LIFE IS A LEARNING CURVE

That's all the accommodation and travel arrangements made for the first leg of my amazing journey  around the world when we (my granddaughter and two great granddaughters) meet up with my grandson and his girlfriend in Brisbane on 11th February. 

We are going to the Great Barrier Reef, the Gold Coast, Hils parents' farm and Sydney.  After two weeks the girls go home and Vinnie, Hils and I  go on a road trip until 15th April, just following our noses, probably staying in hostels and camping. 

The next leg of the journey begins on 15th April when I take a cruise ship from Sydney, stopping off at Dunedin, Auckland, Fiji, Papo Pago, Bora Bora, Tahiti, Morea, Honalulu and Hawaii, arriving San Francisco on 13th May. 

I then fly down to meet my friends Jack and Betsy in their winter home at Desert Hot Springs.  Thankfully they seem happy to have me stay there with them for a few days until it's time to pack up and head north to their summer home in Hoodspost, near Seattle. Then another amazing road trip back to Seattle with them, only this time NOT staying in hostels or campsites!


I guess I had better start up my travel blog again! But how did I do it last year?  The problem, with age is that it's accompanied by fading memory and with fading memory comes the need to relearn every darn thing over and over again. 

With this trip in mind my girls at the office gave me a wonderful Christmas present of a new IPod Touch.  It's something that I'm sure will prove to be very useful because if I don't have access to my netbook (packed in the rucksack) I can whip out my very prortable IPod in a suitable wifi hotspot and skype, facetime, and update photographs to facebook, on the go, to my hearts content, as it where.  Well, this is the theory.

The problem is that my head is so full of technology that I have to regularly delete old stuff from my memory board.  Consequently whenever I want to do something quite fundemental I have to relearn it. Every minute of the day has become like Groundhog Day. Life is getting very complicated for me.

So, back to the travel blog. How did I do it?  And, more important, why did I do it?  I think it was because the travel blog tracks my position in the world.  But doesn't blogger do that now too?  I have to research this.  F****** H*** more stuff to learn. But I have to make the effort because if I don't record the journey I'll forget it!  At times life can a bitch can't it?

A BUSY COUPLE OF WEEKS

My life spiralled out of control for a couple of weeks, but I think that I've sorted it now (fingers crossed and all that good stuff!). I have (had) a few problems which are (were) all good but time consuming and looking for immediate decisions, so it did get a bit stressful. 

First on the agenda was my new house build.  I think that I have mentioned before that I have a plot of land beside my house. My first inclination was to build it myself using sub-contractors.  Then I got cold feet, got in builders quotes, saw the prices and decided to go back to Plan A to save myself money.  So I've been trying to get this underway asap.  In all honesty I don't see this happening until at least the summer, but I'm not in any real hurry.  

In the meantime I have arranged to go to Australia on 10th February with my granddaughter and two great granddaughters to visit my grandson and his girlfriend who live there.  The challenge here was to give the girls the time of their lives in 2 weeks which proved to be quite stressful.  Trying to liaise and organise has been almost impossible because of the time difference and the fact that Vinnie and Hils work long hours.  But I think that we finally sorted it out yesterday.  I will then stay on and do a road trip with Vinnie and Hills "until the inheritance runs out" as he put it. 

I have also arranged to visit my friends in America early May to take a look at their new home in Desert Hot Springs and then do another amazing road trip with them back to their other home in Seattle.

So, in my infinite wisdom I thought "why go back to the UK?  I should just stay on in Australia until the end of April and then fly there direct".  In other words cut out the middle man - the UK. Note to self "don't be so bloody stupid next time" because it proved to be a nightmare. Although we made sure that my return flight ticket date could be changed as it turned out the destination could not and the ticket could not be converted to World Traveller or anything sensible like that!

But it still made sense to throw away my "home" portion of the ticket and book fresh from Australia to USA and then back to London.  But the cost of that jolly jaunt was absolutely extortionate. Reason?  They are two single tickets and single tickets come at a premium.  I 'phoned my friend who worked in BA and she confirmed this was correct.    I know that by shopping around I can get this cost much lower, but I was raging about it. I feel a swear coming on - f****** airlines need to get their act together!

