I've been there too

When I saw this it brought back some none too pleasant memories:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-19058256

It was three years ago. 

Daughter (aged just 16) and younger son (aged 11) were going to go on a mountain bike trail.  Daughter was just getting into biking and had printed out a little bit of an OS map from Mountain Biker magazine for a trail they could follow.

So I dropped them off at the car park at the bottom of the hill and arranged to meet them at the car park at the top.  It should take them about an hour to do the trail.  I last saw them at about 3.30pm.

I sat in the car park at the top sewing name tags into younger son's new school uniform (it's the kind of thing that mums do).

An hour went and past.  And another.

I was sat in a car park at a place called Dead Woman's Ditch.  It's in the middle of the Quantocks and there's precious little mobile phone signal anywhere there.

Even at the best of times it's difficult to get teenagers to actually answer their phones, but every time all I got was "Welcome to O***** answerphone..."

So what do you do?

I was reluctant to drive off anywhere to look for them because a) it was woodland between where I'd left them and where they were supposed to go to  and b) if they turned up and I wasn't there then where would they go then?

Two chaps on mountain bikes in their 40s turned up so I approached them.  Oh yes, they knew that trail, they'd go and have a look for them.  Only bit of good news is that daughter was wearing a bright pink helmet so they'd be easily recognisable and also noticeable at a distance.  Half an hour later they came back and said, no they'd been down that trail to the bottom and come up a different way and there was no sign of them.

By now it was about 6pm and although it was nowhere near dusk yet (being August) I was very aware that the clock was ticking.

I'm sorry, I have to go and do other things now.  To be continued (that is, if you're interested).

Resistance is futile (or not)

So there I was yesterday, sat in the carpark of a male menopause shop when I got a phone call.  From Samson, who said he was calling from 33C Accounts and could he speak to someone from the accounts department.  As we are a partnership of two and I do all the accounts stuff I said yes, he could talk to me.

Samson: "I'm just calling to tell you that we are planning to sign you up to our new accounts system run by OBX.  And we're calling suppliers so that they don't get cold calls from OBX."

Me:  "And do I have to do this?  What benefit do I get from that?"

Samson:  "Well it's more efficient so your invoices will get paid faster, and you can track where they are in the system."

Me:  "Well I'm already on immediate payment terms so I don't think you'll get it any faster than that.  And so far I have no problems with any payments."

Samson:  "Well it will all be far more efficient.  And we're trying to ensure that all our purchasing is dealt with electronically."

Me:  "But I produce all my invoices as pdfs and e-mail them to you, how much more electronic do you need?"

Samson:  "Well we need to get as much as we can through the system electronically."

Me:  (thinking back to when they tried to do this five or six years ago)  "And how much will this cost me?"

Samson:  "Well as a rough estimate, say you have approximately x number of invoices per year, it will probably cost £750,  And let me say that any new suppliers would have to go through OBX, there would be no option."

Me:  "£750  !!!!!!!!!!!!  That's a small fortune.  There's no way I'd be paying that.  And this is just to make the 33C more efficient??  If I was forced to do so then my invoices would be adjusted to cover it."

Samson:  "Well of course some suppliers have found that they're going to have to use OBX across maybe 3 or 4 different clients so when you divide the £750 across 3 or 4 clients then it's not that much."

Me:  "Well none of my other customers would even touch OBX so that ain't gonna happen here."

Samson:  "Well since you're an existing supplier, and you clearly don't want to have to deal with OBX (too f**king right, mate) then I can offer you an alternative.  For a limited period (ie the link will die within 5 days) you can sign up to our supplier self service system but you might have to do a bit more typing.  But as, judging by the past year, you only send us about 9 invoices per month then that probably wouldn't be too arduous for you, then perhaps you'd like to consider sending invoices  via this method."

So then he sent me links for signing up to the self service supplier portal - which as I was in the middle of Somerset I completely ignored.  Which I think was about right.

I love the feel of autumn

I love the feel of autumn. 

That slight nip in the air. 

The sense of anticipation of something new.  I remember feeling that very acutely when I went to university but also on starting a new secondary school (which I did twice).

The regret that the long hot days of summer are over, but a freshness in the air.

The realisation that it's not that long till Christmas.

I love the feel of autumn.

BUT NOT AT THE END OF JULY

Not quite a curate's egg, but distinctly patchy

So what did you think of the Olympic opening ceremony then?

