. It’s really very good; strong plot, well drawn characters and fast paced. But despite all that, it was ruined, ever so slightly, by being punctuated with obscure descriptive words which despite what I consider to be my excellent education and reasonably high level of understanding of the English language, I don’t know the meaning of and would need to look up in a highbrow dictionary. As a consequence the author, instead of being thoroughly entertaining, has been slightly annoying.

There are also, of course, all sorts of abbreviations and text-speak words which our children know the meaning of and we don’t. For ages I thought LOL meant ‘Lots of love’. It doesn’t, of course, it means ‘laugh out loud’ as I found out to my cost when I used it in what it turns out was an inappropriate way.

There are countless other examples of this. And to what end? Just so you can save 10 seconds every now and then by not typing out proper words? So you can fit your meaningless message into the designated number of characters that your mobile carrier allows?

Why are we sending so many texts any way? We used to manage without such instant messaging and contact previously, and we were probably all much happier for it. My children sit at the table with their mobile phones constantly checking them for messages or the latest hot information to the extent that they have forgotten not only their manners but also how to have a civilised conversation. What do we think we are missing if we are parted from our phones for half an hour? Most of the time it’s not going to be anything earth shattering, that’s for sure.

I think it is time for a return to good old fashioned grammar and spelling lessons in schools and the use of colloquialisms and trendy words or abbreviations should be banned. Perhaps if we return to using proper language, we will return to proper manners and a better understanding of our fellow men. Whilst encouraging innovation and creativity, we should be less tolerant of individualism for trendiness sake instead of indulging those that simply do not wish to conform and by not doing so, influence our young people to the worst.

I know it’s old fashioned, and I know it would be unpopular, but to me the poor use of the English language is part of the steady erosion of our society, a removal of the glue which holds it together.

Is that too fanciful?

(BTW, if you disagree, you have my permission to LOL and get back to me).

Bloody Football !

The World Cup kicks off proper tonight with the first match. It seems to have been eons coming, and stretches ahead like some never ending trip through purgatory.

There are as many of us desperate for the whole shebang to be over as there are looking forward to it with eager anticipation.

Needless to say in our house we are at polar opposites in our views of this overpaid, overhyped circus populated by egocentric (albeit talented) individuals. As you may have guessed, I am in the ‘can’t wait for it to be over’ posse whilst The Hubby is in the ‘eager anticipation’ camp (I use the words advisedly). He has even backed out of a lads curry night next week to watch the bunch of nincompoops in the England side play one of their matches.

I have never really got the point of football. The ridiculous and little understood offside rule for one (and I maintain that is little understood and when it is, often misjudged by even professional pundits), the ludicrous posturing of the players, the viciousness of the press when things are going badly and almost godlike worship when they go well and the whole obscenity of the amount of money involved just raises the whole thing to the levels of lunacy. Add in the elderly and out of touch FIFA chairman, Mr Blatter, who claims that one day football will be played in an interplanetary league and we enter the realms of a parallel universe.

I also take huge aversion to the popular press, who like to give the impression that they have one brain cell which they share (although actually that can’t be the case as they are, in the common phrase, ‘popular’ and making shed loads of dosh), telling me that I should be enjoying this and embracing a sense of national pride. Why? There are far better things in which to take national pride. For instance, to name but three….

• Soldiers giving their lives for their country
• The National Trust
• The Queen (whatever you might think of her dysfunctional family or of the monarchy as an institution, she is one amazing lady)

But most of all, I dislike the way that mass market sport (and in particular football) can turn even the most mild mannered (usually) male into a rampaging, ill mannered, loutish great ape. Often although not always fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol, perfectly reasonable men will shout, scream obscenities and make ill informed comments about players in their own and other teams whilst yelling such phrases as “Go on, my son”, “Get in” etc, at the same time as jumping up and down and waving fists in the air. For God’s sake, it’s a GAME boys, get real.

So as you may have guessed, I am not looking forward to the next three or four weeks at all. I am hoping that England will be eliminated as soon as possible so that the worst of the fervour dies down (and the pathetic plastic England flags will disappear from every car aerial and window) and we can get on with life as normal.

But of course if we win, I’ll join in the celebrations. Well, there’ll be free booze around, won’t there.

Eurovision. A marmite event.

This weekend is my favourite telly night of the year. From Saturday evening at about 8pm to almost midnight I will be glued to the screen watching out of tune singing, novelty dances and weird costumes.

I am talking, of course, about the Eurovision song contest. I love it, and I always have. I can vividly remember watching Katie Boyle doing the scoring in four different languages back in the sixties and seventies with a very ferocious perm, and watching Abba perform their winning entry 'Waterloo' at the Brighton Centre forty years ago in 1974. I loved Terry Wogan's acerbic comments on the performances and even Graham Norton comperes the thing not too badly. To me, Eurovision is an evening of unabashed, cheesy and unadulterated fun which you shouldn't take too seriously.

