On the Underground
Let's see, what have I been up to?
Well, in reverse order:
Today, tried a different flapjack recipe. This one was more successful, except that the pan I used was a bit too big for the amount of oat-glop. Also, folks, butter the liningpaper, otherwise your flapjacks will stick to the tin! Luckily, none of the Wandsworth Witterers mind having to eat the liningpaper right off the flapjack.
Went by the sorting office to pick up something which had been sent to me with insufficient postage. I was hoping it was the marigold tea I had ordered. In fact, it was a mystery communication from my GP, so I paid the 16p excess postage and the GBP1 handling charge, and took the letter. When I opened it, it turned out to be a leaflet inviting the practice's customers to come to a Q&A session on what we wanted from our local healthcare service. What I want from my local healthcare service is for them not to send me junkmail with insufficient postage on it, so that I waste half an hour of my Saturday and GBP1.16 of my money to take delivery of something I neither need nor want.
Apparently one of the parents at the school runs a B&B that is in Alasdair Sawday's Bed and Breakfasts. Tried in vain to find our copy of Sawday, to find out what he thinks of their pad.
Which segues neatly on to our good news for the week, which is that we have finally found someone to buy our flat, so our own house-purchase is back on! Hopefully (or for the pedants, It is to be hoped that) soon we will be living in a place which is big enough for us to give our books some semblance of order.
Went to Indian wedding in Edgware. It is strange that the stations at the two extreme ends of the Northern Line have such nearly-apocalyptic names: Edgware and Morden. If this were a sword and sorcery fantasy type world, they would be called Edge City and Mordor. But since this is England, their potential drama has been toned down into bleak suburban red brickiness. The bride was a really pretty girl from Moscow that the groom met in a chatroom. Her father looked a little bit like an unemployed hitman. I hope that is not what he really is.
On the train back, I tried to persuade Larry that it would be a really interesting thing to do to visit one London Underground station a week (and actually get out and explore the neighbourhood at each one) until they were all done. It would only take 6 years or so, I reckon. She turned me down flat. When I stuck out my lower lip and looked as if I were about to cry, she did seem about to relent. Even though she knew I was only joking, she is such a softy, she can't bear to see people looking sad. Except Curly. Curly's woe she can take with total equanimity.
On Friday Mo missed the appointment with the NHS ADHD specialist that we have been waiting for for 8 months. I am so pissed off I cannot begin to express it. And now she is off gallivanting around for a month, so there is no chance that he can get in to see her till April at the very earliest.
While Mo was missing his appointment, I was down at BUPA getting a checkup. They stuck loads of things to me and made me get on a bike and keep the speed at 60 (60 whats?) while sticking my left arm out periodically and holding my nose with my right arm (because the nose clip kept flying off - hey, I don't have a great beaky gweilo hooter, alright?). Frankly I think I should have got extra credit for coordination and balance in these circumstances. I got tested for blood, heart, kidney, lungs, liver, sight, hearing function, and at the end of all this, he said everything was perfect and within range and I was the first person that week (it was Friday) that he could say that of. So my takeaway from all that was: (i) maybe it's your washing powder that's making you itch; (ii) take glucosamin and chondroitin for your twisted knee; (iii) do more aerobic exercise and resistance training and eat more oily fish, to increase your levels of good cholesterol and improve your muscle to fat ratio and therefore reduce your chances of having a heart attack within the next 10 years to 1% from 2%. I have (i) requested LSS to switch back to Persil from Bold; (ii) bought some G & C capsules from Waitrose; (iii) signed up for circuit training session next Monday at the gym; (iv) looked at a tin of sardines thoughtfully.
The boys at work were discussing the case of a mystery man on our floor who periodically goes into a cubicle in the Gents and can be heard taking spools and spools of loo paper from the roll, accompanied by noises that make it sound, in the words of the new guy on our desk, as if he is "stretching". All this loo paper eventually gets put down the loo which blocks it and puts it out of commission for the day. What can he possibly be doing in there? No one dares to ask.
On Tuesday managed to bag one Standing ticket for La Traviata at the ROH, for the very last performance. Apart from the fact that I was standing, it was a really good "seat" (or "stand"), nearer the stage than I have ever been at the ROH. Enjoyed the opera, particularly the way Verdi has just dispensed with all the boring in-between-explaining crap and basically just concentrated on the four scenes he is interested in. However, I must say, when Violetta or whatever her name is declares at the end, I'm going to live, and then promptly drops dead, he takes dramatic compression a little too far.
The mentoring was really interesting. I got a really sweet mentee who, amazingly, professes an interest in banking as a career. I did not disillusion her. I asked her why she wanted to work for a bank. She said that her aunt worked for Barclays and also she wanted to work in an office because she thought it was a classy kind of a job. Recalling that one of my developmental goals from the last management thing inflicted on us was to Encourage Visionary Thinking (gag, gag), I asked her if she didn't want to explore other areas, like possibly maybe drama (as this was one of the GCSE subjects she said she was enjoying). How pleased her mother would be, I thought, if she could hear her daughter's mentor suggesting that instead of going for a good steady job in a bank she could consider trying to make it as an actress. Hope no-one realises that, as usual, I am doing everything sideways on from everyone else and tries to get me thrown off the mentoring programme...
Well, in reverse order:
Today, tried a different flapjack recipe. This one was more successful, except that the pan I used was a bit too big for the amount of oat-glop. Also, folks, butter the liningpaper, otherwise your flapjacks will stick to the tin! Luckily, none of the Wandsworth Witterers mind having to eat the liningpaper right off the flapjack.
