Chocaholics anonymous for me!

My colleague has just had to resort to a large bar of chocolate to get her through the stress that is the remainder of the working day.  Although she is a coeliac, she is able to buy large bars of milk chocolate from M&S that are gluten free and which she shares with the rest of us. Being  the person that sits next to her most days, I usually benefit quite nicely. I have had a large chunk today, as well as a bar of Twix. Just can’t resist.

Most of you know my love affair with the cocoa bean, which is responsible for quite a lot of my excess weight (although not all – the fermented grape and curry has quite an impact too). For me a dinner party isn’t a proper dinner party without a chocolate pudding of some sort (mousse, trifle, baked cheesecake etc) usually accompanied by extra thick double cream. Yum!

Chocolate is one of the major feel good foods of the world. Apparently it contains some enzyme or other which is similar to the one that is generated by the body during sex and which makes you feel fantastic. Can’t remember what it is, but it is mildly addictive and the more chocolate you have the more you crave it (presumably the same rule applies to sex!?)

I saw a programme on the telly the other day about how chocolate is actually produced in Ghana. The farmers there work for Fairtrade and use sustainable crops which they properly care for rather than treat them with growth hormones to get the maximum crop after which the plants die (as is the case elsewhere). The coca bean is the most unattractive thing, and whoever thought of extracting it and doing whatever they do to make Cadbury’s was a genius.

A few years ago I belonged to something called the Chocolate Tasting Club. For a payment of about £15 each month you got sent a box of the most gorgeous chocolates which were new fillings manufacturers worldwide were considering for their collections. You had to taste them all, and then give marks out of ten on a special website. Each month, one person won a box of posh chocolates worth £100. They have now been taken over by the retailer Hotel Chocolat, and have stopped giving away expensive boxes. And anyway I stopped being a member a couple of years ago – can’t afford it financially and weight wise – but it was fun while it lasted.

My next door neighbour has a pack of three bars of yummy chocolate next to her, so it must be a very stressful day indeed. I’ll have to go now and help her out!

Did video kill the radio star? I think not...

Friday. At last!

It seems like it’s been a long week and gosh, hasn’t it been cold? Even today, when the sun has been shining and there’s been enough blue in the sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers (an old saying of my mother’s) the wind has cut through you like a knife.

Most of the day, of course, I have been indoors slaving away over a hot keyboard, apart from the time when I nipped out to officially put my name down for a spot of volunteering.

Yes, you did read aright. Volunteering, but possibly not in the way that you think.

I am not going to work in an Oxfam shop sorting out rancid clothes from black sacks. I am not going to clean out animal cages at the RSPCA. I am not going to work at the local day centre serving up cabbage and gravy to toothless old ladies. No, I have volunteered to be a DJ at the local community radio station from 7am until 9am on a Saturday morning.

I got involved in this only recently through a friend (the lovely Alex) who already DJ’s this slot and wants someone to alternate with him, as getting up at some unearthly hour every Saturday morning as well as doing it in the week has got a little too much. The plan is that we share the slot for a few weeks until I feel confident and they trust me, then we do alternate weeks so we each get a week off and a lie in.

So today, I went over and met the head honcho, who is an ex BBC radio producer, to fill in the official forms and be initially approved. I seem to have passed the test, and tomorrow bright and early I will be broadcasting alongside Alex for the very first time.

I’m really quite excited about this, the 6.15 alarm call aside. It’s something I’ve always fancied having a go at and now I have the chance, although I have no idea whether I’ll be any good or not. Two hours is quite a long time to fill with popular music and chatter, and I have no idea whether I’ll cope. But it’s got to be worth a shot!

So if you’re up and about bright and early tomorrow tune in to Ridge Radio on the internet (www.ridgeradio.co.uk) and click on ‘Listen Live’ and you’ll hear Alex and me exchanging banal chatter and amusing anecdotes.

Apparently, they get an average of 10,000 listeners to the show, based upon the number of hits they get on their web pages. I had no idea so many people listened to web based stations, but they are growing all the time. Ridge do work experience for schools, training for kids that want to go and do media at university and loads of fund raising events and other stuff as well as broadcasting from 7am until 1am seven days a week, quite an achievement when you consider that most community radio just does a few hours on a Saturday only.

It’ll be fun, and although I’ll be knackered because of the early start (mornings are not my optimum time of day) I will thoroughly enjoy it. I went along with Alex last week just to see how it all worked and have a look at the equipment and this week I get to have a little go myself under his supervision! So if there are any nasty silences, that’s my fault.

Go on, tune in and see what you think. In a few weeks hopefully, I’ll be going solo, and then you can e-mail me with your messages, requests and dedications. Only nice ones, mind!

Tangled up in red tape

I have just been presented with a list of 180 separate pieces of red tape planning legislation to filter through and decide which we ought to comment upon, so that the government, bless their little cotton socks, can decide which to scrap and which to retain.

If my employers think I am going to read all that lot, they are seriously mistaken. I have foisted quite a few off onto colleagues, and have just gone through the headings of the rest trying to find something remotely interesting.

But the point is, why the f**k are there 180 separate pieces of legislation in the first place? If there are 180 just dealing with planning law, how many are there dealing with really serious stuff like care of vulnerable children and adults, with education and public health? No wonder the Civil Service is so huge; they must spend vast amounts of their time just filtering through this drivel trying to find something meaningful and useful.

To give credit where it is due, the Department of Communities and Local Government is trying to streamline stuff like this and that’s why they are asking for our comments. But they must know that the vast majority of it is useless and the rest could be distilled into one or two relatively short, plain English documents that would be understandable by planning geeks and Joe Public alike, and which would make all our lives easier. Why do they need us to tell them? Aren’t they supposed to be the experts?

But then CLG has been a shambles ever since the ignoramus Eric Pickles took the helm. What David Cameron sees in the man is a complete mystery, and how he survived the last reshuffle even more so. I have long been convinced that he is a Slitheen, which any aficionado of Doctor Who will know is an alien shaped like a big green pig which disguises itself inside a zipped up human skin, and which farts all the time in a particularly loud and noxious way. Having never been in the room with Mr Pickles I cannot personally comment on whether the farting takes place, but all the outward signs of Slitheen-ness are there.

