Thursday, 16 December 2004

I may live to regret this

PG, who most certainly doesn't share my enthusiasm and passion for snow, quite the reverse in fact, he hates the stuff, has spent the last 24 hours intermittently sniggering at my almost constant weather monitoring and warning me, in in dire tones, that I am 'going to live to regret wishing for snow'! This is light hearted of course but the more he furnishes me with graphic detail, the more I am inclined to have a tiny bit of doubt in my mind!

Of course I still want snow, I will not be deterred from my excitement at the imminent prospect, the forecast is becoming more promising almost by the hour but maybe just maybe, as he regails me of tales from winter four years ago, I should be hoping for just a little snow...... as opposed to a great white heap.

Winter in this corner of Scotland four years ago, now that's not a winter those who went through it will forget in a hurry. Ask anyone here about it and they will immediately hunt out photographs and begin with tales of white woe. Overnight and apparently unexpectedly five foot of snow fell in just a few hours, it drifted to over 12 foot in places and this little village and those surrounding it, were cut off from civilisation for days. Even the intrepid farmers with snow ploughs attached to the front of tractors and local authority workers struggled to cut a path through the mountains of snow.

PG was working a night shift when the snow fell and was forced to remain at work 24/7 for days on end, he couldn't get home and equally his colleagues, who should have been taking over, couldn't get in. They have fifteen or so severely disabled residents to care for and began to run short of some necessary foodstuffs. PG, as the only male on the premises throughout this, went on foot to the village store, a trip of only half a mile, to collect what provisions he could, the journey took him over an hour each way, on each occasion!

None of this is offputting to me, though I do begin to understand why he doesn't look forward to a repeat. What does begin to make the prospect of such a snowfall seem slightly less exciting is the reminder from him (and I have been reminded frequently believe me) that for 8 days he was without electricity , we have no gas, gas mains here don't exist, and I hate being cold. Worse by far though is the realisation that without power or a phone line......I have no computer!!!!

So, should I disappear without warning anytime soon, you can laugh heartily as you imagine my utter frustration.......... knowing I wished such an annoyance upon myself!

Wednesday, 15 December 2004

I stole this from.....

.....Wacky Southern Housewife who stole it off Sour Persimmons who in turn got it from Rafael's blog, who got it from.........ah hell who knows, anyways, I hope none of them object to strongly to my thievery, it looks like fun.


Q: What color is most reflective of you?
Black....no surprise there, but I love purple and blue.

Q: How did you get the idea for your blog name?
'Gemma' was my first cat, she died aged 18, 4 years ago. The first time I needed an 'online' name I added the 'k', my second initial at the time, it's said as one word incidentally, not gemma-k and has no initial at the front.....long story.

Q: What song are you playing now, or wish you were playing?
I'm not playing anything and I don't wish I was, I like the quiet. I have 'spells' when I play music all day long and then I stop again for months.

Q: Has the death of a celebrity ever made you cry?
Yes, Princess Diana and Marc Bolan.

Q: What color underwear are you wearing?
Excuse me!.......hell, I thought for a moment there I was on IRC! :o)

Q: Do you want a baby?
What? at my age?....unless of course you are talking baby cats here.

Q: What does your mom do for a living?
She was a radio engineer in the navy, a vision mixer in TV and a housewife.

Q: What does your dad do for a living?
He's retired but he was a lighting manager at the BBC, if you knew his name you can still see him in the captions! But you don't. heh.

Q: What is your pet's name?
I have two...'Poppy' and 'Ditto', like I haven't already bored you enough with those names!

Q: What color are your bedsheets?
Purple.

Q: What was the last concert you attended?
Hell, I haven't been to a concert in years, the last one was probably 'Sting'.

Q: Who was with you?

A friend.

Q: What was the last movie you saw?
I don't go to the movies now.....it's a 120 mile trip, if a DVD counts then 'The day after tomorrow'

Q: Who do you dislike most at this moment?
My ex-husband who made a fortune out of me.

Q: What food are you craving right now?
Chocolate......is there another food?

Q: Did you dream last night?
Yes.

Q: What was the last tv show you watched?
CSI

Q: What is your fave piece of jewelry?
A 0.60 carat flawless diamond solitaire ring....I love it, I bought it with part of an inheritance I received.

Q: What is to the left of you?
A wall...........exciting stuff eh?