Went by the sorting office to pick up something which had been sent to me with insufficient postage. I was hoping it was the marigold tea I had ordered. In fact, it was a mystery communication from my GP, so I paid the 16p excess postage and the GBP1 handling charge, and took the letter. When I opened it, it turned out to be a leaflet inviting the practice's customers to come to a Q&A session on what we wanted from our local healthcare service. What I want from my local healthcare service is for them not to send me junkmail with insufficient postage on it, so that I waste half an hour of my Saturday and GBP1.16 of my money to take delivery of something I neither need nor want.
Apparently one of the parents at the school runs a B&B that is in Alasdair Sawday's Bed and Breakfasts. Tried in vain to find our copy of Sawday, to find out what he thinks of their pad.
Which segues neatly on to our good news for the week, which is that we have finally found someone to buy our flat, so our own house-purchase is back on! Hopefully (or for the pedants, It is to be hoped that) soon we will be living in a place which is big enough for us to give our books some semblance of order.
Went to Indian wedding in Edgware. It is strange that the stations at the two extreme ends of the Northern Line have such nearly-apocalyptic names: Edgware and Morden. If this were a sword and sorcery fantasy type world, they would be called Edge City and Mordor. But since this is England, their potential drama has been toned down into bleak suburban red brickiness. The bride was a really pretty girl from Moscow that the groom met in a chatroom. Her father looked a little bit like an unemployed hitman. I hope that is not what he really is.
On the train back, I tried to persuade Larry that it would be a really interesting thing to do to visit one London Underground station a week (and actually get out and explore the neighbourhood at each one) until they were all done. It would only take 6 years or so, I reckon. She turned me down flat. When I stuck out my lower lip and looked as if I were about to cry, she did seem about to relent. Even though she knew I was only joking, she is such a softy, she can't bear to see people looking sad. Except Curly. Curly's woe she can take with total equanimity.
On Friday Mo missed the appointment with the NHS ADHD specialist that we have been waiting for for 8 months. I am so pissed off I cannot begin to express it. And now she is off gallivanting around for a month, so there is no chance that he can get in to see her till April at the very earliest.
While Mo was missing his appointment, I was down at BUPA getting a checkup. They stuck loads of things to me and made me get on a bike and keep the speed at 60 (60 whats?) while sticking my left arm out periodically and holding my nose with my right arm (because the nose clip kept flying off - hey, I don't have a great beaky gweilo hooter, alright?). Frankly I think I should have got extra credit for coordination and balance in these circumstances. I got tested for blood, heart, kidney, lungs, liver, sight, hearing function, and at the end of all this, he said everything was perfect and within range and I was the first person that week (it was Friday) that he could say that of. So my takeaway from all that was: (i) maybe it's your washing powder that's making you itch; (ii) take glucosamin and chondroitin for your twisted knee; (iii) do more aerobic exercise and resistance training and eat more oily fish, to increase your levels of good cholesterol and improve your muscle to fat ratio and therefore reduce your chances of having a heart attack within the next 10 years to 1% from 2%. I have (i) requested LSS to switch back to Persil from Bold; (ii) bought some G & C capsules from Waitrose; (iii) signed up for circuit training session next Monday at the gym; (iv) looked at a tin of sardines thoughtfully.
The boys at work were discussing the case of a mystery man on our floor who periodically goes into a cubicle in the Gents and can be heard taking spools and spools of loo paper from the roll, accompanied by noises that make it sound, in the words of the new guy on our desk, as if he is "stretching". All this loo paper eventually gets put down the loo which blocks it and puts it out of commission for the day. What can he possibly be doing in there? No one dares to ask.
On Tuesday managed to bag one Standing ticket for La Traviata at the ROH, for the very last performance. Apart from the fact that I was standing, it was a really good "seat" (or "stand"), nearer the stage than I have ever been at the ROH. Enjoyed the opera, particularly the way Verdi has just dispensed with all the boring in-between-explaining crap and basically just concentrated on the four scenes he is interested in. However, I must say, when Violetta or whatever her name is declares at the end, I'm going to live, and then promptly drops dead, he takes dramatic compression a little too far.
The mentoring was really interesting. I got a really sweet mentee who, amazingly, professes an interest in banking as a career. I did not disillusion her. I asked her why she wanted to work for a bank. She said that her aunt worked for Barclays and also she wanted to work in an office because she thought it was a classy kind of a job. Recalling that one of my developmental goals from the last management thing inflicted on us was to Encourage Visionary Thinking (gag, gag), I asked her if she didn't want to explore other areas, like possibly maybe drama (as this was one of the GCSE subjects she said she was enjoying). How pleased her mother would be, I thought, if she could hear her daughter's mentor suggesting that instead of going for a good steady job in a bank she could consider trying to make it as an actress. Hope no-one realises that, as usual, I am doing everything sideways on from everyone else and tries to get me thrown off the mentoring programme...
posted by FBT at 11:28 pm
3 Comments:
1. You can view Alastair Sawday online
2. Hurrah! You've found a buyer, when do you exchange?
3. What possessed you to encourage your mentee to become an actress when your little blister has made such a great job of it? Although, you could suggest that she does both - cos that's kind of worked out.
The G hates exploring. If I told him we'd go find a bakery at every stop, then PERHAPS he'd be interested. Just the other day I got him to go for an hour walk around the back paths of the neighbourhood but it was only in combination with an ice cream.
He loved the walk, too. It was especially fun because it started snowing (never does here) and we got to walk home with our tongues out catching flakes.
Indeed, you do not have a great, beaky gweilo hooter. You have the cutest little Asian hooter I have ever seen.
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