So I am now going to waste probably several days of my life going through this rubbish just to say at the end of it that we ought to recommend scrapping 95% and rewriting the rest. Not that I’m pre-empting the outcomes, but it is almost inevitable. So I better get to it, or maybe I ought to save it up for this afternoon and the ‘graveyard slot’ so that it can help me nod off in a quiet corner where my colleagues won’t notice.

Difficult decision!

A waste of my life

My commute took me almost three hours this morning. That, quite frankly, is ridiculous. I could get to southern Europe in the time it took me to get from Bletchingley to Kensington, if you cut out the hanging about at the airport.

Problems this morning were numerous, so much so that a list is called for:-

1.    The train was late getting to Oxted

2.    There was a signalling equipment failure at Clapham Junction (the busiest station in England), which held up everything going everywhere

3.    Someone was very inconsiderately taken ill on a train at Clapham too, compounding the problems

4.    There was a fire at Victoria underground, so the tube station was closed

5.    About a million extra people were trying to cram on the buses, so the queues were enormous

6.    I had a heavy rucksack, so didn’t want to walk all the way

7.    There are road works in Knightsbridge (again)

8.    There was an accident by the Albert Hall and the police shut the road temporarily.

It was a complete and total catalogue of disasters!

As you will know if you read this regularly, I hate commuting. On a good day it takes in excess of three hours (ie 90 minutes each way) and usually it’s nearer four. But to take almost three hours to go one way, into one of the most well served cities in the world for public transport, is ludicrous as well as being a complete waste of my life and time.

I am just building up the energy to make the journey home. Hopefully they will have sorted out the signals, put out the fire and there won’t be any problems on the road at the homeward end. And to be fair, problems over the past few months have been minimal so this is the first time I have been seriously inconvenienced for ages. The frustration comes, I think, from not being able to do anything about it (and being stuck next to the most irritating girl in the world on the train who talked in a penetrating nasal voice to her friends the whole way up to London).

I am equipped for the journey now – sweets, bottle of water, magazine, ipod and a game on my Blackberry which I am getting quite good at and achieving very high scores (it’s so absorbing I nearly missed my stop the other night).

Girding the loins – off we go!

Winnie the Pooh weather!

As Winnie the Pooh would say, it’s a blustery day. Out in the garden I can see one of the more flimsy trees almost bending double with the force of the wind, and a little while ago the door of the summer house blew open with a tremendous crash which sent the dog into a frenzy of barking because, of course, the summer house is her usual day time luxury residence when we are at work.

The cats have hardly ventured out for days, slinking into the garden for a pee only when they absolutely have to at a still, dry moment and then being blown back in with their tails aloft, looking somewhat undignified and scruffy.

The dog quite likes it, chasing around after leaves, pieces of paper and other detritus which people have left lying about and which the wind is picking up and throwing all over the street. Where the black plastic with which we have covered the vegetable beds has blown loose, she dances round it, barking enthusiastically and trying to bite it (very ineffectually, I might add) wearing herself out in the process and going to sleep with her little legs twitching and nose flicking to and fro in excited dreaming (I have chucked her outside several times today and so she has had plenty of opportunity to do this. Last night she stole and ate four bananas from the kitchen counter and she now has terrible wind!)  

We have had it quite easy in the south east of England of course, as our friends in the north have had more snow, rain and gales than they care to think about in a remarkably short space of time. But then it happens fairly regularly up there and they’re tough aren’t they? As northerners are fond of saying, “You lot are soft down south”.

There’s no doubt that the weather is changing, and of course that will start up the climate change lobby again lecturing us on our carbon emissions from cars, planes, patio heaters and all sorts of other convenient but climatically unfriendly things. But the big debate is not whether the climate is changing, because it undoubtedly is, but whether it is anything to do with what we are doing, or whether it is part of a long term natural cycle of change which occurs every few hundred or thousand years. Or both. I guess that no matter how many scientific studies there are, we will never know for sure. And in our lifetimes, the effect will not be too dreadful. Whether it will be in our great grandchildren’s times remains to be seen.

But these things do go in cycles. It is well documented in mediaeval and Tudor times that there were catastrophic floods. It was torrential rains that lasted for weeks and then a flood which defeated Simon de Montfort at his final battle for the English crown about 1300 and something, where as a consequence his troops died of dysentery and water borne diseases, not battle wounds, and several times in the 1500s the Thames froze over due to the extreme cold.

Today the windy weather is made worse by the fact that it is also bitterly cold, although not Thames-freezingly cold. Although the thermometer says two degrees, it must be at least six degrees colder than that with wind chill. Having two open chimneys in the house, the wind swoops down one, round the room, through the door and up the other one, so we have a permanent draught. We could get rid of that by lighting a fire, but seems a little wasteful as I’m out tonight. Better get out the thermals (sexy, eh?) and remember to switch on the electric blanket tonight. Gonna be a chilly one!

Never judge - next time it might be you!

I’ve just had a bit of a rant on Facebook about judgemental people. A friend responded by asking what had prompted my rant, and the answer is nothing in particular, at least not one single event. It really is the case of the straw that breaks the camel’s back being insignificant in itself, but cumulatively being too much. If I were to write here what has caused my rant today, it would seem insignificant and pathetic. But it has pushed me over the edge.

Despite some brilliant things happening recently (a fabulous panto with a great cast and crew, Christmas and being spoiled by The Hubby, a nice New Year’s Eve dinner with good friends and so on) the last few months, in fact the last eighteen months, have been a catalogue of difficult situations and people, and one crisis after another. Little niggle has piled on top of little niggle and a very small number of people have been quite cruel and unkind. Even the most stoic person would eventually buckle. And despite some very difficult situations being resolved, lots of extra effort being expended on my part and some great achievements, not one single person has had the grace to say ‘thank you’.

