OK dont panic (not that you would) I am here better late than never

Anyways after what can only be described as a hellish morning, I am here to write about anything but my morning.

I almost said sod it, sod the rent and the bills and go to Liverpool, but common sense took hold and the rent is paid, at least I will have a roof over my head if nothing else. And it makes you feel better knowing that you are secure in some things.

I have done far too much thinking this week, not good for the digestion by the way, too much thinking It seems that my blog has been on a bit of a downer these past months, and that will not do, after all that is never what I intended my blog to be. So lets see if I can get back to the way things were. Maybe that is just what I need.

I will be back later, after I have finished arguing with my daughter!

See ya

I asked K to let me know when she got to Manchester, and she has called me and has safely arrived, she asked me to let you all know so you are not worrying.

Now we just have to get her to Liverpool and all will be well

The howling wind swept the icy rain in sheets across the bleak platform, she was oblivious as she waited in anticipation for the long hoped for meeting with someone she held dear.

The train arrived and she eagerly scanned the departing passengers, nothing,though she had never met this person she knew she would know them on sight, a pang of disappointment,a repressing of the old paranoia, and thoughts of missed tran and she settled down to wait knowing the next one was due in roughly six minutes.

The next three trains came and went and the thoughts went from have I missed her, to she is not coming, she has changed her mind, others more important ( the old paranoia) that lasted about fifteen minutes until common sense reasserted itself, after all I may never have met this person but I knew there was no way she would leave me just stood there waiting for any of the above reasons.

I went back to the missed trains and delays, if she had missed this connection here it would mean she would miss that there, and so on.

After an hour and a half, and going through all the timetables I had looked at before leaving home, and phoning said persons phone (which by now you are pretty sure they are not carrying) and knowing the frequency of the trains, starting to get seriously worried, contact another very dear friend and ask if our now MIA friend had their phone, we messaged back and forth and during the course of this my phone rings.

"Hi Hunny, its me, I'm in Appleby!"
"Your'e where?"
"In Appleby, I think I went too far North" ( I swear I was trying really hard not to laugh)

Things were sorted and she was placed on a train by a really lovely guy in the station there and sent back my way, it was going to be another two hours before she would get back so I went home and thawed out, after letting my other friend know she was safe and sound and was merely trying to escape to Scotland!

When she finally arrived, I was right I knew her on sight, of course I had to tease about what had happened and asked her if the thought of meeting me was so overwhelming she decided to escape to Scotland, which by the way she was only three or four stops from! Apparently she had fallen asleep and had woken and realised that she just may be in the wrong place, she laughed and said "The scenery was lovely though"

I have placed her on the train to Leeds, and the train stops there so she cannot go any further! I have to admit I did not want her to go, and I was a little sad to see her off.

Have you ever met an Angel? I dont mean all this biblical stuff, or even a person that is good and pure and all that.
An Angel to me is a person that radiates a certain kind of warmth, that makes you feel after the first hug (and as some of you know, hugging me is not easy) there is a sense of having known them forever, a person who you feel instantly is going to be there hovering for a long time. I met one yesterday, I saw her off today, we chatted all night, what about? Well thats between us

I cant be there this weekend, despite a certain persons efforts to get me there, ( by the way, you could always come here my friend, mine is an open door ) So look after her guys, though I know I wont have to say that as you will anyway.

Right I really have to get something done, though I cant remember what it was?

Why is it that when you are expecting company you start to see all the things that are wrong with your home? Mine is not a palace, but then they/she is coming to see me not the house, and there is far too much wrong with me to put right

Half ay through the week, where has it gone? I have done absolutely nothing! Course I am also not sleeping again, the sandman seems to have lost his way somewhat.

Right got loads to do, like go and get the lazy boneses out of bed, I will be back at some point and hopefully at some point I will get to catch up with you all.

Isn't it hard trying to describe how you feel at any given time? You would think that for those of us with word wizadry (when it works) it would be easy, but describing ones own feelings, especially when you dont fully understand them yourself is somewhat of a challenge.

