This is a work in progress.

Bxing day grandparents came around. Went to football, called the game off unnecessarily in my opinion (and many others) very close to kick off.
My grandparents are ok, its sad to see my Nan go downhill so, she told me she was going to go back to work in the New Year as she was till only "twenty-something" and then that her Mum had done her hair for the party.
Later she asked my granddad when he lost his hair. He's been bald all my life and from photos I've seen, most of my Mum's too.
Sad.

Got back into my wiifit, what with that and Worlds Strongest Man lately I have had no time to update.
Welshy came home yesterday and I am attempting to see how long I can stay at work without a day off.
If we take away the three xmas days I'm on day 11. I desperately need the overtime money if I'm to live while I do unpaid leave for my school placement.
When I get back from that, I'll be getting one weeks pay, then living for 5 weeks and 2 days on that. Bad times.

Better get going, will do a year review when I get a chance!

Happy Chrimbo everybody!

Hope you all had nice days and dinners and presents!

Whats the point in having fucking internet banking when you can never remember your important data cos you've had to re-request it so many times you've run out of combinations that you'll actually remember?
I've had to write it all down and now I can't find what I've done with it, which is fucking annoying as well.
fuck, fuck, fuckety fuck fuck.

Meanwhile I now have 3 days off for Xmas! Whoo!

Yup. Didn't get tickets. Ho Hum. We'll think of another plan.

Just got back from riding. Could only manage half an hour, was just a bit too slippy and icy out. Couldn't do much more than slow trots. Then we had a stable management lesson to get our moneys worth.
Yeah. I've spent 20 fucking years around horses. I fucking ate these poncy riders who just show up and get on and off and then hand their horse to someone else. I chewed them up, spat them out, pissed on them and then chewed them up again.
I got banned from answering questions. Haha! Then I demonstrated how to pick feet, rug and saddle a horse.
Then cos I'm so motherfuckingly awesome. I had to help teach another how to put a bridle on her horse.
He was a bit of a bitch, pulling faces, snapping his teeth and shaking his head. After a brief tussle, I just slid it on.
She was impressed. "You clearly know your way around horses."
Damn motherfucking right!
Riding was a bit interesting though, despite going slow my horse's back legs went from under her a few times coming down from trot to walk. Definately wouldn't have liked to take it any more faster than that.

Welshy's supposed to be going home tomorrow, but his train is cancelled and he's been swapped onto a later one. Fingers crossed he makes it.

Not sure my mum wants him here for Xmas, Brat made his feelings very clear last night in that he doesn't want Welshy here at all. (nor me, it has to be said and indeed feels rather unwanted by Mum. I have no idea how, as she bends over backwards to him but he's always out or in his room. Welshy rarely ventures downstairs when he's here but sits in my room or plays FM.)
Anyway. If Welshy is here for Xmas, perhaps for political reasons it is best if he does go to his friends for Xmas as much as I'd like him here.
If only we could afford to move out again!!

Went to Brentford. Don't wanna talk about it. Hate penalties.

Prob won't be able to get spuds tickets as there's less than 200 remaining. The boys have all got theirs but as I'm constricted by taking Mothership and Boy, I don't have enough credit on my Red Card. Shame but we'll find something else to do.

Went for an interview at a local school today for my PGCE app, was a bit random and definately the quickest interview I've ever had! Spent longer straightening my hair! in and out in 10 minutes.

Ho hum. Now to confirm that work can give me the unpaid leave and I'd better get a uni interview at least now!

Busy week trying to sort out missing cards and writing complaint letters, rescheduling my school placement interview, and cancelling riding. Couldn't afford it this week as I had no cards/money.
Booked it for next week only to remember that Charlton are in the Semi of the Paint Pot trophy and I have to get to Brentford.
the N.M.M.C.A.S.C Better get their arses in gear and sort out my ticket now I've done that.
Gotta try and get tickets too for our Cup game again Spurs. On Dad's birthday. They were his favourite team so it seems appropriate that we go to that as a family.

What else has been going on? MH has had her sperm donor baby. God knows that kid's gonna need all the help it gets growing up. I haven't been in touch to wish her well. She got through it ok, as I found from her sister and CL's facebook statuses and thats enough for me.

Am considering taking a language course in the New Year over at Canary Wharf. It'd be useful if I ever go and live abroad and now that mum has the apartment in Grotty, it'd be useful to be able to speak some Spanish out there. Hopefully we'll get it sorted.

Overspent again this month. Isn't good. Especially now i'm on more money. I'm supposed to be able to save the extra for uni if I get to go. Gonna have to crack down in the New Year and be good.
Didn't help that I had to repay Welshy's Dad the 20 Euro we borrowed for the weekend and paid for me and the boys to get to Sheff on the train in Jan at £168. Thank Christ the only Xmas present I still have to get is just for Brat and that we get paid a week early this month.