Q: What was the last thing you ate?
Olives

Q: Who is your best friend of the opposite sex?
Does PG count or does it have to be someone other than him? If it has to be another then I can't choose....Phil, Matt or Tim.

Q: Write a song lyric that's in your head?

'Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the waaaaay'.........

Q: What song is that from?
Er.....Jingle Bells?

Q: Who last IMed you?
Can someone enlighten me please......what's IMed?

Q: What shampoo do you use?
Pantene

Q: When was the last time you cut your hair?
Two weeks ago.

Q: Are you on any meds?
Yes.

Q: Do you have a mental disorder?
Lol......define 'mental disorder'

Q: What shirt are you wearing?
I'm not, I'm wearing a fleece....this is Scotland for Gods sake, it's cold!

Q: What time is it?
20.09

Q: What is your fave frozen treat?
I don't like frozen treats....they hurt my teeth.

Q: Are you sexy?
Strange question, shouldn't that be directed at someone else? lol

Q: What's your favorite shopping store?
PC World

Q: Can you imagine yourself ever getting married?
Is that a wise question to direct at one who is twice divorced??!!

I need add....

....nothing! heh.


No caption required!

What kind of soul are you?





You Are a Newborn Soul





You are tolerant, accepting, and willing to give anyone a chance.
On the flip side, you're easy to read and easily influenced by others.
You have a fresh perspective on life, and you can be very creative.
Noconformist and nontraditional, you've never met anyone who's like you.

Inventive and artistic, you like to be a trendsetter.
You have an upbeat spirit and you like almost everything.
You make friends easily and often have long standing friendships.
Implusive and trusting, you fall in love a little too easily.

Souls you are most compatible with: Bright Star Soul and Dreaming Soul



Tuesday, 14 December 2004

Organised?.... As if.

In years gone by I would frequently have been ready for Christmas by mid November or thereabouts, if not earlier. Organisation , or perhaps 'bossiness' as PG would tell you is, one of my aggravating 'gifts'....well this year has been very different!

I have at last waded my way through the card writing process, I have bought an appropriate number of stamps, stuck them on and all that remains is to see if I can manage to get them into the letter box in time to meet the post office deadlines for last 'posting dates'. This shouldn't be a problem, there is a letter box not two minutes walk from home but I always manage to forget letters I need to post. Daily I pass the box and daily I think 'damn,'i'll post them tomorrow....and then I don't!

The post office incidentally is on my current list of 'companies displaying utter ineptitude', having returned to sender a package this week, that they should have re-delivered. In fact they kindly pushed a card through the door telling me they would make another attempt.....and then sent the sodding thing back anyway! Probably never to be seen again.

But I digress. As I was saying, I am finally getting organised. Yesterday we made a second trip to Edinburgh and purchased the last of the gifts we needed, we promised ourselves we would 'hit the whole thing on the head' last week, but as ever is the case it was not to be and trip number two was required. The freezer and cupboards are beginning to look nicely stuffed with all things fattening and yummy and I have given in and made a Christmas dinner decision and purchased an all in one, one person, Marks and Spencer ready 'Christmas meal'.....Lord knows what it will be like, it certainly won't be 'mothers cooking' but I'll be damned, if as a confirmed hater of cooking, and having to spend Christmas day alone, if I am going to spend it cooking real food for just me! At least being M&S it stands an outside chance of being edible!

So all that remains now is to fight Ditto for the privilege of wrapping up the gifts, she adores to 'help', I adore her not to and then make the 600 mile trip to my sisters to 'play Santa' and get them delivered next Thursday.

On the subject of Ditto and Christmas, I was forced from my slumber on four occasions last night to rescue the tree from her clutches....only to wake this morning to find pine needles, tinsel and two smashed baubles on the floor! Heh.

Dreaming of a white Christmas?


Snow-meter!

If, like me, you would like nothing better than to see a blanket of the beautiful white stuff when you wake on Christmas morning, Metcheck, my favorite weather website, has an amusing little gadget to predict the likelihood where you live (sorry, UK only).

Even if you really only want to check that you won't get snow it's still fun and it's not a gimmick organisation, it's a serious meteorological site and about as accurate as any forecast is going to be at two weeks hence.

Yay.....I have an 80% chance!

Monday, 13 December 2004

Will it, won't it?

Maybe........ just maybe, if this is correct it will!

Scotland.....