I have always found that no matter how I feel, I can always find a song that has the words that I need, right now it is 'I am I said' by Neil Diamond, not all the words, mainly the chorus bit, and the part that goes 'I got an emptiness deep inside and I've tried but it wont let go'. Course you need to listen to it to know what I mean.

However it is not all doom and gloom, because as much as I can always find a song to describe my mood I can also use music to lift it. A bit of Def Leppard, and some toe tapping, body moving music, and the blues will start to lift at least a little. Lets get rocked usually puts me in a better mood and gets the energy going, again, at least a little.

Life is full of ups and downs, sometimes more downs than ups, but the way I look at it is, if you are down then there is only one way to go and that is up. And when you are up, just enjoy it. Too many people worry about tomorrow, I used to, always planning, being organised, of course you have to have a certain amount of structure or you would lead a higgledy piggledy existance, but to always worry about what tomorrow is going to bring is only going to make it harder to enjoy today.

Enjoy what you have now,be good to who ever you are with, for you never know when it may be gone, worrying about it will take away the pleasure of just being, and one day you will look back and wonder why.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss from the Album Raising Sand

Well I finally managed to get a look at some blogs, not commented yet but I will, I can see you all cringing

The most important one was my dear freinds, to find out where she was going and when, seems she has quite a full itinery, and will need the peace and quiet she is going to get here before moving on to the pool and having a wicked weekend.

I have made a few plans of my own, though it will be well after Christmas unless Santa puts something nice in my stocking I shall be letting you know what they are as soon as I have them worked out.

Right what was I about to do?

Monday morning and all I keep thinking is one more sleep!! I am like a child waiting for Christams

The sky this morning was the most beautiful lilacs and purples, spreading out across the sky, the gradual lighting behind the clouds heralded the arrival of the morning proper, though by this time it was after seven. Miss Molly was not amused at having to go out later than normal, but I actually had a lie in! I know I know, the world will come to an end if I do that too often

I have been trying to keep my mind occupied these past few weeks, having a break from studying I find that I dont seem able to concentrate proeprly, so I am setting myself a new routine of studying for at least two hours a day, dont want to be losing it now do we? The mind that is.

I find myself thinking about the strangest things, and of course tryin to follow the financial big boys in their doings is becoming a huge task since the property fiasco in America, one minute they are all tightening thier belts and the next they are taking settlements left right and centre. The main thing to remember is that there are only five actual main creditors in this country and one of them is American!

Every credit card (Except Capital One) is linked to one of those main creditors somewhere along the line.

Enough, I hear you say tis Monday! OK, I will toddle off and do some stuff, but I will be back (Minus the machine gun of course)

I actually managed to watch a sunrise today,stood watching the ribbons of colour soft and pink on the horizon spreading across the sky, kissing the clouds and making them blush,while on the other Lady Moon in her full glory was saying good night.

Funny how the simplest things can lift the spirits, for a little while at least.

I have a lot to do today, well not really a lot, but I want to get done those jobs that I have been putting off, wouldnt want The Special Lady thinking I am a slob now would we? I cant wait, I have been so looking forward to this week, and even though I am not going to be able to be with you nutty lot in Liverpool, I am expecting full reports with pictures

Right off I go to brave the freezing mountain top (The Attic) Catch you in a short while, have a good Sunday Morning ( Thats if you are out of bed yet )

Ahhhh, the weekend, contrary to normal practice I have had a very relaxed day, apart from the two hours at my sons that is.

My team lost, again, but that seems to be a normal thing at the moment

Which of course means that Liverpool won so most of you will be happy.

Right am watching NCIS so will be back in a bit xx

Friday at last, and I have to say that I cant wait for the end of this week.

Due to various changes at work the Customer relations team that I am part of will cease to exist in the next few weeks, it is now a different name which will mean nothing to anyone and why confuse things for you even further?