However, whilst I was on an OzBus reunion in London this weekend one of my friends wondered if there might be a cruise liner going across and there is. The Sea Princess leaves Sydney on 15th April for a 29 day cruise to San Francisco via New Zealand and the Polynesian Islands arriving on 13th May. And, believe it or not, there is little difference in the cost!  I had to check that this was OK with my friends because they had planned to leave DHS the 1st week of May, but thankfully they have agreed to hang on for a while so that I can take this trip of a lifetime.
 
So today I hope to get this nailed on the head.

IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN

I'm talking about weight loss; diet; healthy eating; whatever! I got up this morning determined to start afresh. Having lost about 16 lbs on my world trip I then put it all back on again, + some.  Don't you just hate that? 

So,,, this morning, determined to start afresh I weighed myself (don't ask), planned my menu for the day and was just about to sit down to enter it into weightlossresourses.com to keep me on the straight and narrow when the devil looked over my shoulder and said "before you start why don't you make yourself a nice cup of coffee? You deserve it".

This was my first mistake, I should have stuck my ass to the chair and finished what I was doing instead of wandering around the house in a perplexed daze trying to figure out what I was doing wandering around the house!  I remembered when I avoided my first temptation, the 3 ginger biscuits on my bedside table left over from yesterdays excesses.  These were deposited back into their rightful home in the biscuit jar.

That is when I should have made my coffee and gone back to the job in hand.  But no, I then bumped into my second temptation, the beckoning Milk Tray chocolates and After Eight Mints on my coffee table.  I didn't give into that though, I put them into a container to take over to the office for the gang.  I felt good about myself.

But... my third temptation was a step too far.  The Christmas Cake.  Should I give it to someone?  Nah!  I'll have a bit with my coffee and start all over again on 1st January.  Sorted!!

This is a photograph of some of our little "Infoteliens" at the ritual office family buffet lunch and raffle prior to closing for Christmas.  They are a right bunch of little suspects aren't they?

A TIME OF REFLECTION

Today it is two years to the day since Davy died.  I know that following any life changing event it is advisable to reflect for at least this period before making any major decisions and this morning I woke up to find my mind wrestling with the events of the last two years and wondering what to do.  Is this, I wonder, because I had subliminally been waiting for this two year period to elapse before re-evaluating things?  I don't know.

Without going into too much detail, within days of Davy's funeral a catastropic "situation" developed within the family which, to this day, is unresolved and totally beyond my comprehension. I was left feeling totally bereft, desolate and misunderstood and the more I tried to resolve things the worse they became.  I didn't cope well.  In fact I would go as far as to say that at times I handled things in an extremely immature, irresponsible and at times petulant manner. 

Now, after many approaches, it is my opinion that the rift is too great for me to heal, but somehow it must be resolved because other people are being hurt too. But what to do?  I don't know.  Other members of my family and friends have offered to act as mediators but I am of the opinion, rightly or wrongly, that it would probably exacerbated the situation. 

This morning I found myself wishing that I could ask a disassociated individual to evaluate, assess and advise on the strangeness of  all this.  But who? It would have to be someone completely impartial. I then wondered if I should simply write it all down.  This, they say, can be very cathartic.  But would it open up old wounds that I'm not ready to face yet?  Who knows.  And where to start?  And would writing about it change anything anyway? Would it even makes things worse because once my feelings were committed to paper would I be content to keep them to myself? Least said, soonest mended and all that good stuff. The jury is still out on this.

Oh Davy, where are you when I need you?  Life has been so hard without you and there is never a passing moment when I don't miss you so much.  You were so intuitive and would have known exactly what to do. Or would you?  I remember one time when you went into a difficult situation with the best of intentions only to be chewed up and spat out again.  I know that you felt the same devistation then that  I feel now.

In the meantime I pray to God that one day soon the answer will become apparent . I guess until that time comes I just do the Churchillian thing and keep buggering on! Trust in the lord, but row for the shore!!