This year, we are having a fancy dress Eurovision Party, something I have fancied doing for years and never got round to. We invited loads of people and we've got a pretty decent turn out. Some others have genuine reasons for not being able to come along but clearly a few people found the whole idea horrifying and made vague excuses.

I have never understood why some people are so vehemently against and so sniffy about Eurovision. It's become quite fashionable to say "Oh God, Eurovision. How awful". Why? These are the same individuals who will probably quite happily sit in front of 'Britain's Got Talent' or 'X Factor' with their families on a Saturday night or even (God forbid) 'Big Brother' and will listen to bad singing, total lack of talent and patently false sob stories with great tolerance and laughter, but throw in Graham Norton, a few foreigners and call it an international event and suddenly it's beneath them. Come on guys, Eurovision is nothing more than X Factor International with a bit of parochial voting for good measure. No one expects us to win, but surely we can just have fun?

Of course I say light hearted but the rest of Europe takes this competition incredibly seriously. It's seen not as a joke but as a stepping stone to proper stardom and there are heats, knock out rounds and the contest goes on for weeks before the winning act for their country takes to the international stage. True, sometimes you can watch the singer for say, Finland, and wonder what on earth the other contenders must have been like for him to have been chosen to represent his country, but presumably the Finns liked him and it has all been done in a proper, adjudicated and serious way with public votes, press interviews and so on. Of course there was the famous year when the Greeks went through all the preamble to choose someone, then the government stepped in because they thought the Greek winner was terrible and replaced her with the biggest pop star in Greece. And he won. But that instance aside, it's a well organised, well supported and pretty democratic process (slightly ironic that Greece was the cradle of democracy and then that happens, but there you go!). Did you know more people vote in the 'X Factor' here than vote in most local elections? Scary statistic that, isn't it, and I bet Eurovision heats are like that across Europe itself.

The UK entry this year is pretty good, and for once we've gone for proper Europop and not some soppy ballad or novelty number. So I shall be cheering Molly on with her song "Children of the Revolution" this year alongside the trampoline bouncing Greek boy band who, since I can't vote for the UK, I will probably vote for instead.

My party costume is a Greek Goddess. I have just about managed to persuade The Hubby to wear a t-shirt with a Greek flag on it and I have bought him one of those fez like velvet hats the Greek ceremonial guards wear outside the parliament in Athens. There will be a prize for best cozzie, a prize for the person who can identify the most European flags and a further prize for the person who can identify all of a photo parade of previous winners. There'll be pop-py music and lots of smelly continental grub. And it'll be fun, because it's a group of friends getting together to have a laugh.

So there!

What a tangled web we weave....

I’ve been involved with voluntary organisations of one sort or another all my life.

When I was in my early teens I went round selling poppies for the Royal British Legion, doing the door to door knocking and persuading people away from their tellies to open the door and slip 50p into the collecting tin in exchange for a red cardboard flower.

Then I joined the Barn Theatre and for almost forty years now (I started as almost a babe in arms, obviously) have served on committees for one or the other society in some capacity or another as well as turning up to serve wine, sell programmes or sweets or slip mail outs into envelopes.

And now, I am volunteering at a community radio station as a presenter and, time permitting, willing to help with fund raising and various other functions.

These are all quite diverse organisations but they have one thing in common. And I don’t mean community spirit, fund raising or being “all in a good cause”. No, I’m afraid what I mean is that they are rife with petty politics and power struggles.

Generally speaking, all these organisations are run and manned by very decent people. They willingly give their time and effort for nothing and whole heartedly throw themselves into the spirit of the thing. Those that are retired seem to almost adopt them as their new job and spend hours and hours in what should be their leisurely years slaving away to organise events, drum up sponsorship and keep the thing going. And most of them are thoroughly nice.

But occasionally, you come across one who uses the organisation for their own ends and exploits everyone they come into contact with. They are the equivalent of the playground bully, riding roughshod over everyone and when they are crossed becoming vicious and unbelievably nasty. Usually these people are clever, able to read situations and turn them about face for their own ends. They’re like Teflon (nothing sticks) and they don’t care who they squash. In short, they have no moral code.

It’s very hard to deal with individuals like that and quite often, if you give them enough rope they’ll eventually hang themselves. There has been a recent incident which has not directly affected me but has seriously impacted upon people I know which has been particularly nasty which may fall into this category; I sincerely hope so. All I feel I can do is offer moral support to those affected and if I am able, practical help to deal with the situation. It feels inadequate.