The idea is that every client will have a case officer and that should solve any problems, quell any complaints etc, before they start. In theory it sounds quite good, and most clients are quite happy to have only the one person that they will deal with rather than being greeted by a different person each time they phone.

In practice it is quite different, you will always have your serial moaners/complainers, every business has them and it is always going to be so, some people are never satisfied no matter what you do and this will always be the case.

Of course for this to work we have to first empty the files of the cases we have ongoing, as the team also does settlements, critical illness, deaths as well as complaints, this is quite a large task. Of the cases ongoing for settlements we split them among the three of us that are left in the team, which left us with something along the lines of 33 apiece, not too bad, except of course we have new one coming in all the time. Two of us also do the complaints and critical illness, what happened was I ended up with 80 cases all told including everything and the other two had roughly 40 each.

Because of various events we are behind on our work, we now have more staff, but they are of course untrained, so for the past week we have been trying to train as well as catch up. It is proving to be quite a task. The three of us that remain from the original team have been given two hours each day when we are not allowed to be disturbed so we can catch up on the work in hand, while one has their quiet time the other two take the calls and deal with the training. Again in theory this works quite well.

I have managed to catch up so I am not as far behind as I was, I am now working on cases from the 12th and yes I know that today is the 23rd, but eleven days behind isn't as bad as it was. Trouble is am finishing today for a week, and that means nothing will get done on my cases until I get back to work, so I have been trying to get as much done as I can.

Trouble is that while training I have to constantly leave what I am doing to show someone else how to do theirs, deal with calls that they cant deal with and generally carry n doing two or three peoples work. Which is making each day seem more hectic than normal.

The light at the end of the tunnel as far as work is concerned is that we will have more people soon and even though that means more training, it also means that we can pass over some work, and reduce our load. A couple of weeks they thoerised, a couple of months would be the correct time line.

Anyway, for a whole week I will not let this bother me, I need that break and if things are behind when I get back, well so whats new?

And how is everyone else on this brilliant Friday morning?

Be good and have a great day

Who was it

Anyway as you may have guessed I have had somewhat of a hectic day, ever had one of those where you cant get to your work for doing work?

One minute it is half past five and I have the dog out in the field and the next it is half past seven and I am on my way to getting my son and his wife out of bed and then work, the next it is lunch time and where the blue blazes has my morning gone!?

The afternoon fared no better, and though it did seem like the day went incredibly quickly it was also incredibly tiring.

At some point I went on to automatic and when I get a minute I will explain what has been going on in that place of employment of mine that is making things so hectic, at the moment I keep telling myself that come the end of the week (Tomorrow and I cannot wait!) I hav a whole week of doing nothing to look forward to, not quite but at least I will not be at work and my time will be my own for a little while. I will be back in a bit to answer the comments you were all so lovely to leave me, that I have not had time to get to yet.

At this time of year it can feel as though you live in a world of darkness, you go to work in the dark and you come home in the dark, at the moment here it is raining constantly and so the day never seems to brighten very much. I rarely see a sunrise at the moment as I am usually in work before it lifts its head from its bed.

And yet there are still thing that can make you smile, quite apart from my lovely friends on here, like last night for instance when I took Molly out, no starry sly, just a dark cloudy one, yet looking over to the side of the valley I saw what I at first thought was the glow of a street light from just behind the hill, untill I moved further round and watched as the clouds thinned and the moon shone through them, slightly hidden by the hill and covered in grey gauzy cloud she still managed to let me know she was there. it was a beautiful sight and I wish I could have caught it on camera to show you.

It made me smile and remember that the most beautiful sights and sounds in this world are not ones that we pay for, but the ones that are given to us for free, if we take the time to lift our heads and look.

Have a great day, where ever you are and whatever you are doing. xxxx

Tuesday and the week has barely begun, and despite the fact that I can barely speak, I seemed to take the most phone calls yesterday. What part od I can hardly speak do they not understand? They couldn't just say to the client that I was not available and would call them back, or even deal with it themselves? But that would have meant actually doing something other than reading emails all day!