I am not renowned for my patience, and have never suffered fools, but one thing that my somewhat chequered life has taught me is that you should never judge others without knowing the facts, because you just don’t know what happens behind their front doors and in their lives. Also going through two divorces, several job changes and challenges, dealing with acrimonious ex's, children and step children and forging a comfortable home for them all in reasonable harmony, financial ups and downs (very much ‘down’ at the moment) and coping with a parent who completely failed to love, understand and support me has taught me compromise and also which are the battles it is worth fighting. I have never had counselling, because I am unconvinced of its benefits (and if you need to have it for years then clearly it doesn't work, does it?) but that doesn't mean I don't feel bad about things.

This week there have been one or two things which have been those final straws. It hasn’t been helped by the fact that I haven’t felt very well (I always get ill after panto), the weather has been rubbish and there is a very stressful reorganisation going on at work as a result of which I am forced into making people who do not deserve it, redundant.

I have been judged all my life. Because I speak plainly (a trait which I get from my Dad and which is both a blessing and a curse) I tell people unpalatable truths. Very few people can cope with such things, preferring to live in a little bubble of niceness where no one says what they think or tells them what they ought to hear, instead telling them what they want to hear and dressing things up.

Another trait I get from my parents is I don’t make friends easily; having been let down by so many people throughout my life in different ways I automatically put up a brittle barrier which deflects approaches and stops people getting close. That can, I know, come across as harshness and people that don’t bother to find their way through slag me off behind my back. People have done just that over the years and smiled to my face. If they think I don’t know, or that it doesn’t hurt, then they’re wrong. I know who you are, I will never trust you, and it hurts very much.

Definitely, my few months ‘out’ is now long overdue. For the immediate future, I have a small, close circle of friends whom I trust and a wonderful man who cares for me and gives me the odd reality check. It’s time I focussed on them instead of trying to split myself in too many directions and at least for now I ought to stop worrying about the opinions and views of others. Due to our circumstances the future might look very different soon, and I need to be prepared. There are new things I want to do, and existing things and acquaintances I need to think hard about.

That won’t be a panacea, but it will be a step in the right direction.

Clever Clogs, but what for?

At the weekend, my very clever Daughter Two obtained her degree (as in, went to the ceremony and put on a silly hat and collected her certificate).

I’m sure she won’t mind me saying this, but a few years back none of us really thought she would go to Uni because she just wasn’t interested in being part of extended academia. Daughter One was the one that got nine ‘A’s and a couple of ‘A*’s at her GCSEs and went on to do the academic ‘A’ levels, and The Hubby’s Son One and Son Two were the ones who went to the posh Reigate Grammar School, so we thought our two eldest would get there first and Daughter Two would do some good job instead.

But to her credit, D2 stuck at it, studied hard and got her Degree in Business in the autumn, the first of our five children. This weekend was just the shindig and palaver which goes with it. As regards the others, D1 passed her vocational professional qualification in the autumn too, but that doesn’t have any ceremony attached to it, and S1 is now in the Metropolitan Police dealing the with miscreants and villains in Westminster. S2 is at university in Cardiff doing something clever with IT (although actually, from what he says, he spends much of his time DJ-ing and drinking), and S3 is just about to take ‘A’ levels then wants to go travelling before starting work.

Goodness knows what D2 is going to do now. She has a permanent job, in Morrisons in Oxted, and she is desperate to advance through the ranks to management where she can actually use some of the knowledge and skills that three years at university (and the associated debt) has bought her. They didn’t want her on their graduate programme last year, so she is trying to do it the hard way. But you can’t magic up vacancies, and competition is fierce. Maybe she’ll try for the graduate programme again this year, we’ll see.

D1 and S1 are already in work and both doing OK, although D1 struggles managing on her own with my grand daughter. Her employer reasonably understands, but Ruby starts school this year and that means shorter working hours to accommodate school hours, and less money. It’ll be hard, and she will need us all there to support her.

As for the others, well it’ll be a year or two before we have to worry, and they say employment prospects are improving, but I can’t say I see any real evidence for that. The Hubby has now been out of work and actively looking for another job for almost five months, and there is virtually nothing out there even if we set our sights lower than we really need. I feel some difficult times and tough decisions coming.

We all know things will get better eventually, and it is much better that our children have spent time doing something meaningful in academia which may give them an edge in the future rather than sitting around watching daytime TV because they can’t get any work, but it will take time to come back from the precipice we have all been teetering on and we are in for a few lean years. There is much talk on the TV of ‘the bank of Mum and Dad’ but in this direction the bank is already run dry, so they will have to manage on their own (or tap up their other parents, of course).

Let’s just hope that we can make it through the next year or two without anything disastrous, then that villa in the sun beckons. Roll on!

All over for another year (oh no, it isn't)!

The most exhausting production of the am-dram year is over.

The pantomime played to ten full houses (well, I think there were a couple of empty seats on Wednesday but that’s it, so occupancy, must be 99.5% plus) who all received it with raucous laughter and rapturous applause. Cast and crew acquitted themselves with honours and should be very proud. The sight of several three year olds doing ‘Gangnam Style’ on the stage was mind blowing.

The standard was indeed very high. We had a new Musical Director this year and a new Choreographer and both have challenged the cast far more than in previous years. And the cast rose to that challenge, although as always at the last minute.  The standard of singing and dancing was superb.

This year was my thirty fifth panto, in some capacity or another, without a break. I have been either a member of the company, had a principal role, been on the crew or directed in every panto since 1978. That’s quite an achievement; maybe I should get a plaque or something. This year was my fifth as Director.

I have always loved silly humour and visual gags, both of which traditional panto excels in. Slapstick never fails to make me laugh, and someone getting a bop on the nose or smack in the face is one of the funniest things ever, in my opinion. But then I love Carry On movies, and was a huge fan of Benny Hill, who was one of the funniest comic actors that ever lived alongside Ronnie Barker. It is significant that Benny Hill, who the UK lambasted as sexist and a dirty old man, made huge money in America (which is the most prudish nation on earth) with his silly humour, where at that time they didn’t go all politically correct about it.

The benefit of writing your own scripts as I did this year is that you can change them if you want to and you can pack them full of the silliest jokes, visual stupidity and mess you want. We had a slapstick scene with the Dame getting the custard pie in the face, a rip off of a popular talent show (which shall remain nameless but has the letter ‘X’ in its title), a performing animal (a real one, not a child dressed up) and all the silly ‘behind you’ and ’oh no he isn’t’ you could possibly want. And the audience have loved it.

