Aparently no one thought to explain to my Granddad that you should stop taking your medication when about to go have a major operation.
So there we go. Op Cancelled. The bastard inside him will continue to grow for another week or two until they manage to reschedule it.

My granddads operation is tomorrow.
i hope it all goes well.

I went to my first ever East-end lock-in on friday! It was actually pretty fun and I can feel quietly proud that i helped the place run out of alcohol. By all accounts the place went through 3 bottles of sambuca, and completely ran out of gin and vodka.
it was 4am by the time me and Welshy ran out of money and decided sleep was our best option!
Hurrah!
And on Sunday I made him accompany me to the Natural History Museum to see the Butterfly exhibit. which was rather exciting, we got to run around (well i did, he followed me with a slightly disapproving but resigned look on his face) a giant maze competiting with children to complete the maze and collect our stamps, ride on a small butterfly zipline and then to play with all the pretty butterflies inside the exhibit.
Then our day of culture continued with a trip to the next door Science Museum where I bored him by insisting that we MUST look and read everything in detail in the Vet science gallery and then he claimed he was squeamish and ran away while i looked through the medical history galleries.
But what was the most exciting part was our trip to the IMAX cinema to play with the 3d fishies that were there. I've never been to a 3d cinema before, and kept trying to grab all the wee jellyfish as they swam past! Dead Exciting.
Sadly since this weekend I've somehow lost my work keys again. Well misplaced them really, however work have warned me that if i lose them again I'll be getting a written warning.
Bugger. any ideas where they are?

So after the bad news of Friday, me and Mum headed to the stables, since its been sold the lady who runs a small rescue aviary there, has been told to wind it up and find homes for them.
I dont wanna brag about my aviary, but my birds have SO much more space and things to do than hers! I guess half her problem is not being able to say no to anything, and that resulted in me doubling the birds I took home, because I simply couldnt bear to see them all in such a small, overcrowded and heated place.
So I took home, 3 female cockatiels and 3 female budges, and a pair of golden mantled rosellas! The rosellas especially are fantastically coloured, maybe tomorrow I'll try and take some pics of them and put them up. I also fell in love with this little Ducorps Cockatoo.
I also took some more pictures of my horsey friends. I took some past ones HERE. (yeah its always a sign that i'm bored, when i go and actively LOOK for past posts to link too!)












This is Chelsea, I mentioned his partner in Crime, one eyed Captain in the aforementioned post. As you can see he's a chubby little beast!






















Jude (in stable) and his girlfriend Selica, Selica is a lovely thing who will fall asleep with her head on your shoulder. I'm always amazed to see Jude, he's half brother to Jimmy (again mentioned up there) and I remember them as tiny little babies and then as naughty teenager horses, getting broken (horrid term) to the rider, now they're respectable members of society!



Here's George showing off his lovely long thick mane. He's a proper lightweight gypsy cob, all snorting and hair everywhere! Ever so good looking though! I rode him oh god only once about 8 or 9 years ago, when he first arrived and I rode often and relatively compently (I wish I still had the money and time to do so again!) He was a complete handful to control and we argued constantly about exactly who was in charge!

Horses! Gotta love them!

So it is cancer, which i was pretty much resigned too. and its big and nasty apparently.
However, the docs reckon they can cure it up with a single op and a bunch of chemo, so its time to go down that route again.
and so far I've only had one uncle phone me up and demand that I/Mum quits work and cares for me nan and granddad as "we know how to look after people with cancer"
Ho hum. Its nice to know I'm surrounded by caring family members.

i was sent on a spying mission today!
Work do this "benchmarking" scheme, its a bit like mystery shoppers i guess really, we get sent on an expenses paid trip to a local museum to find out if theres any ideas we could pinch for our museum or anything that we do better than them.
We got sent to the docklands to the Museum there, which had this really good jack the ripper exhibit on, i love goulish things like that, it also had really good exhibits about the history of the docks.
it was a pretty good day out really, loads more fun than standing in a gallery!

My Granddad may have Cancer, we wont find out until next friday (the 13th? a bad omen?)
I dont know if I can go through all this again. I seriously dont.

I've just had a pretty awesome 24 hours.
Nothing happened in it, I was pretty bored and mystified during most of it. But all through it I had the most wonderful sense of contentness and peacefulness.
For the first time in a long while I was happy doing nothing. I had no need to keep myself busy and keep on the go. I was simply happy doing nothing, and the company was great too!