So yeah. Gatwick was opened at 4am. I woke up and tried to decide what to do. Meanwhile Mother who had been planning her attack then pounced on me and started telling me I was stupid for going, that I'd not get a cab to get me there and then started sobbing telling me that I was selfish for leaving her, what if I died as well?
So I decided to just risk going for the 9am call. Woke up at 6. She was still on the sofa fretting and I called a cab and went anyway.
Pretty uneventful, roads no where near as bad as expected and I got there just in time for last call - not the way I roll! So I ran across Gatwick in my socks to make the flight.
Flight ok. Got to Barca ok, managed to get on a train ok.
20 minutes into my train, I got pickpocketed, somehow. lost my wallet, all my Euros and my bank cards. I met up with a friend of Welshy's and he took me back to his while I tried to get things sorted.
BTW Natwest are not Britain's most helpful bank. They cancelled my cards no problem, then refused to transfer any of my money into his account.
for ttwo hours I wasbounced arond the telephone system, each of them telling me they were sorry but couldn't do anything as neither of us have internet banking.
WTF. What about old people who have never heard of the internet? Neither of us had money for food, accommadation, transport. We were stranded. I plan on writing a complaint letter.
Eventually we managed to get his Dad to give us 200 Euro. Which after paying for accom, left us with 100 Euro to live on for 3 days.
Clearly the most rational way to deal with any other problem is to drink. So between us, we got through a bottle of vodka and a bottle of absinthe in two nights.
Lived in a falt with a photo of a child lying in a pool of blood. I mean what? Not sure the camera's the first thing I'd think of if I was told my child had been shot/knocked down/whatever.
Creepy.
And Miss Haversham from Great Expectations lived there.

Gotta go, gotta get ready for work.

Oh. Cricket Wooo!

Sigh.
Snow is disrupting everything. Gatwick has been closed for two days. So I was preparing myself for a cancelled flight, except mine appears to be the only one going ahead when it reopens at 6am tomorrow.
my Flight is supposed to be at 7:05. EasyJet website claim it will take off then. I hope that I can believe the Gatwick Website more as it says it will be 9am.
9am is do-able. 7am is not any more.

So I'll be giving it a go early tomorrow!
Now where's my team of Huskey dogs?!

Snowing at last.
Quite frankly I'm getting sick of it. Snow was much more exciting when it happened once every ten years. Now its every year, its just a bit meh.
Was gonna ride in it... Right up to half 4 when I got the cancellation call. Was sat in the pub with all my gear on, ready to go.
And of course the 386 can't cope with going uphill in it, so I got another bus to Charlton Station and walked from there.
Three idiot fucking chavs hanging out by the Valley cafe pelted me with snowballs. Course they all found it hysterically funny until I chased after them waving my riding crop and screaming obsenities.
I'd have fucking mashed them had I caught them.

Yup. The cricket has kept me up until an undecent hour. Bring back the old days when I was working in The Health Food Shop That Cannot Be Named and able to stay up all hours.
I still hold out for a win in this first test but Welshy, who knows more about these things than I do claims it will be a draw.
My little VC talk at work has gone, farewell Jack! I debut a new talk tomorrow (I really should sit and learn it at some point) all about Whaling, cannibalism at sea and Moby Dick. Looking forward to that!
The rest of the country appears to be about 6 foot under snow. So far London has remained snow-free. Apart from two flakes that just drifted past my window... so maybe.
I need it to hold off until next Tuesday at least as my trip to Barca will be in jeopardy otherwise!

Ashes start tonight!
Let's hope there's not a repeat of that crazy Uber-wide ball bowled first delivery last time!

Bye-bye Sleep!!!

Hurrah.
Although I put in my application ages ago for uni, there's been a few problems with my referee not being able to get into the system. After an agonising wait on hold, I think I managed to sort the problem out and hopefully she is completing it now as we speak.
Hurrah Part 2.
I'm trying to arrange a meeting next week with a local school to get a volunteer placement in. My referee actually reccommended them to me, apparently the Head is a big nature-lover and sets up cameras in birdboxes, has his own beehive on school property and arranges for them to grow veggies, so hopefully it'll all go down well if it all works out.
Hurrah Part 3.
Ashes start on Wednesday, and I have football tomorrow and riding the next week.
Hurrah Part 4.
I'm going to see Welshy next Friday, no time at all!