...is not always beautiful, this is the same view, that for those who are familiar with this blog, normally includes horses, trees, wonderful skies and swathes of green..... Not so this morning!


Fog!

Sunday, 12 December 2004

On this day.

Reminiscing is a sign of age right? ....so I'm getting long in the tooth..... a day ill, off work and with nothing to do found me lost, reminiscing about years past, normally long forgotten but today sharp in my mind, sights and sounds, thoughts and feelings all remembered with unusual clarity......it must be the meds!

Twenty seven years ago today I began what was to be the job I stuck with longest thus far in my life, it was a 'sensible' but very mind numbing job in a government department. I had, since leaving school, been working in the West End of London in retail but the small fact that my underground fare into town, outstripped my meagre wage by approx 20% meant that inevitably I had to leave. My father had continued supporting me, preferring that I worked at something than did nothing but it was not a situation that could continue forever. I was in many ways sad to leave, I had seen something of a different life, not all of it good but all of it an experience. For me London rocks, it does now and it did then. Yes, I had one or two 'run in's' with wierdo's and unsavoury characters, I got knocked down an escalator on the underground by a delightful individual, armed and fleeing the cops having just held up a famous jewellers and I was caught up in an IRA bombing but mostly I met wonderful, cosmopolitan individuals and savored every moment of my time there.

And thus it was that I attended, all 16 or so years of me, for interview 'somewhere in the city' and sat terrified in a large oak panelled office, being grilled by three late middle aged men in dark, pin striped suits. These guys could have been straight out of a 40's movie, they where only missing bowler hats and no doubt, upon stepping outside into the street all donned such an item religiously.

Suffice to say, I got the job. Myself and my family had been duly 'checked out' for unacceptable history or political affiliations, I signed the Official Secrets Act and this day in 1977, nervous as a kitten, I reported to my new boss.

Day one was a hoot, civil servants where not at all what I expected, it was Christmas time and surprisingly they knew how to party! By lunch time we were ensconced in the local pub where another surprise met me. This establishment was by coincidence the local watering hole for one 'Reg Dwight', I tried not to stare or to be starstruck, my new colleagues where all used to this company but I was not and it only added to my feeling of 'newness'. We remained in the pub for most of the afternoon and staggered back to work at some time nearing the end of the working day! Things seemed to carry on in that vein right up until Christmas with parties, lunch in the pub and most amazingly to me, who had only experienced retail previously, a whole two weeks paid holiday over the festive season. This was not an option, it was obligatory.........I decided I had been landed somewhere close to heaven!

Of course things where to change, I soon discovered that my position as almost lowest of the low, was not what one might call 'intellectually challenging' and the civil service as a whole had a tendency to be pedantic and to operate, even in the 70's, like a dinosaur. Unbelievable routines still existed with the female staff making tea and coffee for the male staff at break times and those in positions of authority being treated like demi-gods. Despite all that I made many good and long standing friends and Christmas time always remained wild, somehow all the usual stuffiness of the place disintegrated under the weight of tinsel and alcohol!

That job and those in it saw me through my late adolescence, teenage up's and down's and a considerable amount of fun, stuff that by the standards of current teenage shenanigans seems very un-sophisticated but at the time of course we thought differently....... Oh the naivete of youth!

One such teenage Christmas, a year or two later still stands out, it saw me newley liberated from an 'ill advised' and long standing union with a guy who was not my best choice and one that had given my parents nightmares for a year or three. I had a new man in my life, I will call him 'Simon' here, one that was not controlling and destructive but was open, educated and fun, he was perhaps still a little too 'lively' for my parents liking but that of course only made him all the more attractive to me....... we had an absolute ball! In the funny way that teenagers have a 'hierachy', he was a 'face', he knew exciting people, his family did exciting things, his father was 'one of the lads', we partied unendingly, we spent money like water, we dressed the part or at least we thought we did, we were loud and probably too brash, we did absolutely mad things, we went on a wholly unorganised holiday that would have been a disaster had it not been so funny, he forgave me an incident that taught me an important lesson for the rest of my life...... and he was romantic. Something that had been lacking in the tough guy demeanor (the less said a bout that the better) of my previous 'beau'.

Strangely, of all the things we did together one tiny incident on Christmas Eve of that year stands out in my memory, probably because in retrospect it was so embarrassing..... a teenage silliness that had I more sense I would probably not recount here for I am unlikely to live it down!

