Just managed to find a few minutes to sit down to wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas - hope Santa is kind to you :) Hope you all enjoy the day, and you are lucky enough to spend it with the people you want to be with the most.

Sue

I’m bored, we don’t break up from work until Monday lunch time but no one here is putting much effort into doing anything today.

It has been suggested that I could concentrate on my feedback to Hic Draconis, which then made me think that I haven’t actually done feedback to Sulya yet either – at this rate I’ll end up with coal in my stocking come Christmas morning and not goodies. Yes, I do send feed back - fair enough only to three sites, but I do make the effort as I appreciate more than ever the amount of work that goes into writing fiction.

Speaking of goodies I appear to have only two pieces of Cobweb’s Christmas fudge left, and it’s not even Christmas until next Tuesday - I’ve been on a sugar high the last couple of days. I was thinking of saving the last two pieces for eldest, who loves fudge - but if he doesn’t visit tonight he could end up having to eat a peppermint cream instead.

I was watching the kids go to school this morning and it reminded me of when we used to take board games in on the last day – it was one big play day. Either that or you could make Christmas cards or decorations –adding obscene amounts of glitter. If you were lucky you could just make out the drawing underneath all the red, blue, silver, and gold. Going home was like a scene from Hansel and Gretel, a trail of glitter that lasted for days afterwards. A bit like the pine needles from the Christmas tree, which could still be found in the carpet the following March.

We used to have a Christmas party too – not like these days where they bring in fish and chips from the chippy – a real party. With sandwiches, jellies, ice cream, and iced cakes – crisps and sweets – and very weak orange squash. After everyone had eaten, Father Christmas arrived with a gift for all – usually a selection box. And then back to the classroom to collect all the paintings and finished exercises books plus your P.E. kit; usually containing just the one black slip-on plimsoll – no one ever located the other one. Thinking about it now, it makes you wonder if the teachers were a bit of the kinky side and look them home with them – plimsoll’s can pack one hell of a wallop after all.

What’s been happening then? Well the central heating stopped working earlier this week – no heating or hot water – but only for a day, thank the Gods. The house was freezing – I went to bed dressed in pyjamas, socks and an old cardigan. We didn’t have central heating when I was a child – the frost used to be on the inside of our windows. Most families had a coal fire downstairs with a back boiler that heated the hot water - if it got too hot, you'd hear a whistling sound, then you'd have to run some of the water off. Getting dry & dressed when you got out of the bath took only seconds to complete. It makes you wonder about sex back then too; everyone went to bed dressed for the north pole. Sexual foreplay must have been trying to fight your may through layer upon layer of clothing back then.

Right, I suppose I better show willing and start that feedback then…

Bloody hell, it’s not really been that long since I last blogged, has it? And you’ve carried on visiting too. Now I feel guilty, very guilty. It’s nearly Christmas you know – you don’t have time to read things like this. You’ve still got presents to buy, mince pies to bake etc. I’ll do a catch up tomorrow, some time – I can’t even think what’s been happening to tell you the truth, I shall have to engage my brain and remember. Painful.

Till tomorrow then….

I’ve just not felt in the right frame of mind to blog of late – the words aren’t there. My cheerful fairy has obviously packed her bags and left for warmer climates and who could blame her, it’s sodding cold around here.

My health thank the Gods has at long last started to improve but only because I continue to use both of my inhalers. Mind you quite a few people I know seem to be having a few problems of late, so maybe it’s just the time of year. I seem to have hit my all time low and I’m climbing out of the pit of despair - where I’ve felt very sorry for myself and wallowed in self pity. And let’s be honest it’s the only pity worth having when you’re in that sort of mood. After all no one else is going to feel sorry for you with quite the same amount of continuing conviction, dedication and effort that you put in yourself – they will either not notice, not be bothered or get bored with your morose attitude very quickly and then ignore it or hide. To be honest, there was a point when I did consider hiding from myself.

It was around that time that someone nicked my sense of humour I think – I just couldn’t see the funny side of anything going wrong. Little things that I would normally find a funny story to tell you about just weren’t funny anymore – just upsetting instead. I got to the point at one stage where I actually started to dread what the day would bring – it’s like walking around with a knot of apprehension in your stomach. You can’t say why, but you are in a state of anxiety all the time. The pressures of work obviously haven’t helped – the FC is still off so I’m carrying some of his workload, we’re moving premises and this time instead of renting we’re buying and also bidding for a extremely large contract – all on top of everyday work. Christmas is fast approaching and I hadn’t done anything and then Child’s wedding is getting closer as well.