Lots of people have kindly said to me that this year has been one of the best pantos they can ever remember, and that is saying a lot because there have been some crackers. But that’s because it has gone back to its roots and not been messed about with.  As an art form it is so deeply rooted in tradition that you change or mess about with it at your peril. The audience has certain expectations – the stereotypical characters with all that cross dressing, chasing about, old jokes we all know, booing and hissing, mess and above all boy meets girl and a happy ending. It doesn’t matter where you set it – China, Arabia, an English village or even in the Wild West, as long as it has those ingredients it will succeed.

I’m not Directing next year and I’m seriously considering having a season off (after all this time I think I deserve it) and there is a certain appeal about having a Christmas holiday without any commitments to a show, but I honestly am not sure whether I will be able to keep away. I’ll go along to the read through and see whether there is a part for me, and then decide.

But if I don’t do it, much as I’ll enjoy the time off I know that come this time in 2014 I’ll wish I had!

Panic, panic!!

My daughter, who works in Morrisons, tells me that when she got into work today at 9.30am there were queues all the way down the aisles and the store was as busy as just before Christmas.

Now why would that be, I wonder? Oh yes, there are a few flakes of snow coming down so regardless of the fact that we all have freezers choc full of food (and probably at this time of year full with Christmas left-overs) and amply full cupboards, the UK populace thinks there is a strong possibility it may starve over the weekend, so is stocking up.

I never understand this seige mentality. For goodness sake they can't all have bottle feeding babies who can't have anything but milk, and so be needing to top up on formula and nappies! Most of them are bog standard normal families.

If I really put my mind to it here, we could live for a fortnight or more without having to go shopping for anything at all. Yes we might have to drink black tea if we run out of milk, toast may be in short supply and meals might have a few unusual combinations of ingredients, but by and large we'd get a balance of carbs, protein and the full balance of nutrition we need. Most of us in the Western world, despite our varying incomes, are pretty well nourished and could survive for quite a while on less food without any major detrimental effect upon our health. And we all eat too much most of the time, anyway. It would do us good to have a few days off the snacks and junk food.

And anyway, although supplies might be disrupted for a day or so if the snow really comes down and the main arterial routes become difficult, by Monday they'll be back to normal. There is too much profit involved for suppliers, distributers and retailers for them to allow anything else to happen.

These panic buying people need a dose of common sense, ideally administered anally! In their greed they are buying up supplies of basic food like bread, potatoes and milk thereby denying others their fair share which under normal circumstances they would get, because there's enough for everyone if we all just buy what we need. And I bet loads of it is wasted.

Personally, I have just taken delivery of my normal Tesco order, which was made at the beginning of the week before the snow forecast. It contains the normal amount of food we would need for dinner in the evening, packed lunches and breakfast whenever we are at home. I haven't supplemented it with an extra few pints of milk 'just in case' nor have I ordered extra of anything, because I know in my freezer I have joints of beef, fish, ready meals and frozen veg as well as rolls and crumpets (looking forward to toasting them in front of a log fire!). We'll be fine, in fact more than fine.

Perhaps I should add a law outlawing panic buying to my 'things I would do in 2013 if I were in charge' list. Trouble is, it's getting rather long!

His Master's Voice no longer.

So HMV has gone under. I guessed as much a couple of weeks ago when the little branch at Victoria Station didn’t open after Christmas, and it’s no real surprise.

I haven’t bought anything in HMV for years. The Hubby has occasionally succumbed to their ‘three DVDs for £20’ offers but even they weren’t a bargain, usually being rubbish straight to DVD movies or box office flops which no one in their right mind would pay full price for. The simple facts are that HMV were too expensive, and failed to notice changing consumer habits.

They have been undercut by the supermarkets and by online retailers such as Amazon for years. Why on earth would you pay £15.99 for a DVD on new release when you could pre-order it online with free delivery (and often it arrives before the official release date) or nip into a supermarket and get it for a tenner or less? Why would you pay the same £15.99 for a CD when you can download it for £7.99 or again, buy it for about 33% less in the supermarket? The law of evolution clearly also applies to retailers – adapt or face extinction!

I remain convinced there is a place for high street music chain, but not in the old format. There will always be a market for ‘hard copy’ music (like there will always be a market for nice books), even stretching back to the old fashioned vinyl for classic albums (I don’t think videos will ever make a come back though).  Sell them alongside electronics such as CD players and MP3s, together with other music or entertainment associated products, and you might survive. Reasonable pricing is also important, no one will pay more than they have to for a non essential product, particularly in these straitened times.

HMV is, of course, only the latest in a long line of high street failures and it won’t be the last. The worry is that as the small companies, or those which have been poorly managed or have insufficient capital fail, then the larger ones become more dominant and take advantage of their increasing market share by exploiting consumers. There must be a real danger that companies such as Tesco or Amazon, both fast becoming leviathans of the retail sector, start to create a virtual monopoly and slowly but surely increase their prices for the benefit of their shareholders but to the detriment of the consumer.

Recently Jessops also folded, a shop where I have bought cameras and used their expertise a number of times and have never had poor service from. Now, if you want a camera of any sort, you have to go either to Currys and ask a spotty youth for their advice (never to be relied upon) or buy online and take your chances.

It wasn’t before time that the high streets had a shake up and retailers that took advantage or gave poor service probably deserve to go. But they must be replaced by something that has quality and service at its heart and not purely profit (although profit is necessary of course, not only as an incentive to do business but to improve). To encourage that, restrictions on both lending requirements to small businesses and health and safety bureaucracy must be removed or loosened to allow those with an entrepreneurial spirit to not only start up in business in the first place, but to grow once there.

A high street full of Tesco and the Pound Shop will do none of us any favours.

Snow! Whoopee !!!

Yet again, my favourite thing has happened. Yes, it snowed.

Fortunately, it wasn’t much and didn’t settle, at least not on the roads, and disappeared as quickly as it came. It had been expected and local authorities and transport companies were prepared. But more is promised.