Another manically busy week, in the last 10 days i've done 18 hours overtime, considering that i've spent 3 days in derby, thats a huge amount.
Everyone loves my purple hair at work, well, there's always the odd miserable sour-faced cowbag who looks at it and tuts and scowls at me about lowering the museum standards or something.
But anyway the museum has no standards left to lose!
I went in early this morning for a lecture by the museum director. It was pretty much bollocks. We'd been given this 20k by some random old rich nutter and its been given to "the south west link project" which as far as i gathered today, involves ruining the museum look (wonder actually if they get planning permission) by adding a glass box to the back, which will hold a corporate cafe a reading room, for members only and a new entrance, it'll also mean the destruction of two of the largest galleries, and certainly the most popular one. - The Nelson's Navy gallery in order to put three floors of paper archives in. which considering we get on a good day 10 visitors to the library seems a bit of a waste, especially when you realise that they have no plans to add more galleries and to put all that stuff exhibited in storage.
Including Nelson's Trafalgar uniform, which is THE only thing the museum is known for and the main reason we have any visitors. Madness I tell ye!

Anyway, work seems to be on the verge of getting more interesting lately! what with that and the fact that i'm now getting trained on the switchboard at work (imagine that! Me! Who until 4 years ago was utterly unable to talk to ANYONE on the phone!) plus I may finally be getting unleashed soon on the public giving gallery favourite talks, and i shall campaign most strongly in favour of me getting a payrise!

hurrah! i'm back from derby, where i've had an awesome time, culminating in a random trip to Splash Landings at ALton Towers, despite me arguing to STF that i cant possibly go, I didn t bring a costume! But when has that ever stopped him?!

And now i'm purple. I dont know what work will say, but i love it! hurrah for purpleness!

yo yo yo!
i'm abso-fucking-lutely knackered! Decided to "celebrate" my year at the museum (How the fuck i've managed to stick THAT one out is beyond me.) by doing a mega amount of overtime. As in working 3 days 9am-8pm in a row, plus two days later working from 9am till midnight.
Hardcore.
It didnt help that this was my long week, so it worked out that i've worked 8 days with one day off inbetween, with an extra 18 hours at least overtime fitted in somewhere.
So yeah. I'm rather knackered, to say the least.
And the reason behind all this?
My football ticket for next year. Bastard wanking footballers, didnt even have the decency to go and get themselves promoted back to the prem for me.

Still i've got the whole of bank holiday off. and i plan on celebrating this in two ways.
1. I'm taking Welshy to meet my Derby lads and I hope they all get on, despite him being a stroppy little get at times!
2. On Monday i'm dying my hair purple. In direct violation of the "No extreme hairstyles" rule in my contract.

Hurrah.

summer has finally arrived here, so i headed up to Welshy's and we set out for adventure!

We were heading to Anglesea island to find puffins when we stopped at this place

*deep breath*

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch!

and if you can pronounce that you're a better person than i am!

I LOVE Chrissy Powell.
What a fucking living legend.

My name's Charby. I want to be a zoologist.
I've wanted to work with animals my entire life, I've surrounded myself in pets, in horses, in dogs, in fish, in birds, in geese, in goats.
And my bookshelves are filled with biological textbooks and zoology reference books. Books that i've had for years, admiring the pictures and dreaming of the day I too could see these things.
I've spent hours watching wildlife tv shows, going to zoos and safari parks. In trying to soak up every little bit of information I could.
I went to uni and studied for three and a half years and put myself nearly 16k's worth of debt in order to work with animals.

But with every rejection letter and failed interview, I start to wonder, is it really worth me still trying? Three years now since I've left uni and is it time to acknowledge the fact that if i've not been able to get anywhere now, I wont get anywhere ever?
This rejection for Colchester Zoo, has really hit me hard. I'd have been perfect at it, Its stuff that I could have done, that i've done for ages at the aquarium.
I sit and look at my options, I cant afford to go back to uni, I cant afford to do another course. I cant really do any volunteering any more. I cant afford to take the time off of work in order to do so.I'm trapped in a kinda catch-22. I dont have the experience, no one is willing to give me the experience. I cant afford to take a day off of work to go volunteer.
So what else do I do with my life? I really dont know. I dont like children, so teaching is out. I'm too figety and have too much energy to sit in an office.

Am I really doomed to spend the rest of my life at that museum?
Was it silly of me to ever attempt to not only escape London, but get a job working with animals?

so last thursday i had an interview at colchester zoo. Its about 3 hours from my house so happily if and thats a big IF i get it, i'll have to move back out of London.
Just getting to the interview in itself was a drama, the train in front of mine, hit someone at Romford Station so we got held up somewhere past Ilford for 40 minutes and then when i was preparing to leave the train at Colchester, a well dressed man stopped me.
"Excuse me" He said. "I dont feel very well, can you help me please."
So i had to help him get off of the train and found him a seat and called a member of the station staff to come over and he then got an ambulance for him and I waited with the man for the ambulance to arrive.
Putting my first aid skills right to the test there!
The interview was to become a park presenter, doing pretty much what i did at the Aquarium, but paid this time! I'm hoping it went well, but they havent got back to me yet, which is always a bit of a boo.