Why do people use organisations which are set up in such sincerity and good faith like this? It totally undermines the community principles they are meant to support and allows destructive individuals a platform upon which to exercise their Machiavellian tendencies. The only way that they will be toppled is by their membership, who need to exercise people power.

So come on guys; stand up and be counted when it matters. The world will be a better place, and go hang what other people think of you. If you know you gave done what is right, you can sleep easy at night.

Things, they are a changing....

I’m having one of those days when you feel about 150 years old and ridiculously tired. I had a rubbish night’s sleep, goodness knows why, and woke up as tired as I went to bed. As we all know, when you’re tired any physical aches and pains come to the fore (a sign of aging, sadly) and even the most mundane of problems seem too much of a mountain to climb.

It’s interesting that over the last year, when I haven’t done any shows or had much of an involvement in the theatre at all, I seem to have been as busy as ever and possibly more so. Goodness knows how I found time to appear in shows, let alone direct them with all the preparation and thinking through that involves. A year or so off of what has been my hobby for almost 40 years seems to have done nothing for my stress levels or energy.

In the spirit of remaining positive (mentioned in this blog last week) I’m trying not to let feeling totally knackered all the time get me down. After all, chores are getting done, the dog is getting walked (and I mean walked. I certainly don’t intend to go jogging with her), the house and garden are in good order and I’m managing to have some sort of a social life (although rather reduced from what it was). Paperwork and bureaucracy are being dealt with and I’m enjoying the radio presenting.

I thought your busiest times of life were meant to be from your mid to late twenties to about forty, when you had young children about the place and were climbing the greasy pole at work. So not in your fifties, when you might reasonably be expected to have reached the zenith of your career, to be able to slow things down a little and take some more time for yourself. But I’m exhausted.

Definitely it’s time for a major life change. I fully intend to have a ripe and fulfilling old(er) age and carrying on as I am really isn’t an option if am to achieve that. As I sit here now I can feel my shoulders aching due to computer work, my back playing up due to an uncomfortable train journey this morning, my sinuses congested due to the stuffy office atmosphere with no fresh air and my eyes wanting to nod because I sleep badly. All minor ailments, none of them life threatening or serious, individually hardly worth mentioning but collectively they really drag you down. The mental effect of cumulative small physical problems is significant.

So, plans are afoot which, if they come off in nine to twelve months time, will push me in a completely different direction and much, much closer towards what I want. I’d like to be free-er with less stress and angst, be able to do something creative, be able to work as much as I want, when I want and have a life with less moaning from others and more satisfaction. I’ll be so, so, so skint, but I’ve come around to the view that money isn’t everything and keeping the shoulder to the grindstone to achieve maximum pension or a house in a posh area or another promotion simply isn’t worth it in so many other ways.

The Hubby and I don’t entirely agree on this. Being more attached to Blighty than I am, he wants to work on with slightly different longer term ambitions. And for some bizarre reason, he thinks working in the public sector is worth it because it makes a difference (hmm - debate!). But he has been very supportive of my proposals and it’s safe to say that in the medium term (definitely not as far in the future as the long term) things will be very different. I have mixed feelings – “what have I done?” being one, bravery another and excitement underpinning it all.

But this time, I’m gonna do it!

Normally, I try to cover it up....

I’ve just done one of those ‘no make up selfie’ things which are doing the rounds for the cancer charities. As I’m working at home today (I am, really!) I haven’t bothered doing my hair either, so it’s a bit of a double whammy.

I don’t always wear make up, certainly not when I’m just bumming around the house. When I do bother by using at least some tinted moisturiser, mascara and lippy, I invariably forget to refresh it during the day and so by 5pm you don’t know I’m wearing any, anyway. The occasions when I wear full proper makeup and do my hair to look really respectable can probably be counted on my fingers.

It’s a funny thing isn’t it, our cosmetic mask. Putting it on increases our confidence and self esteem, and not wearing it, especially in public, makes us feel vulnerable.

The degree to which we feel that varies, of course. And I think it changes with age; when I was younger I wouldn’t have dreamed of going out without make up even for the most routine of shopping trips. Now, most of the time I can’t be arsed and nip down to Morrisons as natural as the day I was born, spots, thread veins and all. I’ve never understood the women I see on my daily commute sitting on the train and slathering loads of the stuff all over their faces as the train is moving. It jogs and jerks and if it were me I’d end up with mascara all down my cheek or poking the wand in my eye (mind you I am prone to doing that any way). If it’s really so important to you to look immaculately made up, then get up 15 minutes earlier and so it in a civilised way in front of a mirror with proper lights.