It never ceases to amaze me how much I stress about snow. It is the only form of weather that really upsets me, for two reasons:-

1.    It disrupts my life so much

2.    I am scared of falling with my dodgy knees and bad back

I dislike being cold and I hate being wet, but I can live with both because they don’t really interfere with how I live my life and I’m not scared of them. But snow gets me every time.

I never liked it even when I was a kid. My friends would go out into the snow with gay abandon (that’s before the word ‘gay’ became distorted in its meaning and was a trigger for sniggering) chucking snowballs about, making snow angels by lying flat on their backs in the stuff and making hazardous slides on the pavement so they could slither along the street then fall flat on their arses (and so, by the way, could most of the old ladies who lived there too, although for them not intentionally). They did all this and laughed all the way to their hot chocolate at the end of it.

I never joined in. If at all possible I’d stay inside, cocooned in my warm lounge, watching out of the window. If absolutely forced to go outside in the cold, I’d sit miserably  on a bench occasionally getting pelted with snowballs and being called a sissy.

But it wasn’t lack of adventurousness which put me off; I’m not a wimp, although now I am older and wiser I won’t put myself in a potentially hazardous situation if I don’t have to. I used to ride my bike (which didn’t have any brakes) down Chalkpit Lane in the early 1970s racing several others. We fortunately never met a car coming the other way, and we had some spectacular crashes at the bottom, but I was never scared doing it although it was, arguably, much more dangerous. I just don’t like snow – simple as that.

I am, as those of you who know me well understand, much happier in a warm climate. Being able to spend your life outdoors for most months of the year, not being cold or worrying about whether it will chill later so should you take a cardie is the way I want to live. Being able to walk around and drive without worrying about black ice, poor visibility because of snow, or having to make sure I have a shovel, blanket or bar of chocolate in the car for emergencies is my ideal situation.

My oldest daughter has taken my granddaughter skiing this week, and little Ruby will be going into the nursery class with all those four year old French children who are practically born wearing skis. My daughter enjoys skiing too, although why you would go to all that effort to get up a mountain, just to slide down it on pieces of Perspex is beyond me. But each to his own, and its just as well we don’t all like the same thing.

If we did, there’d never be room on my favourite beach!

More things I'd do if I were in charge in 2013...

The year may not be long enough. But here are a few more things I'd do if I were in charge this year, in no particular order...

• Legislate to ensure that banks plough back at least 50% of their profits into schemes to help the communities they serve, instead of being allowed to retain their extortionate billions and share it amongst an elite and undeserving few. And no, they wouldn't relocate, because the UK is still a massively profitable market for them and if they do, well who cares?
• Leave the EU, which we seem to get no discernable benefit from and pay a massive amount into. It might temporarily dint our exports, but they'd bounce back. What do the rest of the EU (besides Germany) do which is of any notable economic benefit?
• Stop international aid to other countries until we have put our own house in order, by investing in our infrastructure including repairing our roads, building proper flood defences, putting the hospitals and schools into a state of good repair and keeping our streets properly clean.
• Put a cap on executive pay at a reasonable level (which might be quite high) and instead share the money out amongst the people that do the real work.
• Make it compulsory for the telly to show at least one 'Carry On....' movie each week.
• Teach citizenship much more in schools, educating our children to make a meaningful contribution to the world they live in and instill in them that sponging off the state is a bad thing.
• Ban Eastenders, Corrie and Emmerdale (and possibly some other dreadful soaps) which are not representative of real life and teach our children that 'soap style behaviour' is an acceptable way to carry on.
• Bring in proper punishment for criminal activity and change the law to be on the side of the police and public, and not the perpetrator.
• Knock down high rise flats and allow people to live in proper houses with little gardens and some sense of civic pride.  And make it compulsory that they look after them in good repair.
• Teach men it's not a bad thing to cry, nor is it shameful. Repressed emotion is responsible for so much unhappiness.

Better get started.

If I were in charge in 2013.....

A few things I'd do if I were in charge next year....

Shops would be shut from 12 noon on Christmas Eve until 27th December, and also shut the whole of Easter Weekend from 5pm on the Thursday before Good Friday, until the Tuesday after Easter Monday.

Sales would NOT be at Christmas, but only be permitted in March and September.

Sunday opening would be banned for all except essential services.

Trains would be equipped with external coatings to repel mobile phone signals, returning them to peace and quiet, and they would have windows that open to give you fresh air.

Car radios and personal music players would have a legal upper decibel limit so others are not forced to listen to tinny overspill or thumping bass beats.

Voting at elections would be mandatory - it's no use moaning if you haven't exercised your democratic right.

Immigration would be curbed to protect our environment and reduce the burden on the state which we all pay for, and probably stopped for the foreseeable future. Immigrants would have to demonstrate why they would benefit our society to be granted a permit to live here.

The Health and Safety Executive would be disbanded along with vast number of ludicrous H&S laws and restrictions (retaining those that are of real value only) and we would return to an era of common sense and allowable risk.

The Human Rights Act would be repealed, because it has become an excuse to avoid the consequences of your actions for all sorts of villains and terrorists, and replaced with something more measured and sensible.

Learning to clean, cook and do DIY would be compulsory in schools, to equip young people with the skills they need for life.

Old fashioned respect for others and consideration for other people would be drummed into kids from an early age to prevent them becoming the selfish neanderthals I seem to meet every day, and parents would have to properly answer for their children instead of abdicating responsibility as many do.

Everyone would have to do something for their livelihood, even those on benefits, provided they were physically able. Why should we pay people to sit on their arses and do nothing when there are roads to be mended, graffiti to be cleaned up, drains to be unblocked and schools to be maintained?

Glitter is good, drab is bad!

People (including The Hubby) take the piss out of me because I like glitter. For me, the more the better.

I can't help it. I'm drawn like a magpie to things that sparkle and shine and because of that, Christmas is a wonderful time. I love the fact that not only can I deck out my house with an inordinate number of sparkling lights, tinsel and shiny streamers, but it becomes socially acceptable to wear large amounts of glitter as well.