So last Thursday Himself and I hit the shops and after 8 hours of pure hell – knocked the Christmas present buying on the head. All bar one pair of jeans for youngest and that was only because I couldn’t remember his waist size. I’ve not gone mad this year, with the wedding coming up I can’t afford too but we’ve remembered everyone and that is one worry I can put to bed.

I hate shopping at the best of times, but Christmas shopping is the pits. It’s not so much the mums with pushchairs these days – even worse than that are cantankerous elderly people with those shopping basket things with wheels. You know the sort that I’m on about - they either pull them behind them in a wild erratic manner, making sure that as soon as you try to pass them they step in front of you and you nearly fall over the bloody thing. Or it’s one of those walkers that they push in front of them with a seat on – they obviously have a tally going at the local day centre as to how many pedestrians ankles they can bruise. And of course it’s all your fault for getting in their way.

Mind you even worse than that is having to wrap everything up when you get home – you can’t find the end of the sellotape, then you lose the sellotape, then you lose the scissor and eventually you lose all your Christmas spirit and the will to live. *Waily, Waily.*

So the blog won’t be daily for a while – thank you for those that have continued to visit and been met with the same blog they’ve seen every day for a week. I’m not saying I’m going to stop – just that it will not happen as often as it used to for a while.

This blog is for Sommer, who after ascertaining that I’ve not dropped off the edge of the world, has agreed that I’m allowed a little moan. She did! I have it in writing.

So here goes….

What the hell is wrong with this country? You wouldn’t believe the palaver we’ve had trying to get a job advertised in the Job Centre.

Six phone calls; passing us between the local Job Centre and a central number. When Dilys mentioned in passing that this was the fourth phone call she's made and still no one wanted to help us - spoken very politely by the way - the snarky bastard on the other end said the number of calls was irrelevant and she needn’t mention it to him. Good job Dilys handled it; I’d have ripped his ears off with my reply.

Eventually she managed to speak to a lady – the first person with a bit of common sense who was only to happy to take the details. Of course whether they ever post it in any of the Job Centres remains to be seen.

Unfortunately one of our administrator’s partner has a degenerative illness and she’s struggling to cope with work and his care. She asked me today if there was a possibility of reducing her hours and job sharing; she still wanted to work – it gets her out of the house and gives her a break from it all, but she’d understand if I couldn’t agree to it. Work is a little on the manic side at the moment. I’ve been in the position she’s currently in, I sometimes look back and wonder how the hell I managed to juggle a full time job, a young family and caring for my mum. I would no sooner tell her that I wouldn’t support the changes she needed to make than chop my own arm off, there is always a way around things. So she’s over the moon, she thought she’d have to give up work. Some people are so easy to please.

++++

I thought I’d broken the new printer yesterday - it stopped printing half way through the payroll run. I had a quick fiddle but didn’t have time to mess too much so I left it well alone. I'd already had one run in with a member of staff who couldn't understand the phrase - 'I'm sorry I can't help you at the moment, I'm up against the clock to get the payroll finished'. I wasn't falling out with the printer as well.

After another half hour of fiddling today I moaned about it to Craig who looked under the desk and pointed out that the lead was out of the back of the server. Two fecking mintues and he’d put it right and then walked a way with a smug grin on his face.

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I can’t decide which of us is on the way out – me or the dog. Himself had the spaniels out with him and child on Saturday as there was a shoot on – so Billy and I decided on a gentle stroll down the fields.

He got half way down there and his back legs started to play him up, he’s old now after all and the ground was uneven. I couldn’t get my breath; I was sounding like a rusty old boiler – no comments please, and really struggled to get the pair of us back home again. If anyone was watching they would have wondered what the hell was going on, he’s no light weight is Billy and I reckon I found every bloody hole in that field. I’m lucky I didn’t break my ankle.

From a distance I must have looked like a staggering drunk. It wasn’t actually the gentle amble with dog and camera that I originally planned on. I’m getting so fed up and down in the dumps with how my health is at the moment; I can’t remember the last time my asthma affected me so much. But the worse part was once we got out of the field and I put Billy back down on the floor and stood wheezing; the little sod walked quite happily back towards home.

OK, moan over - don't look at me, all complaints to Sommer :)