Anyway,little rant over, mondays are mondays and thats that.

Why does having a cold always make you feel so blah! Its only a cold,and what with the way that the weather is, it is not really surprising that we have them. It is so Cooooooold, in fact I thought it might just snow this weekend, but nah, it just rained.

Where does the time fly to? I thought I had plenty of it this morning but apparently not, never mind, away to prepare myself for the wonderful happenings of the day, if I keep saying it do you think it may just be so

Catch you all later

No time this morning for the usual post and as you may (or may not) have noticed no post yesterday.

I spent a very lazy Sunday nursing a very heavy cold, shivering in front of the fire,lounging on the sofa. Still I went to work today though I was a lot slower at my morning chores than normal before I set off, hence not having time for my morning muse.

Things are still very grim on the financial side, despite keeping faith it seems my lottery numbers were left in the tub

Never mind every cloud has a silver lining and it is just a matter of waiting for it to show itself

Right I am starving, so got to go eat, back later

Have you ever felt like there was no point and that you are just banging your head against a brick wall? I feel like that right now, I go round in circles with the bank and with Virgin, I work all month and I have nothing at the end of it, it is like no matter how hard you try, it makes little or no difference to anything.

I should try being like all those people that are on the dole and going on holiday twice a year, I work hard and cant afford to go on holiday once let alone twice! I really must be doing something wrong.

Ah well never mind it will soon be Christmas

Friday, I love Friday, it is the day that heralds the arrival of the weekend, whatever they throw at me today, it doesnt matter as I know that after a certain time I will be free from it for two whole days.

I spent the whole of yesterday morning doing a papaer chase, an ex member of the team had sent out some cheques that had not arrived at their destination, it took all morning but I discovered why, and where and everything. Got the cheques cancelled and reissued the payment by BACS.

I was not amused as it was not a simple admin error, when I had investigated and found out where they had gone it had been made obvious that the person in question had simply not cared enough to check what she was doing. She had been brought back to the team for the day as we were mega short staffed, and I have spent the three weeks since cleaning up the messes she made. You just cannot afford to have that attitude when you are playing with other peoples money.

Never mind today is friday, and despite the paper chase and the phone calls and the constant interuptions I did manage to get quite a bit of work done yesterday.

And what are we all doing this weekend?

I am going to relax, I have made no plans at all, so they cant be quashed by anyone

Right got to go, have a great day

Thursday, thank goodness only today and tomorrow and then two days off, and I really cannot wait!

Little Miss has got three days off so I didnt have to put up with her yesterday, or today or tomorrow. Which meant we were down to two staff, well, in a manner of speaking. They gave us four of our new staff, and kept three of them on call centre calls, so they were no good to us, and the fourth, well she needs training as do the other three, so she was pretty much a no go, and as one of us had to train her the other (bet you cant guess who!) had to do the work, I really will be glad when this week is over.

Still another week and I have the week off, which I am looking forward to because I will be meeting a very special lady, but it is also the week I was to meet some other special people, and now cant, but, it is only postponed until things improve.

Right it is that time again, bit slow this morning so not got time for a long post, where does the time go?

Have a great day whatever you are doing

The deed is done, last night I loved it, it looked good and it felt light and soft. This morning, as always happens with new styles I am not sure and of course it looks nothing like it did last night as it got messed up on the pillow, I knew I should have tried spending the night sat up!

I had before and after pics taken and as soon as I acquire the means to transfer them from my phone to the computer I will show you them.

When measured before the cut my hair measured twenty four and a half inches, after it measured thirteen inches. And I raised forty seven pounds for Children in Need

And on to the saga of work, I got rather disgruntled with one of the girls at work yesterday, I am not in to petted school playground antics, if you have something to say then say it, dont go crying to the boss behind my back, after all I wouldn't!