Lunch time, Christmas eve, it was freezing cold, I was inappropriately clad for the conditions, as ever female teenage fashion seems to dictate, and myself and 'Simon' had been in a pub with friends, enjoying the spirit of Christmas for way too long. I have no idea why, other than to escape the cold but as we wove and unsteady path through the town centre headed for home we took temporary refuge in an electrical store. It was at this point my young inebriated mind made a very odd decision, one that at the time I assume it felt was amusing. I am small I accept and having been a gymnast for years I was bendy but come on....... I was never going to fit inside a washing machine successfully. None the less, common sense having run off in the opposite direction, I climbed in and promptly got stuck! It was not a disaster, it could have been worse. The obvious chagrin of the staff only heightened my amusement at my situation and thankfully said boyfriend and another of our party extricated me without too much ado!

Christmas that year carried on in much the same way, stupidity and teenage fun for days on end, the uninhibited madness of youth given it's all.......oh to be 19 again just for a day! :o)

I will of course not identify the guy in question, we parted company perhaps a year later, the result of some misunderstanding. He went on to be a highly respected and successful business man and managing director, though he still retains some of his 'unorthodox' slant on life. We are still in occasional contact....... if you read this 'Simon' you know who you are, I wonder if you remember that Christmas?

Today....

....I should be in work, I'm not, I'm ill...ugh! I had to call in sick, I hate doing that, I feel guilty. On one hand as an employee one feels mostly wholly dispensable, at times like this, why then is one made to feel completely indispensable?!

I once overheard a colleague threaten to leave, she was told by a member of management that anyone of us would be missed for about 5 minutes, none of us are indispensable.........it doesn't stop me feeling guilty now!

Calling in sick has to be one of life's most unpleasant and scary experiences, today was no different. We have to speak to a manager not a 'minion'. The manager I got when I made the dreaded call today was someone who I hoped would at least have little understanding, no chance, apparently unsympathetic, short with me and disinterested in anything other than the fact that the store will be 'one down' today. I know that! Bloody hell, that's why I feel guilty in the first place, it's going to be a busy day for them, I should be there but I don't choose when to feel like crap.

I don't know if I'm more angry at being made to feel like a naughty child or upset that, despite talking the talk, even those one believes genuinely care about their staff patently don't appear too when push comes to shove.

Call me naive....... as a company we have undergone massive changes of late, we have been told time and time again we are a 'family', we care for one another and support one another. I do my share of hard work when others are ill. Silly me..... I almost believed they actually cared a little.

Something uttered along the lines of 'I hope you feel better soon' would have gone a long way. :o(

I'm going back to bed!

Can I play?


Transfixed!

Friday, 10 December 2004

Friday's feast (27)

Appetizer
Make up a word and give us its definition.

"Bloggered"......the result, when one places a minute piece of HTML incorrectly and causes the entire page to collapse beyond recognition!

Soup
What is currently your favorite song?

'The closest thing to crazy' by Katie Melua.

Salad
What's at the top of your Christmas wish list this year?

For PG to magically get Christmas day off work.

Main Course
Name a scent that reminds you of someone special in your life.

'Joop', it reminds me of PG

Dessert
Who is someone on television that you feel probably shouldn't be, and why?

Rebecca Loos....because claiming to shag a football star does not qualify one as a television presenter!

Thursday, 9 December 2004

I couldn't work it out.

Home at last, another long day at work but I have tomorrow off. Today is one of those 'blogless' days where my mind is a blank so this will be short!

For those of you who I sent the 'Freaky site' email to and who haven't worked it out, here is the answer:

Any two digit number added up and subtracted the total from the original
will result in a multiple of 9 ie 9 18 27 36 etc etc
Every time you have a go on the 'mind reading crystal ball' the symbols
change for the multiples of 9 so it will be correct every time.


And yes, you are right, I couldn't work it out either but it appears I have a smart ass friend who came back at me with this explanation almost immediately! Cheers PAN, I'm impressed.

Thanks to Justitia for the original mail.

If I didn't send you the mail and you want to see what I'm talking about drop me a mail or leave me a comment and I will oblige.

That's all for now.......I have a blog to go make Christmassy :o)

Wednesday, 8 December 2004

'We are not amused'

If Ditto had the wit she would aspire to this look of disapproval! :o)


© Getty Images