Interview update

I had a great interview on Thursday with a very dynamic, youngish director at B&Q and the job sounded exactly what I was looking for. I felt that we could work very well together and he seemed as enthusiastic about my CV as I was about the job. You can imagine how disappointed I was when the agency rang me the following day to say that B&Q had asked them to stress that I was absolutely the best candidate for the job, but they needed someone to start almost immediately so they could have a handover from the out-going PA, and as I had to give 4 weeks' notice, they offered the job to the 2nd best candidate, who could start on Monday.

So, while it's nice to know they had such a high opinion of me, it doesn't really help me in my current situation here at the University, where it's getting harder and harder to remain civil, let alone cheerful!

I'm living up to my dwarf persona - Grumpy - a lot today!

Spoke too soon

I spoke too soon about nice things happening to me. Today has been a real pain in the backside. Having been told to cancel our Christmas lunch, and having apologized profusely to the hotel, the Director suddenly took a vote in a whole team meeting and announced that we would be having Christmas lunch at this particular hotel after all ... so I was back on the 'phone, grovelling again. I pointed out to the director that I'd been told to cancel - no apology from him, just a flap of his hand and an irritated expression. I am so fed up of being here and being the one everybody kicks!

I didn't want to organise Christmas again this year anyway, I told my line manager I didn't want to volunteer, and he just shrugged and mumbled and I somehow ended up doing it. I just hope I get a new job before the Christmas lunch ... or that I can stand up at lunchtime and announce my departure. That would be fun!

HUMBUG HUMBUG HUMBUG

Nice things do sometimes happen to me ...

... for all my ranting you could be forgiven for thinking that life is just one long round of irritation (well, 99% of the time it is!) however, sometimes nice things do happen and yesterday was one of those rare nice days :

1. The awful Mozzie has 3 days off so I am spared her irritating whine
2. I put an old printer on Freecycle and a nice elderly man came to pick it up yesterday evening for his grand-daughter, who's just started her nursing degree, so it's gone to a good home and cleared a bit more space in the house
3. I GOT A TAX REBATE! So I can pay a few more bills

I suppose that's my quota of nice things for the rest of the year, but there's only about 9 weeks to go, so I think I can put up with it. Something else nice in the form of a new job would be welcome, too ...

Sunday already? Where did the weekend go?

One of the great things about having bugger all of any interest to do at work is that it gives me the chance to read other people's blogs. I skip around all day, checking out what other total strangers have to say, and I find all sorts of fun things to do with a spare five minutes, like this:

You Have a Choleric Temperament

You are a person of great enthusiasm - easily excited by many things. Unsatisfied by the ordinary, you are reaching for an epic, extraordinary life. You want the best. The best life. The best love. The best reputation. You posses a sharp and keen intellect. Your mind is your primary weapon. Strong willed, nothing can keep you down. Your energy can break down any wall. You're an instantly passionate person - and this passion gives you an intoxicating power over others. At your worst, you are a narcissist. Full of yourself and even proud of your faults. Stubborn and opinionated, you know what you think is right. End of discussion. A bit of a misanthrope, you often see others as weak, ignorant, and inferior.

What Temperment Are You?

Effing, effing Kay and Mozzie!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Just had to get this off my chest!

Effing Kay has now started backing Mozzie up if I say anything, for instance :

Mozzie: 'What's happening with this parcel? Seeing as it's in the middle of the office.'
(Actually, it was leaning against a screen, in no-one's way, and the parcel belongs to someone else and is nothing to do with her.)

Me (calmly): You don't need to worry about the parcel.

Kay (snapping): She's not worried, she's asking the question!

Irritating little bitch will never to learn to mind her own fucking business if she keeps getting Kay jumping in with her unsolicited opinion, and she's never going to learn not to interrupt other people's conversations if she sees Kay interrupting too. God, there are days when I wish I had a gun!

One of those days

Today is one of those days when everything, but everything is guaranteed to annoy me.

Mozzie had only been here for a couple of minutes and I was ready to become an axe-murderer. One of my friends here noticed me pulling faces (Mozzie sits behind me, so can't see the grimaces and gurning) and sent me the following to try and calm me down - try it!

Find your battle cry!

Feeling better? I am!

Just my luck!

Isn't this just typical of my luck?

Yesterday I had an email from the charity where I volunteer as a counsellor. They'd written previously saying that they head some excess funding and would like to 'reward' the long-term volunteers - I'd said that as long as I continued to get my expenses paid I was quite happy with that. Yesterday's email said that they were considering employing the more experienced volunteers (I count as one of those) on a freelance basis for certain clients, which sounded great! I'm currently taking £40 a week for the centre in donations, and the thought of that coming my way instead would be wonderful news for the poor old bank balance.

But isn't there always a catch?