I have said many times that often I get annoyed because I am the only one that appears to be taking any calls, now with the staff depleted as it is we should all be logged in, of course little miss thinks she is above such things until being told last week that she has no choice as there is only the three of us. Many times she 'opts' to not log in as she 'just has to get a letter out' well so do we all! So yesterday I 'opted' to not log in, I have a terminally ill client and his paperwork had to go out to his creditors, and there were quite a few of them.

Little miss couldn't cope with the calls, she told me I had to log in, so I replied as soon as I have finished what I am doing I will log in, right now I am in the middle of something. So as soon as I went for my lunch she complained to the boss! The boss sent an email round stating that she knew we were busy and short staffed but the calls had to be answered, I replied to it saying that it was very rare that I wasn't logged in to the phone but I had to get a terminal ill clients file done, she said that was fair enough.

If there had been a high volume of calls I would have logged in, out of the seven calls that came through yesterday morning five were redirected to me anyway!

Ah workmates dont ya just love em!!

Anyway on to other things, first the bad news, well bad to some maybe some others will not think it so, I cannot make the Liverpool meet, sorry guys, but unfortunately Mr Government man has decided that he wants his council Tax paying at a horrific rate and though I have appealed until it is heard that money is coming out of my wage.I will be lucky if I can afford to eat let alone do anything else

I expect lots of pics of you lot though and a full description of the weekends events.

Right got to go and get ready to face another day of working to pay Gordon Browns Wage, TTFN,

Already time to get up! I dont feel like it is that long since I left work and here I am preparing to go back to it

The new teams *cough* were supposed to start yesterday, but as it happens not everything was in place, mainly the database. Now I love our IT guys, they are a laugh, and mostly they will get you what you need when you need it, except, when you ask IT for something doing on the data base it usually ends up slowing down the whole system for however long it takes them and then you have to force an update to get everything to work again.

After the slowest morning ever computer wise, so slow it was practically at a standstill, we were informed that the new data base would be up and running by the afternoon. Now I didnt care, I had whizzed through my work that morning and actually managed to get my tasks to under sixty from over eighty, I was on early lunch and came back with a good feeling of I might just be able to get all the red tasks finished finally and maybe even the amber ones, nothing is ever that easy

Half way through answering a complaint they come and say, force an update your new data base is ready, so I dutifully comes out of what I am doing and forced an update. The new data base is cool, it means I no longer have to wait a week (or even two) for certain tsks to be done as I now do them myself, and I am all raring to go, Mr IT is stood there looking all proud and chest puffy, I go back into my tasks, that is I attempt to go back in to my tasks.

Erm, where has all my work gone?

Well it is still there

Erm no, it is gone, look, nothing, nada, Zilch, disappeared.

Oh errr, erm, well erm, you have to put the reference numbers in of all the people you were working on and it brings them back.

And what about the ones that I hadnt even started on that I dont have the reference numbers of? You know all the ones that are assigned from other departments?

Oh, well, errrr, I dont know!

Why does IT make simple things so hard?

As it happens, between myself and the boss we managed to retrieve the work, but it took us most of the afternoon and I got hardly anything done. Which means a long day today

Never mind, today is the day I am having my hair done, which I am both looking forward to and dreading.

Right off to get ready for the day and whatever it brings, have a great one

Monday morning, the day that starts another week of the same old same old, of course there are lots of people that like the same old same old, but wouldnt it be nice just to do something different for a change and say, start work on a Tuesday? But, I guess then Tuesday would become Monday and it would be no different after all.

We begin the new teams today, and to be honest I am sort of looking forward to it and dreading it all at the same time, but one thing is for sure, they will now be able to see who does the work and who does the skiving. I am still looking for that elusive new job with the better pay, there just doesn't seem to be any unless I want to travel up to two hours a day, and that isnt so bad if you have a car, but going by bus and train puts up to another hour on at peak times.

Right enough of that, I cant tell you about the beautiful sunrise this morning as it is still pitch black out there, and cloudy, and coooold.