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

MOST HUMBLE APOLOGIES

Following my ,"the worst CV in the world" blog I received a severe admonishment (HELP Benedict, is this a real word?) from the writer Benedict Le Gauche because I failed to mention where I happened across this gem. I added a PS to my blog to lead you, dear followers, through the process I took and asked Benedict if he was now content.  I also sought his advice on how to spell the word discombuberated. He emailed back:

Ann I am not content.  You got the CV from my site, not from the Metro's site, which doesn't have it but has a link to it.  Mother tells me I shouldn't indulge these frissons of propriety and yet here I am 01:25 in the morning asking you to please link it to the original because I spent a time writing it and it connects to whole lot of other stuff that I wrote and it's not really much to ask that you link to the original site from which you cut and pasted it. 

You f****** spell discombobulated like this DISCOMBOBULATED. 

Yours with a frank-uncalled-for amount of snoot.

Benedict

Calm down dear.  You have to remember that you are communicating with a frail and, quite honestly, crazy 71.33 year old widow woman.  Please forgive me.  Oh! and by the way, in response to your request, here's the link to your site, http://curriculumvitiate.wordpress.com/.  I admit that I was entirely in the wrong and hope that you aren't still discombobulated darling.

Having to print this makes me empathise with the editor of the Daily Mail when he compiles a list of apologies and retractions at the end of each day.  Is this power or what?  Oh sh*t, am I now in trouble with the Daily Mail too?!  Lock me up!!

THE WORLDS WORST CV

This purports to be the world's worst CV.  I think it must be a joke, but I still love it, especially the bit where he says in his Extracurricular Pursuits "In order that the cheques do not stop I sometimes spend time with the family." Read into that what you will!   Note to family, even a 'phone call now and then would suffice!!! :-)

So - here is the CV.  My advice? Read it on your own because you'll howl with laughter and might even wet yourself. 
My name is BENEDICT LE GAUCHE and I was born on 02/05/83 which makes me 28 and ripe as a lemon. I’m looking for a job I’ll like. As a man of integrity I’m not about to try and give you the impression that all the jobs I’ve had previously were brilliant learning experiences tailor-made to equip me for precisely the job I’m applying for (hello you) when in reality they have been, for the greater part, boring and drudgerous and disheartening. I should state I was not bad at them. The capacity to bear such trials whilst retaining an at-most-times sunny disposition might be called something like ‘the ability to work under pressure’. Yes. I wasn’t bad. I was good in fact – I can’t think of a job I wasn’t good at. (I can: a call centre job at a company called GOVNET – ‘a communication tool that government uses to communicate with the third sector’ and home to the most disastrous horseshit I’ve had the pleasure of peddling, commercially.) So, but via some kind of weird pride or fear of being disliked I have hitherto been inspired to perform above averagely for every company I’ve ever worked for and believe that I can harness this same fear in the furthering of your company goals. Who knows? I might even like the job! Though this is statistically improbable. Some short sentences about me: I excel at customer service – really fly, you should see. I can lift more than it looks like I can lift. I like working on my own if there isn’t anyone fun to work with but can also stand the company of people I hold in contempt and am, in this sense, versatile. I can work incredibly long hours, and will work for very little money. I have ginger hair and for a lot of people this is a talking point. Sometimes I do not feel like I am completely in control of myself and I have to pinch myself very hard. I like the great outdoors. As of the 11th January 2011 I am free from all venereal disease. Thanks for taking the time out to read my application. I’ve tried my best to be honest. I really excel at customer service and do, through great force of will and habit, hide the worst of my qualities.

Work History

Cleaner/Caretaker; The Women’s Organisation, Manchester ; 11/08/2010 – Present

Duties include: Working out how dirty I can let the building get without Lisa complaining and then cleaning to this exact standard. Composing lewd/crass emails to Alison. Enjoying the reversal of gender stereotypes. Pride swallowing. Key holding.