The world is a drab place by and large, and a little bit of glitter makes me feel better. A large amount, even more so. I know if we had it all the time it would become commonplace and therefore not be so uplifting, but it's a pretty harmless thing to love and definitely, for me, makes the world a nicer place.

I've never been a minimalist in anything I do. If you're going to do something, you might as well really go for it. Therefore when I decorate my house at Christmas, not for me the tasteful string of beads and homespun looking tree decorations make of old bits of sack and gingham cloth, so beloved (I assume) by the earth mother NCT brigade. My tree has enough silver tinsel, and so many baubles and glittery snowflakes on it that it makes you feel frosty cold, and the light reflects and dances round the room where the coloured fairy lights catch them.

The dining room is festooned with shiny streamers (this year, to my delight, I found an old stack of unopened ones we bought from Woolworths several years ago and then never used, in gold and bronze foil), a second tree and a fibre optic twig tree that twinkles at you in a rainbow of colours. It's all staggeringly bad taste, and I love it.

Perhaps because of my overboard approach, my daughters sadly don't much go in for ornament at all, although they will wear a bit of sparkly eye shadow on occasion when they go clubbing. I have seven different shades of glitter eye shadow in my make up box, glitter eye liner and two or three different glittery nail varnishes. Originally I bought them for doing shows, but I like them so much they have migrated to my day to day make up box and I use them when we go out to dinner.

I think the world would be a much better place if we all adopted this approach, and in fact if I were in charge I'd love to pass a law about it and make it compulsory. so vote for me, the Glitter Party, if you want the world to be shinier and happier!

Too busy too blog!

I haven’t blogged for a while now, because life has been somewhat busy.

Principally, my time and mind has been occupied with a very unwell little puppy. Coco is a typical Labrador – always grubbing in the hedgerows and digging stuff up, then eating what she finds. Most often it is something totally unsuitable such as cat poo or her particular favourite, horse poo. But she’s not overly fussy and by and large will pick up and eat anything.

This time she clearly ingested something which disagreed in the most violent fashion with her insides. Normally a ravenous eater, she wouldn’t touch food nor, more worryingly, water, for two whole days. We came down one morning to find the carpet covered in vomit and bloody faeces, and throughout the day she was listless and sick even when she sipped water or had a few grains of rice. Desperately worried, we took her to the vet, who didn’t seem worried at all (presumably sees it all the time) and gave us some anti biotics and sent us on our way.

Things didn’t improve and the next day we took her back to the vets where she was kept in and put onto a drip, by this time fairly severely dehydrated. The nasty specimens we had scraped up from the rug have been sent off for analysis, and we don’t yet know what she ate although I’m sure we will soon. It could be anything, on walks we are always taking things out of her mouth that shouldn’t be in there and goodness knows what she digs up when she’s mooching round the garden. And there are definitely toadstools out there somewhere – no matter how many times you try to get rid of them they spring back up.

The vet, an infinitely patient man, checked her over for anything and everything including various canine ailments I rang up to suggest having looked them up on Google (which must be the bane of his life) and after 24 hours when she had stopped emitting foul fluids and seemed more herself and we had had enough time to steam clean the carpets, she came home. Apart from a raspy sore throat caused we think by the pipe put down her throat while she was sedated, she seems absolutely fine. It is an incredible relief, and I don’t think I have been so worried even when my children were ill.

The cost of all this of course, has been astronomic. X-rays, drugs, diagnostics and veterinary time are ridiculously expensive. Thank goodness we took out pet insurance, for which we pay a measly £12 a month and which we are just about to claim against for almost £600. It has made us think that perhaps we better investigate taking out insurance for the moggies, who fortunately have never been really ill or cost me much beyond their annual jabs.

On top of everything else it snowed the other day, and you will know if you read this blog last winter how much I hate the snow, hate being cold and hate being wet. It actually made people on the train speak to one another, mostly in horror, at whether they were going to get home and asking “this wasn’t forecast was it?” looking out of the window with worried eyes.

I’m supposed to be avoiding stress to bring the old blood pressure down. Recent events can’t have done it any good, and it had gone up to treatable levels when I last saw the doc before all this happened so I am now taking tablets every day (someone asked me what drug it was and not remembering exactly, I said "Ritalin" which made them snort with laughter. It isn't, of course). I have had to resort to buying one of those old people’s pill boxes with the days of the week on it so I remember whether I’ve taken them or not – of everything that is going on, that is the one thing which has made me feel oldest!

To finish it all off nicely, my own work has gone crazily busy and The Hubby has been job hunting like mad. On that front at least we have some good news in that he has some temporary work for a few months, which will keep the wolf (or at any rate the debt collectors) away for a little longer.

It seems like it was time someone gave us a break, it’s been a pretty tough year whichever way you look at it.

Seasonal disorders

I have a cold. A filthy, debilitating, snot ridden and temporarily life changing cold.

I haven’t had one of these for ages, in fact for about three years since I started having flu jabs each winter. I know they tell you that the flu jab doesn’t prevent you getting a cold (or even some types of flu) but it has done a pretty good job so far with me and this has come as a bit of a shock.

So, symptoms! Firstly there’s the sore throat, which feels like dozens of razor blades have been unceremoniously rammed down it and wiggled about a bit. Then there’s the ear ache, which renders temporary deafness and a throbbing pain at the side of your head akin to being knocked out by a sledgehammer. Just as these are subsiding, comes the runny nose when you could rival an overflowing River Thames for the volume of liquid which seems to run down your face towards your mouth on a regular basis and due to the regularity with which you have to blow your nose, turns you into a passable doppelganger for Rudolph. And after the runny nose the final stage, the thick, usually green immovable snot which takes up residence in your sinuses, redecorates, has babies – often called Grolly – and generally makes your life a misery.

Whichever of Mother Nature’s elves designed our faces and thought it was a good idea to put your nose higher than your mouth and throat ought to be drowned in green gunk. When you get to stage three (the runny nose stage) mucus runs down your throat making you feel sick and out of your nose towards your mouth making you look like some sort of creature from the black lagoon, covered in slime. Prominent in the centre of your face, no amount of make up will disguise the reddish glow caused by too much blowing and for days people will go around trying not to look and saying “Poor you!”.