And we are doing Children in Need all week at work and I am having my hair cut, sponsored by the people at work, but dont panic, it is a professional hairdresser doing it and no, I am not having it shaved It is at the moment to my waist and she is going to cut it to my shoulders, or thereabouts. Though I couldnt get the guys to sponsor by the inch, cheapscates! One of the bosses was going to and then he looked at it and said, I dont earn enough, cheeky sod!
Right got to get ready for work, have a great day, and dont do anything I wouldn't do

Ah the weekend, a time for relaxing and kicking back and doing little if not nothing. Well not quite, Saturday was lost in a mish mash of hanging curtains and finishing off bits that had to be done, shopping, washing, sorting things out. So much for a weekend off!

Today I was going to do various things but have spent the last couple of hours playing WoW, time just seems to disappear when I get on there

But it will be a quiet day as it is too bloomin cold to go wandering off without good reason, and it is raining as well.

A nice serene Sunday, why do I have the feeling that it isn't going to work out that way?

If you hear a strange noise it is just my teeth chattering after being out with Molly, definately time for the gloves!

One of the problems we Brits have is that we are used to Seasons, the reason that we have seasons is to gradually lead us from one state to another, Spring is usually damp and starts off chilly with a gradual warming up into Summer, which starts warm and gets hotter leading us into the gradual cooling of Autumn, which leads us with gently dropping temps into winter.

We are used to having 'Cold Snaps' but usually by the time that winter rears its icy head we have got used to the falling temperatures. What the heck was gradual about this years? What happened to Autumn? Come to think of it what happened to Summer?

One of the main problems when the cold comes in like this is that our vulnerable people, the old and the very young, dont adapt too well, and even though we haven't had a great summer it was at least warm, this sudden drop in temps will have old bones shivering and old minds worrying about the extra cost of a long and extremely cold winter. Walking becomes hazardous and they become reclusive, so maybe it is time to keep an extra special eye out for those more frail neighbours and lend a hand where we can.

Work continues to be much of a sameness, not so much onwards and uwards as onwards and sidwards, in honesty if things carry on as they are I dont see me being there much past Christmas, in fact as things stand I dont see the firm being there much longer

Though the bosses have finally got it into their heads that not giving pay rises means a steady depletion of staff, which is ok to a certain extent, weed out those that you dont need, trouble is it doesn't work that way and it is always the 'good' ones that leave feeling that there services are better valued elsewhere not to mention the fact that this now places a heavier load upon the remaining staff who now feel even more undervalued than they did to start with. No staff equals no business, so the promise of a payrise, but of course with strings, isn't it always?

Still today is Friday and I have point blank refused to work the weekend, I am tired and the weekend is my recuperation time, the only time that I get to do the things around the house I am too tired to do through the week.

Right time to get ready for to face the Coolldd out there, Brrrrrrr.

Have a great Friday, catch you later.

Brrrr, who made it so cold? When Molly and I go for a walk in a morning now we play kick leaves, she thinks that is fun cos she gets to chase them. She is still fairly bemused by the walks, but loves them and finds she gets longer ones as we have to go further to the field and the walk that we have found. She is getting better with traffic but is still very much a little scaredy miss that jumps at her own shadow.

And it is nearly the end of another year, where does the time go?

Work is the same as ever, we have had the promise of a two grand a year pay rise, but it is apparently dependant on several factors, though I have just done the first conversion for the new product and am apparently going to be training others, so hopefully that means my pay rise is in the not too distant future.Lets hope that they do it before I find that elusive new job.

And how is everyone? I will try and catch up with all your blogs this weekend, now that I am finally unpacked and sort of settled in.

Right just a short one this morning, things to do etc, etc.

Have a great day

Ok, dont all rush to greet me at once!!

Yep I am back, online and feisty.

I will update you all once I have my breath back, been a long week already and it is only wednesday.

It is good to be back, I have missed you guys.