Host: Zion Arts Centre, Manchester; 02/02/2011 – 28/07/2011

Moving chairs from one place to another place. Tables, sometimes. I sat on the front desk. I colleced printouts from the office which is 300 meters away from the desk and I brought them back. When people passed the desk and made little jokes in a kind of we’re-in-this-together spirit I laughed even if the jokes were not at all funny. This made me feel hollow. I tried to fill the hollow by eating stem ginger biscuits that I stole from the cafe. The biscuits were delicious but they did not fill the hollow. Duties included: Checking that the toilets were still there and that it was ok in them, still. Keeping a log of this information on an A4 that was taped to the back of the toilet door. Taking orders from people who are conspicuously younger than me.

Copywriter ; Tailormydesign.co.uk, the internet ; July 2010

Duties included: Writing about fabrics and tailoring like they were something I thought were exciting and meaningful. Researching the exact tone of condescension invariably used in the Q&A sections of trendy fashion websites and overcoming an astonishing sense of dread in order to copy seven shades of shit out of exactly this tone. Wondering whether I preferred prostitution of the mind or of the body. Wondering whether this made me a writer. Wondering when it would end.

Waiter/Barista/Kitchen Porter ; Koffee Pot, Manchester ; I did this job like five times in 2010

Duties included: Washing up until somebody told me it was time to wash the floor. Washing floors. Pretending I was cooler than I am and that I was ok with all this washing up.

Commis Chef ; Stock Restaurant, Manchester ; 28/09/2009 to 15/12/2009

Duties Included: The preparation and presentation of fine-dining dishes. Intimate acquaintance with panic. Embracing with grace and good cheer being called ‘Julie’ by most of my colleagues. Teamwork. Because I personally went in to resign instead of anonymously skulking off I was commended for my bravery and forthrightness though I really only went in to collect my ipod and my terrifyingly sharp knife.

Telephone Guy ; GOVNET, Manchester ; 15/8/2009 to 28/8/2009

Duties included: Pretending to be on the phone. Joining my irrevocably compromised colleagues in the morning chorus of ‘I’M GOING TO SELL SELL SELL (my soul)!’. Trying to work out what it was the company did and what part of that I was supposed to be doing. Hiding.

Bookseller ; Blackwell University Bookshop, Manchester ; 01/06/2006 to 10/12/2008

Where I was kept on after temping because I was more than willing to share my social time / pass notes on Belle and Sebastian with the full-time staff. My meteoric rise to ‘Fiction Buyer’ – I was for a time featured on their website as an ‘expert’ – was tempered only by my devil-may-care attitude toward punctuality and what was termed in meetings with management as my ‘attitude problem’ (FUCK OFF). Having achieved a dream I attributed après coup to my traumatic childhood at such a tender age (the dream of being able to buy ‘all of the books’) I withered on the publishing vine and hit the bottle. I eventually left, to Denmark, in pursuit of dubious love. Duties included: Daily use of the full suite of Microsoft Office programmes. For two years. So now I can’t look at a latticed window without seeing, in my mind’s eye, Excel and everything that follows.

Weekend bookseller ; Books Etc. Manchester Printworks (now a Cafe Rouge) ; 02/08/2005 to 20/12/2005

Where I ignored signs that the world of bookselling was not quite as I’d pictured it in my dreams (signs included: Simon’s cadaverous skin and desperate smell. Eve’s quiet fury at how unlike the dream of youth real-life-retail-maturity had turned out to be. And Richard’s faltering attempts to allay this same fear and same desperation by writing plays that no-one ever performed, no-one ever saw, drunk, as was I, on the promised authority of the author over his and all possible worlds.). Duties included: Cashing up. Data input.

Retail man ; NEXT, Market Street Lancaster ; 06/09/2001 to 01/02/2003

Duties included: Resisting the desire to fold my arms. Resisting the desire to yawn. Resisting the desire put either of my hands into either of my pockets. Resisting the desire to scream aloud. I learned how to separate women who’re clutching with their dear lives to the same knitwear without ruining the knitwear. Learned how to dress wounds. Learned what it means to be a man (thanks Wendy).