So when we returned from Venice we headed back to FLorence to see "David" and then took a bus up to Michaelanglos Piazza which overlooks the entire city and has amazing views.
Then we caught a train down to Rome, sadly we only had the afternoon there really, so didnt get a chance to see much, we got a bus to the colusseum and braved the queues to have a look inside. It reminded me of some of the new football stadiums, you go inside and head up to your seat in the covered section adn then head outside to the pitch side as it were!
it wasnt hard to imagine how it must have been then. We then headed off to the vatican city, we both wanted to go see the sistine chapel but it was massively expensive and a huge queue so our next port of call was the trevi fountain.
which we missed and got side tracked by this lovely big fountain in the middle of the roundabout, which mother insisted we stop and risk life and limb crossing the road and posing for photos with!
The next day we caught a coach to Naples and Pompeii, Mother got bored with the speed that the group was moving at and encouraged me to come explore with her, which isnt a good i dea! all the streets look pretty much the same!
WE explored in the ruins of some houses/shops and saw the towns Brothel! Not sure that was on the tour and some lovely frescos, and was only late back finding the group by a few minutes!
So thats the end of my Italian adventure, and I have to prepare now! I have an interview tomorrow for Colchester zoo so i better do some research for that!
TP and TJ are moving back to Derbyshire" Hurrah!

i'll put the last set of pics up tomorrow maybe when i report back on how it went!

the Duomo, Florence.

St Marks Square, Venice.

Gondolas!

So on the 3rd day we headed to Florence.
We spent most of the day just pootling about and booked tickets to go see David at the Accademia when we returned and visited the Duomo, which is an absolutely beautiful church, we went into it and lit a candle and put it on a tealight tree for Dad and then went into the catacombs and saw lots of old roman and religious relics and icons and sainty type things.

Then we headed to Venice the next day, I cant even begin to explain to you just how amazingly awesome that place is. The water is a lovely blue, the streetlights are pink and give a lovely glow, there's canals and bridges and gondoliers everywhere, although it kinda spoils the image you have of them in your head when they whip out their mobile phones!
And of course the novelty of riding a water busboat everywhere and getting onto floating platforms to wait for the bus can never ever grow stale! Although I admit for the next two days afterwards everytime i closed my eyes or stayed still i was swaying!
Venice is also famous for its Murano glass, which is awesomely pretty and very expensive. I got a pretty multicoloured photo frame and a little blue bird thats all cheeky looking and a multicoloured parrot.
We spent two days in Venice before going back to Florence where we went to the Accedamia and saw "David" Who is fantastically good looking even if he is a statue. Although he has almost scarily large hands, as apparently he's supposed to be on a mountain top so he'd look in proportion then.
Whats scarier is that like at my museum photos of David are banned and I was off duty and still found myself yelling out "No Photos please" at tourists hiding round corners to take pictures!

Blogger is being a bitch and not uploading my photos so i'll try again tomorrow when i tell you the final part aboutr Rome and Pompeii. ooh i bet you're quivering with excitement!

Hullo!

I'm back from Italy. It was a strange little place, rather rainy and dirty grotty cities with graffiti. So much like London then!

I did like Italy though, all the streets are narrow and dark and rather scary on a dark night. I loved wandering down odd streets and coming across ancient churches or ruins.

Pisa, was dark and spooky though, and rather run down. We went to the tower and climbed up it which was the oddest thing ever, you lean with the building and start walking up one side of the staircase and find yourself on the other! And at the top with only a thin bar stopping you from slipping off of the steps and falling does odd things to your centre of balance!
THe place we stayed at was odd though! It was basically a B&B set up by a rather enterprising woman in the spare room of her 3rd floor flat. who spoke no english. and my italian is limited to "Hello" "Bye." "Thanks" "Excuse me" "Welcome" "ice cream" and "How much does that cost?"

She got rather excited by the fact i was travelling with my mam though and pinched my cheek lots which hurt. And hugged me loads. And offered me what looked like Liver on toast. I opted for the nutella at breakfast time. Which they all seem obsessed by. Its everywhere, in ice cream, in cakes, on the breakfast table.
Needless to stay I spend much of my time hiding from her.

On the second day we went to Lucca, which is a lovely little medieval town about 40 minutes away on the train from Pisa, its exciting cos its mostly pedrestrianised (which is a good thing considering the driving skills of most italians!) We got a tandem and rode it the 4km around the city walls, which was an experience! its horrid not being in control of your cycle and i was at the back all the time and feeling like it was gonna tip over!
Anyway here are some pictures from that part of my adventures and I'dd do the rest tomorrow.

Me at the Tower!

Climbing to the top!

Lucca

So Tomorrow I'm flying off to Italy! Hurrah! My plan is to fly into Pisa, spend a day in Lucca, then head to Florence, before going onto Venice, returning to Florence, for the night before we go to Rome and then down to Naples and Pompeii before returning to Rome to fly out. In the space of 9 days! Phew!
I'm kinda nervous about it, its the first time i've back packed in a country i dont speak the language of, I'm worried that me and Mam'll fall out and can i negociate my way around Italy's train network without speaking a word of italian!