Harry was amazing. I know I tend to get carried away with these books/films but that was the best, the truest to the story, the most gripping one yet.
Not perfect as none of them have, but pretty damn well close.
Went to football today and we won 3-2 which was exciting!
And I've gone and got organised for Xmas, I've got stuff for Welshy's bro, sister and mam, (only chocolates but still!)
Presents for TP and TJ - actually I must confess, I brought them gifts when I was in Dublin last year but completely forgot to send them to them!
And presents for my friends who have children.

Gonna try and talk to the bro and see if he wants to go halves on flight vouchers. I heard Ryanair were offering them and if we can get some for Mum then she can take herself off to Grotty when it all gets too much, plus a little something each from us and she's sorted and E will be the usual Wildlife Photographer of the Year when payday rolls around.
Efficiency is my middle name!

Guess who just got asked out by one of the Astronomers at work, "now i'm single again."
News to me, good to know i've still got it though, whatever "it is!

HARRY POTTER TONIGHT!!!! ROLL ON 7:30!!!

well my decision to pick horses over football probably wasn't inspired as I missed us win. After two lessons, where even if I do say so, I was pretty awesome and rode close to my best. This lesson wasn't as good. The horse I rode, Roo was rather bumpy, and seemed to slip and trip a lot. Horses are normally sure-footed and especially just plodding round a school may just slip once. So this was a bit off-putting. I saw a pony, Holly at my old stables, a half Welsh/half Arab slip and go right over onto her side, breaking her riders leg as it was crushed under her once.
So I've always been a bit wary of something like that happening to me, even though that was an one in a two trillion accident.
So I think that played on my mind a bit and I didn't rise to the occasion too well.
Never mind.

Today was another quiet, meh sort of day, not a lot going for it. Still, two days till my date with Harry Potter and 16 sleeps till Barca!

Oh dear.

I had a really pleasant day with Lollypop from work, counting donations. I really like him. He's sweet, ever so slightly old-fashioned, despite being younger than my brother and is disturbingly obsessed with castles and historic houses.

Today was the first day of the new position. He got it too, which is nice. Me, him and two other people who just happened to be made Seniors as well were told to collect donations and do the Poppy boxes. Nothing strange in that. I've helped Lollypop and the other Cashiers do it hundreds of times, as have others. One girl. Greek C has just come back from an operation to remove a cancerous lump growing in the bone of her thigh. (All clear now) so can't move about too much. The other girl was just a spare. So sounds reasonable to have them do the Poppy Boxes and me and Lollypop do the usual Monday collection of the myraid of boxes.

Head back down in the afternoon, then Indian N and Tall S who both went for the job and both got rejected and were working the front together accosted me and Lollypop, making their new W gesture at us, asking why it had taken 4 seniors to do the job when anyone could have done it and then if we were plotting against them.
Both me and Lollypop are pretty pissed with this now. Since the two weeks its been announced we've had nothing but aggro. TS has been telling me its everything from Racism (no coloured people got the job, perhaps not all that unreasonable when you consider. One of them is incredibly lazy and bolshy. One has been in front of HR countless times for unappropriate conduct towards the female members of staff - [Never me. Not sure if I should take it as a compliment or be outraged that I'm not good enough to be perved over!] for an assault against another member of staff - Nothing crazy but a childish Chinese Burn. Oh and for not doing his work. I can't explain why Indian N didn't get the job and TS claimed that if he got the job he was going to ask for more money, wasnt sure if he was going to take it and answered most of his interview questions with "call a manager") So its not racism, nor ageism as they also tried to claim as others older than them got it. And I certainly ain't no Managers Puppet.
I do not appreciate being told by TS that if I ever tried to use my new seniority over him that he would go to the managers and tell them about my mischief.
A - I dont care really.
B- I'm sure most of them are aware of it anyway, I don't hide my antics.

One of the questions was: "How would you feel if one of your collugues got the job over you?"
I don't think running to HR or complaining to every manager that you find is setting a good precident if the job comes up again!

Anyway we were talking over the stupidness of it all in the cash office and came out to get a new donation to be moaned at for plotting and talking about them in there. Sigh.
Rosta Tom popped over with the paperwork for the Poppy Donation and asked why we were hanging out in there rather than in the messroom and we told him about some of the dramas. Anyway when he returned to the managers office, he mentioned it to the Duty Manager, who then saw fit to put his Size-11's all over it, go speak to Indian N and call us up to the office.
I told him, what I've pretty much told Lollypop. We just have to man it out. Once the next bit of drama arrives we'll be forgotten about. I don't like the thought that they're now gonna think we went running to bitch when we can deal with it ourselves.
Yes its dragged on for a fortnight now, but it has been very quiet.

Its just a bit sad as until now I considered these people friends! _ but they're not bitter! Oh no! We're not to think that, they constantly reassure us.