Education // Trainings

Customer Service Certification ; Mary Gober International ; June 2007

After a two day course in a hellhole hotel deep in suburban Leeds my self-satisfaction is up from 46% to 79% and number of written complaints I receive down from 400 to 35 (all statistics in line with their website[1])

BA (hons) Philosophy (2:1) ; Manchester Metropolitan University ; 06/06/2002 to 06/07/2006

Pointless.

A levels, English Language (C), English Literature (C) Mathematics (D) ; Preston College, Preston ; 06/06/1999 to 06/07/2001

I learned that I was not nearly as clever as I’d always assumed I was. A difficult pill to swallow.

GCSEs in all manner of subjects (4xA, 2xB, 3xC and 1xD ); Garstang High School, Garstang, Lancashire ; 1994 – 1999

So unfathomably long ago that I can remember only vague scenes and almost certainly nothing of value.

Extracurricular Pursuits

I read, I brood, I play squash, I collect Nina Simone and Fats Waller and Billie Holiday records because they are beautiful. In order that the cheques do not stop I sometimes spend time with the family. I like going to parties (If ever I sit next to you at a party it is likely that I will talk to you about the author David Foster Wallace in a way that you will find dreadfully boring and it is likely that you will start looking around in an increasingly frantic manner for your friends. I will be hurt by your obvious attempt to escape and I will most likely betray this hurt by rhythmically stroking my ironic tie). I play the piano and the guitar. Sometimes I’ll give a cigarette to a tramp. I draw pictures of my friends and give them to them as birthday presents. I like to close my eyes and pretend I am Darth Vader. I pursue love and happiness like anyone else, with about the same level of success.

Facts and Figures

•Average time I stay in a job: 357 days

•Average wage: £6.15p/h

•My weight, as of June 2011: 56KG

•Number of friends on Facebook: 289

•Age at which I was 100% sure I’d passed puberty: 21

•Average number of letters in my eight ex girlfriend’s Christian names: 5

•Number of letters in current girlfriend’s name: 9

•% of customers satisfied: 97% (up from 74% thanks to The Gober Method)

And if you would actually like to meet the man himself go to

http://www.meettherealme.co.uk/profiles/3e84763442add1960b1d9a531d24b9a5c34d516f

PS  I've just received the following email:

Dear Madam Ann,

I'm flattered that you like my cv but I was wondering if you could refrain from posting the whole thing on your site without at least referencing where you got it from.  I'm sure you meant no harm, it's just a matter of some narcissism.

Kind regards,
Benedict.

I am so sorry Benedict, you are correct I should have admitted that I googled "the worlds worst cv",came across this for all to read on metro.co.uk and finally linked to your site at .http://curriculumvitiate.wordpress.com/.

PPS - wana job?

UNWANTED BROWN ENVELOPES IN THE MAIL

I had a brown envelope in the mail this morning and my heart sank.  Brown envelopes = bad news.  More tax to pay? a parking fine? or even worse, another wretched speeding ticket! But no, this one was unusually good news.  Notification of my £200 winter fuel allowance.  It got me thinking.  I'm in a very fortunate position in asmuchas through sheer hard work and insanity I don't really need this money but I have no way of refusing to accept it.

Recently many high profile people have tried to send this payment back but  there is no mechanism for doing this, which is mad. Admittedly this money can, and I'm sure will, be sent off to good causes, but wouldn't it be better to have the ability of opting out in the spirit of  "ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country".  Maybe the better off could also have the option to opt out of receiving family allowance and the state pension too! 

And wouldn't it be fun if CEO's opted to reduce their massive salary and bonus payouts, or if some of our public servants declared "you know what, I'm not short of a bob or two, I consider that it's my civic duty to do this job for a modest fee", or if Trade Union leaders said "no £100,000 + exenses is too much to take out of the kitty, pay me less", etc. etc. 

Let's start a campaign.  Instead of demanding "what's in it for me" lets ask "what can I do to help?"  One of the key by products of this might be to take personal responsibility for making our leaders more accountable. And wouldn't it be good if pigs could fly? They don't call me polyanna for nothing you know!