There really is a mind blowingly diverse range of different cold cures around. Meandering into Boots looking for a simple Lemsip, I was faced with almost a whole row of different makes and remedies in a massive range of flavours and different ways of ingesting. There are powders, syrups, capsules, things that last four hours, eight hours, all night and possibly also boil the kettle for you. But I still maintain my customised remedy of hot water, lemon juice, honey, brandy and a couple of emptied Lemsip capsules stirred in is best. Adjust the amount of brandy according to mood! Not only does it give you a cracking night’s sleep, it tackles the little b*****d viruses head on.

I have manfully (or should that be womanfully?) struggled into work today, and am sitting with a martyred look on my face beavering away (well, not literally at the moment of course, because I’m writing this).  Come 4pm, I will snuffle, sigh, maybe sneeze and cough a bit and make my excuses to go home. On the train, I will hide my face into my scarf looking sorry for myself and occasionally no doubt emerge for a very wet sneeze and good blow (it’s essential to emerge as my scarf comes from Barbour and is expensive, and I don’t want to get snot all over it).

Then I will go to bed when I get home with a hot water bottle and my patent remedy as outlined above, put “The Muppet Christmas Carol” on the DVD player, and so far as blocked nostrils allow, drift off to sleep. Bliss!

Thoroughly spoilt - for maybe the last time.

On Sunday, we were thoroughly spoilt.

It was The Hubby’s birthday, and as it has been a pretty crap year I decided he needed treating. To make things complete, it was a gorgeous day with clear blue sky and the sun shining, in fact warmer than many days we had in June or July.

So we headed to the South Bank and wandered up and down by the Thames in the sunshine. We looked at all the craft stalls and bought a few bits and bobs for Christmas as well as partaking of a glass of really delicious gluwein. Then we wandered up to Covent Garden and did a bit more Christmas shopping, topping it all off with afternoon tea at the Savoy Hotel.

My, it’s posh in there! The hotel recently had a total refit and was closed for a period of 18 months, reopening in splendour about a year ago. Goodness knows how much it cost, but it gleams with polished marble floors and beautiful wooden panelling, and you sink into chairs with massive padded cushions you could sleep on (and we nearly did once we’d stuffed ourselves with dainty little sarnies, scones and cream, pastries and cake – oh, and after a glass of very nice champagne, which many of you will know isn’t usually my choice of drink).

When you go to a posh London hotel for tea it really is a treat, and you don’t have to lift a finger. Each time a waiter wanders past the table they top up your tea cup and the refills of food and beverage just keep coming (although not the champagne, which you pay for by the glass). Nothing is too much trouble; I asked for a different chair to accommodate my crook back, and straight away one was whisked in from somewhere and the unsuitable one squirreled away. We each wanted different blends of tea; “Of course, Madam” and within minutes two gleaming silver teapots arrived at the table (well, probably very well polished chrome) with wisps of steam coming from their spout, and proper tea leaves inside and a posh silver tea strainer. For all I know the waiter went away and swore in Polish or whatever his native language was (they are all foreign) but to our face he couldn’t have been more helpful.

It really is nice to treat yourself occasionally and in our case, see how the other half lives. Short of a lottery win, we will never be able to do this more regularly so it felt very indulgent and to be able to do it actually on The Hubby’s birthday was even better. We even treated ourselves to a cab back to Victoria, which The Hubby normally snubs as an upper class, elite indulgence. Personally my feet were killing me and we had shopping to carry, so there was no way I was walking and birthday or not, he would have been on his own.

Now of course, it’s back to reality and certainly after Christmas, if he still doesn’t have a job, we will fall upon hard times. Some hard decisions will have to be made about spending and alternative types of work, and we will really cut back. The monthly treat then will probably be Wetherspoon’s curry night (and nothing wrong with that, after all!).

Research is continuing into alternative means of living and going out on a limb with something completely different, but I am so tied up with panto I haven’t got very far. But come next year, when panto will be over, I am no longer Treasurer of the operatic society and I can focus, I do intend to try and do something definite about it.

They say it takes a crisis to a) make you appreciate what you have got and b) take courageous decisions, so maybe this is it. Good job we spoilt ourselves now, we may never get the chance again!

We all love office training sessions. don't we?

I’m just off to deliver a training session.

In a previous life, I worked as a regional training officer for Barclays Bank (and look what a mess they got into afterwards) and I do quite enjoy standing on my feet in front of a crowd with a good set of notes, the facts at my fingertips and ‘performing’.  That will come as no surprise to those of you that know me, of course!

It’s a funny old thing, office training. Often (not always, but usually) the participants are reluctant and see other things as far more important than sitting in front of one of their senior managers who is spouting on about something they consider inconsequential and nothing to do with them. Therefore they rarely engage, reasoning that if they ask questions or show interest the session will be prolonged and keep them away from whatever else they think they should be doing for longer than absolutely necessary.

Just occasionally I have been to a training course which has proved stimulating, exciting and informative. They are the exception, and when I deliver a course I always try to emulate that and be animated and inclusive; there’s nothing more boring than sitting listening to someone speak for hours without variety. If it’ll only take 20 minutes, don’t pad it out for an hour and never, ever subject your audience to death by PowerPoint.

This afternoon’s session is to tell staff about a benchmarking exercise they have to take part in for a four week period in the run up to Christmas. It involves extra work, which is never popular, so I have a selling job to do. It involves completing data in a spreadsheet, which is also generally unpopular unless you are an anoraky statistician, which none of them are, so a bit of an uphill struggle.

By and large, I have discovered that Town Planners think town planning is the centre of the universe and nothing else that is not on their ethereal plain matters. The fact that they may be a costly resource, slow or inefficient is an alien concept to them, much like giving a decent level of polite and helpful customer care. One or two are particularly arrogant (I blogged about them a few weeks back) and if they think that you are not similarly qualified to them will treat you like doggie doos on their shoe- they have come unstuck in the past doing that to me (I'm actually more highly qualified than most of them), and so I doubt will try it again. This benchmarking could be seen as a threat, as it will expose their shortcomings as well as celebrate what they are doing well at.