The scary thing about this selfie I’ve just taken, which of course is completely unflattering and at a weird angle as I try and peer into my iphone camera lens and look nonchalant, is how much like my mother I look. I’ve always known there were some very strong genetic traits there in the shape of the lower face and nose, but when made up they can be hidden and disguised quite effectively. Without that, they become the dominant feature and if you stood me next to my mother, aunt, grandmother and great grandmother (all no longer with us of course, so they wouldn’t be looking their best) it would be blindingly obvious that we were closely related.

Most of the time, I think I look a little like a bag lady. I dress for comfort and often for dog walking when I get covered in hair and mud, dislike things that are tight or too restrictive and shop for quite a bit of my daily wear from Primarni, which is all very well, until you wash it a few times (I do have standards though, my knickers still come from M&S). My age has meant that my skin, hair and so on has regressed back to its teenage state and is totally unpredictable and unreliable, a bit like most men. I seem to have shadows and bags under my eyes most of the time, and constantly be suffering from some minor ailment or another. The times when I look my scintillating, ravishing best and most gorgeous are becoming fewer and fewer. I’m told, when the next few years are over, that those times will return. Let’s hope so.

The make up free selfie campaign is for charity. The idea is that you text a number to donate three quid, take your photo and upload it to Facebook for everyone to laugh at you. Maybe men should do it too – instead of ‘no make up’ it could be ‘unshaven and hung over’. Now that’s got to be worth a few quid and a good laugh, hasn’t it?

Be positive. Definitely.

I’m always moaning about work in these postings, I know. The commuting on an overcrowded, overpriced and inadequate public transport system, the dull and pointless nature of some of the work which doesn’t really make a difference to people’s lives (unless you count giving a multi millionaire permission to extend his excessively large, luxury house even further with a gym, cinema and underground garage for his Ferraris and Bentleys), the constant ungratefulness of public sector customers, the moaning and complaining from colleagues and the sheer grind of it all gets you down.

So I have decided to be more positive in my communications. Continually griping doesn’t actually make me feel any better and must be incredibly depressing for those that either bother to read my missives or take the time to listen to me.

The problem is I tend to see the world in a rather black and white way. As far as I can see, no one makes any allowances for me so why should I make them for other people. I’ve always been fairly forthright in my opinions (you might have noticed) because my parents taught me not to have hidden agendas and to be open and honest about what you think and feel. As it turns out, that was a pretty crap piece of advice to give because being open and honest as well as forthright makes you no friends and does you no favours. And boy, have I found out the hard way!

My mouth constantly gets me into trouble. And it isn’t even that I fail to stop and think. I DO stop and think, the problem is I mostly think “What the hell” and say it anyway. Quite often, I fail to understand why someone gets upset or angry about something I may have said or written, because to me it’s just a statement of the facts and not said with any malice.

I have discovered throughout my life that really and truly, no one is completely on your side. And that doesn’t mean that someone should always agree with you all of the time; some disagreement and challenge is healthy, and it’s good to hear alternative views and approaches to things. But it is quite surprising how many people underhandedly and actively brief against you just because they don’t like the fact that you have a different approach or will challenge them. I have discovered, for instance, that a member of a group I belong who is now in an influential position is actively briefing against me being a Director again for that group. I don’t know why, but I can only assume that it is simply because they think I will not allow them to do what they want or that they won’t be a shoo in for a role. Their priorities are all wrong – I’m a bloody good Director (not just my own opinion). And I always have the good of the organisation at heart, not just personal aggrandisement. Their loss!

But in the brave new world, I’m not going to let any of that matter because, in the grander scheme of things, it doesn’t. Those people can be as petty and small minded as they like and they can drown in their own bitterness because I’m bigger than them; I have been through a considerable amount of adversity and angst in my life and I’ve come out the other side. I have a husband that loves me (and doesn’t see me as a cash cow or as some romanticised duplicate of his sweet but compliant mother) (well, third time lucky!), two modern and intelligent daughters, a lovely granddaughter and a gorgeous dog. Oh, and two fluffy cats whom I adore and a job which might be horrible but pays reasonably well. I’m clever enough to see my own shortcomings, unlike some of the others, and to know when they matter. I have a reasonably good health and exciting plans for the future.

So I’m going to think of positive, exciting and interesting things to blog about over the next few months. That’s in between writing my books, doing my radio presenting and doing only what makes me happy and gives me fulfilment instead of what everyone expects me to do or what causes me stress and anxiety.

It’s either that or an early grave, and I know which I’d prefer.

Back. Again. Very briefly. For now.

I am conscious that I haven't blogged much recently. To be honest, I haven't felt inspired. But I'm starting to feel creative juices flowing again. And there seem to be lots of outrages going on in the world in various ways, too, for me to get my teeth into. So watch this space, and now I've worked out how to do his from my iPad, there'll be no stopping me.