You know I may never blog again. Just stare in awe of my new pretty coloured blog.
Brought myself a new bed today, a plain silver small double. Means I'm pretty broke now until payday, and yet have to pay for a hotel in Barca. Oh well. I've got a good 7 hours overtime to claim this month and new pay kicks in from Monday, so it'll all be good, even if I have to wait until payday to get the hotel.
Done some mega-restructuring of my room. Got rid of a lot of crap, uni posters and stuff. Bit sad but they were just cluttering the place and I swapped the position of my large pine desk over with my bed and now my room looks HUGE.
I love how just a simple change makes it look like you've completely redecorated.
Threw out a few things, photos and that, that related to the LF. Didn't realise I still had them, forgotten that I had treasured them once. Long, long ago.

Do you have any idea how happy my new background makes me?

Back in the day when all this was fields *waves arms vaguely* I had three choices of blog background that wasn't white. Or boring. Or completely girly.

Remember how exciting the day was when I got comments as standard? Remember when I learnt and then promptly forgot how to HTML this. Remember when coloured TEXT arrived! Remember when PICTURES ARRIVED!

Now holy fuck! Look how pretty my blog is! With just a template and pressing the colour text option.

And there's loads of others! Some that I fear using as they are just so joyful and bright and vivid that an epilepsy attack might happen if I spin around too quick on my chair.

I love it! Its happy and colourful and fun. I need to figure how to make my text more readable though... But Colours! Swirls! Brightness!

The only thing that could complete this, would be if somehow I could get a set of colouring pens and colour each of the CHARBY letters in a different, clashing colour.

Slightly better day at work, although still deathly quiet. I can't describe to people who don't understand what its like at work on a quiet day. But at the moment we're getting probably the same number of people though the doors as we do in Dec/Jan, during the worst of the winter weather and if its like that now. I very much fear for my sanity during those quiet months.

We'll see...

Busy trying to find a cheap hotel or a decent hostel near to where Welshy is living in Barca, really need to get him on facebook to find out exactly where he is.
Having a vague look for a cheap and decent double bed. Months of being kicked in the face (Yeah kicked. He squirms about like a fish outta water) in a single bed is not appealing. Although I guess that depends on if he comes home!

Many lovely people at work have come up and told me not to worry about losing my Saturdays and to swap with them if I need to. I love my work chums.

And finally and positively I found the location of an old blog-friend. I lost the blog address aaaages ago. Although he seems not to have updated in forever and ever. YEAH YOU! Sort it aht!!

Today was the worst day at work I have had for a long time. It was just boring! No one was in! No one wanted to hear my talks, weather was atrocious which didnt help. and my gallery, being an art one was dark and dimmed so I felt sleepy all day and there wasn't even any fun staff about to talk to.

I've got a new rosta to do with my new job, before for the last two years, I've had a cushy number. being off 2 saturdays out of three and either block-booking the third or swapping days off about. Now I'm back to a standard one saturday out of three. Not helpful for football watching!

E's kinda upset me too a bit. I text her telling her about losing my Saturdays and she asked if I should be pleased that I have time off in the week and I said not really cos I dont enjoy them. Everyones at work, I'm too poor to go out and about, and I didnt even really prefer my weekends off cos of it. I prefer having a day off then working for a few and then having another. Means I can save up my tasks and stuff so I have things to do, reasons to leave the house.
She then got a bit snipey about how I'm always miserable lately, and that some people were never happy. I dont think i've been miserable, a little frustrated at how long my uni app was taking and being back at home again, but you know. I feel positive, either in the New Year or by September, my time at the NMM will come to an end and I will start a new adventure. And I was kinda happy with my rosta the way it was! Done especially for me!

I explained about not having any money and I dont particuarly wanna waste it unless I have too, what with saving for uni and that and then she got really sarky, telling me that if I was gonna sit at home all day I shouldnt then complain I'm bored. Asking me if I could afford to go to Harry Potter on the 19th and then when I pointed out that her workplaces starting salary is still a lot more than mine is going to be, and she has 10 days more leave than me, and gets days of in liu for working Bank Holidays which I don't and she earns 2k more than I will get and more on top cos she can do a lot more overtime there than at my corrupt system, she got arsey at that too.
She also commented when I said that me and mum were going to Pizza Hut or something before the cinema, whether I can afford to eat there or will I be outside with sandwiches!

Cheeky bint! I can't afford to waste time in the gym or meeting friends like she can, and I don't see the need to spend money for the sake of it, even if its only a £2 bus fare to get somewhere.
Not when every penny is going to count, when I may even end up worse off than I am now cos of student loan kicking in, tax and NI going up and Mother demanding that I hand over more money than I do now.