But I’m a good trainer (not just my personal opinion by the way, I have been told so by others). I enjoy doing it, I make sure I’m properly prepared and I don’t just read off the slides. I use humour and invite participation. I will be highlighting the benefits and mentioning, although playing down, the disadvantages. So it should be OK.

So, off to the lions den! I should say that if I live to blog another day, it’s been OK. If you never hear from me again, you will know that they have eaten me alive!

The telephone is not necessarily a totally good thing!

I have decided that the telephone is the most impolite thing ever invented.

When I was a child (admittedly a long time ago) I was always taught not to interrupt other people when they were speaking and to wait my turn politely in a conversation and not jump in and ‘out shout’ others. I taught my own children pretty much the same thing in the name of good manners and retaining my sanity.

We would never have dreamed of just walking up to someone who was otherwise engaged and demand they give us their attention immediately, or of expecting someone to get up from an unfinished dinner to speak to us. But that’s pretty much what using the telephone does.

Three times this week I have been in conversation with someone, either in a work meeting or in a social setting, and their phone has rung. Immediately, they have fished it out of their pocket or bag and despite the fact that on at least one of these occasions they had been in the middle of a sentence explaining something fairly complex, they answered it and interrupted what they were doing. Only once did the person apologise afterwards, and on none of these occasions was the call urgent, nor did it need to be dealt with straight away.

I find that sort of situation the height of rudeness, I really do, coming very close second behind people that talk unnecessarily loudly on their phone in a public place. Just because your phone has rung doesn’t mean you necessarily have to answer it. If it’s urgent (and it very rarely is) somehow, some way, you will be reached.

I have noticed that other people find it very hard not only to ignore their phone when it is ringing, but also to switch it off. Our children, when they were teenagers, used to leave their phones on all night and at all hours we used to hear the beeping or loud vibrations when a night owl called or a late text was sent. It drove me nuts, especially when I had to get up for work the next day.

Personally, when I walk through my front door my mobile is switched off. If people want me, and I want to talk to them, they will have my landline number. I thoroughly dislike being contactable 24/7 and the number of junk calls I get on my mobile is increasing (due, I think, to the fact that when you use the web, in particular price comparison sites, you often have to give a contact phone number and I use my mobile number).

We often have ‘dinner for two’ evenings. Mobiles are switched off (all of them) the BT phone is unplugged, the computer is off, we disconnect the doorbell and shut the curtains. We put on some music, have a good bottle of wine and a nice dinner, just the two of us, without any interruptions from the outside world thus guaranteeing us some quality time. The first time we did this The Hubby was quite apprehensive – “What if there is an emergency?” he wailed, probably concerned that his poisonous ex would be trying to get hold of him about something trivial and become irate because he wasn’t jumping to command. “The phone’s off for two hours, three hours max,” I said. “What can happen?” Of course, nothing did.

We’ve done this several times now and it’s a wonderful de-stressor. Being at the world’s beck and call means we never truly relax and by and large, very little is so urgent it needs instant reaction or response. It’s just that we have got used to it, which makes anything else seem unusual or odd. I didn’t even have a mobile phone until about 18 years ago, and only bought one then because I had a job which meant I was travelling alone late at night and wanted the security in case my broken down old car clapped out. I still wonder whether I might be better off without one.

Only four total d***heads? Is that all? Really?

There are four people in my office, which comprises about 120 very different individuals, whom I really cannot abide. At least two of them make my flesh crawl just by being in the room. All four are men.

Why do I hate them so much (I think the feeling is mutual, by the way)? Well, here we go, let’s air all my prejudices and dislikes:-

1)    A raging Queen obvious to all to see, but not out and proud and in total public denial. Throws full blown tantrums over ridiculously minor stuff and is totally change averse.

2)    A dinosaur stuck in the 60’s who calls women ‘chicks’ and ‘babes’, wears hush puppies and corduroy jackets and has hair which is creeping over his collar leaving a slightly greasy neckline. Rarely does any work, and whatever you try to talk to him about, says it’s the first he’s heard of it. The first flesh crawler!

3)    A fat arrogant slob who, despite being just a junior planner and having vastly less experience and knowledge, thinks he is better than and more qualified than me and is staggeringly rude at every opportunity. This one is the second flesh crawler.

4)    An up-his-arse urban designer who has managed to get away with doing very little for several years and thinks he’s God’s gift, and so makes a full time occupation out of being a total knob!

Most people I can tolerate in fairly close proximity and most of the time probably can ignore fairly effectively. These four, I bristle just at the sight of and they can annoy me by simply walking into a room.

I know it’s irrational, and I know it’s unreasonable to feel like this, but it’s just the way it is. Perhaps it stems from the fact that I am charged with bringing about organisational change and don’t have any time to suffer fools (as those of you that know me well will be aware of) and in my early days these four were the main protagonists and blockages to modernisation, so we crossed swords fairly regularly. I don’t know; I can’t explain it and no matter how hard I try, cannot shake off the feelings. They’re with me to stay.

In contrast, there are a few people that I like a lot and who, despite varying degrees of incompetence and annoyingness, it is impossible to be cross with for long if at all. There’s simply no sense to it at all!

I acknowledge of course, that there is very little I can do to change these people and probably nothing, so I have to find coping strategies for them and most of the time that comprises ignoring them as much as possible. When pushed, I have to force myself to listen to what they say because maybe, just maybe, they may have a valid point in a discussion, but it’s a struggle because in my head, before they start they have no credibility.

There must be people like them in every office, and we must all, if we work, have colleagues we feel similarly about. Please someone tell me I’m not alone! I know I’m not the most tolerant of other people and most of the time would rather spend my life in glorious isolation, but generally speaking I manage to rub along with most including a complicated and awkward family. So I don’t think it’s me. But then there must be a common denominator, so perhaps it is?

I’ll probably never know, because most people are not blessed with the gift of honesty and won’t say what they think. Why can’t we just be straightforward from time to time, and if someone is being a total dick just tell them instead of nodding politely and then slagging them off behind their backs. It might at least make the workplace more lively!