Opening film good, pacy.  Historical stuff good, although the much publicised animals seem to have been reduced to a few horses who looked well used to the spotlight, and the chronology seemed a bit hit and miss. 

Musical stuff all over the shop.  Not at all helped by Trevor Nelson's inane comments.  Still, at least the rest of the world didn't hear him.

Queen's arrival excellent.  Glastonbury Tor interesting (it's a lot harder to climb than that in real life - last time I did it the Red Arrows just happened to be practising and flew over, that was quite spectacular).

Arrival of athletes - well I went and loaded the dishwasher and when I came back it was still going on.  Quite intrigued by the ice-cream girls leading each nation and obv setting the pace.

Cauldron - excellent, very impressive.  And clever, the way pre-event publicity had odds laid on several likely torch candidates, and they were all there, but not the one.

Cringeworthy - Paul McCartney.  Please.  I used to love you when I was younger.  Now you've become an embarrassing cop-out at the end of every event.  No wonder they pulled the plug on you the other day.

 Overall, 9/10.  And you?

SAD or just tired?

I have a clock in my kitchen.  Looks like this.  Has an AA battery.  It's been there for years.  It always used to run very slightly fast, which was quite useful as it meant that in reality I still had a couple of minutes in hand, if you see what I mean.



About three weeks ago it stopped, so I changed the battery.  A day later it stopped again, so I changed the battery again.  When it stopped a day after that I thought there must be something wrong with the clock itself, but no, the terminals looked clean and nothing was out of place.  I left it lying face down on the table.



When I came back later it had started ticking again, so I hung it up.  Over the next few weeks it would run for maybe 10, maybe 20 hours at a time and then stop.  Every time I laid it face down on the table and within about 5 minutes it had started again.  I came to the conclusion that my clock was tired and just needed a rest.

But since we've gone back to summer again, it hasn't stopped once.  Does my clock suffer from SAD, do you think?

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do

My brain hurts.

All morning and half the afternoon I have been writing a report (currently four pages long) detailing the current state of the project we are managing.  Trying to put politely the fact that the person we have to work with as Chair is an idiot, who goes off at a tangent on her own, upsetting volunteers, trying to discredit other people's judgements and who uses as an excuse the fact that she didn't know what was going on.  The fact that she is completely incapable of listening to anyone goes totally over her head.  She has no creative side to her at all.  She thinks everything should be done in formal meetings, in committee.  She talks a load of council type rubbish.  And then she wonders why this project has taken four years to get off the ground. 

It's taken six months for them to figure out a way of reclaiming VAT on purchases for the project.  Why?  Who would seriously want to give a sixth of the HLF grant straight back to HMRC? 

We have to find some niche that she can be put in charge of, just to keep her out of the way of everyone else.  I have had to write this report just to make sure that she doesn't write it and now I shall have to email it to everyone involved that I can think of just so that she doesn't either pretend it's not like that, or else steal all the words and try to pretend they are hers.  Not that anyone would be fooled by that as she tends to write total gibberish with very little punctuation and terrible spelling (eg "graffic" artists - to rhyme with traffic, I suppose).

There.  I've said it now.

And then after that I've been doing our year end accounts.  Not because it's the actual year end - those were done months ago - but because I need to do our tax returns.  Not because they actually need submitting now, but because the tax credits annual review has to be done by the end of July, and so I might as well have actually done the tax returns as well.  At least I won't get a penalty for filing a late return.  And with a bit of luck the tax credits people might decide I'm so poor they might give me something.  Alternatively with daughter having just finished secondary education they will probably take some away.

So the rather nice sunshine I can see out the window is just that - outside the window.

W-w-w-w-w-w-wet again

Jeeeeze!!!  We've just gone from pretty dry and sunny to the biggest raindrops in the world.  Daughter said, "have you still got washing out?" - and at that point it was probably almost dry - and by the time I'd brought it in I was totally soaked.  Had to change my clothes, that soaked. 

I know I should be grateful that I live in a hilly city, and that for us to be flooded probably 40% of the country would be underwater, but still....

Why do I now think that rain is the default option?

Does anyone know a means of nudging the Gulf Stream back on course (ie north of the UK), otherwise we're all buggered from now till kingdom come?

Have you ever seen so many slugs?  And where have all these black slugs come from?

Yours, wetly....