We'd have to pay for the room hire ourselves. No idea how much that would be but could be £5 an hour. We'd have to have ongoing analytical therapy ourselves - that could be anything between £35 - £50 a week. We'd have to have our own public liability insurance, which is £85 a year, and we wouldn't get our expenses reimbursed (I claim about £5 a week for petrol and parking). So, in order for them to pay me £40, I'd have to spend £55 - £70 a week. Even with GCSE grade C maths I can work out that it would be costing me more to be paid that it currently costs me to volunteer!

I think I know what the answer will be when they ask me if I'd like to be paid ... NO THANK YOU!

Two new job opportunities in one day!

There was a nice job in the paper on Thursday - PA to CEO of New Forest Parks Authority - so I've asked for an application form for that. Today I had a call from one of my agencies to ask if they could put me forward for yet another job at B&Q (bilingual French/English) and one at Coopervision, again, PA, with another European language 'desireable'. Fingers crossed! The money at Coopervision isn't as good as B&Q and it's much further away and the traffic will be crap going that way - all in all, I don't think I'd be any better off financially there, but that's not the point, it won't be here, with its blocked toilets, pubes all over the place (on toilet seat and soap dispenser today) nasty people and fuck all to do most days.

It's got to the stage where I resent anyone giving me anything to do, but I'm just too pissed off to challenge it. For some unknown reason Kay gave me some diary work to do, didn't explain herself properly and then laughed like a drain when I contacted the wrong people. It wasn't my job anyway, all I was supposed to be doing was booking a room, not sorting out other people's diaries. GRRRR!

So, keep your fingers crossed that one or other of these jobs comes up trumps. I think my favourite ones of the hopefuls at the moment are Red Funnel (if the money's OK), New Forest job and the one at the BUPA hospital as PA to General Manager and head of Clinical Services. Holby meets 5* hotel ... and within walking distance if anything goes wrong with the car ...

I wasjust about to go into a major rant about Mozzie borrowing something from my desk and not putting it back properly but I'm aware I'm getting even grumpier than the grumpy old women on TV so I'll go and do something to take my mind off her and the awful Kay... Thank God for YouTube!

What a day!

It's been chucking it down with rain so Mozzie has used this as an excuse to be late in - again. 9.30am! Now, I wouldn't mind if she stayed and made up the time, but she's supposed to be working 36 hours a week (like me) but she comes in between 9 and 9.30, and she used to leave on the dot of 4.30. Now, occasionally, she'll leave around 4.50. No way is that anywhere near 36 hours a week. Being generous I suppose she does about 32.5 hours a week but is paid for 36. I'd love to do 32.5 hours a week and be paid for 36 - that would be like an extra £35 a week in my pocket. I've mentioned this to my lovely line manager (who is about as much use as a fart in a collander, as my Dad used to say) who just babbled on and made no sense. Apparantly Kay has spoken to Mozzie about her time-keeping and there has been a little bit of improvement (as in leaving at 4.50 instead of 4.30) but it's still not 35 hours a week.

On top of Mozzie irritating me just by her very existence, the milk's gone off in the kitchen, so I'm on black coffee, and someone has left what I would normally call a 'floater' in the loo, except that it's not floating, it's blocked in the S-bend. Disgusting. I've put a very graphic notice up in the loo and I'm going to add another one saying that we are able to trace the culprit through DNA so they'd better bloody well clear it.

Honestly, turds and pubic hair and sour milk - what have I done to deserve this?

And another thing! I just had a call from one of my agencies to say that Skandia didn't want to interview me because they were looking for someone with financial services background. So nearly 4 years at HSBC doesn't count as financial services then? Go figure!

And it's only 11 o'clock. I've got clients tonight so I won't be home until 9 o'clock - it's going to be a very very long day ...

I'm being boring

Nothing funny or even remotely interesting has happened to me over the past few days. No amusing encounters with nutters in the street, no telephone calls from call centres in India for me to rant about, nothing worth reporting at all!

This is just not good enough. I think I shall have to start walking to work across the Common again, just on the off-chance that I might catch a flasher (if I run fast enough!)

Tell you what, why don't you leave a comment about what's happened to you? All you have to do is click on comments below, and you can fill me in on what's going on for you. It would be great to hear from you!

Early Saturday morning

It's not yet 9 o'clock, and I've been up for an hour - unheard of for a Saturday morning! Perhaps it's because it's a lovely sunny (but cold so far!) day, the first decent day all week, or perhaps it's because the whole weekend stretches ahead with no obligations, no concerts, no visits, no need to go shopping, no college essays, no data entry to earn extra money, no transcription tapes (again, to earn extra money!) no jobs in Thursday's Echo to apply for, just a fridge full of nice food, and a load of good books, and some decent programmes on telly tonight.

Well, I've done my bright and breezy early morning. Time to go back to bed for a nap. All this bounciness has worn me out!

First gig of the new year!

This is me! The rock chick!

Well, you may disagree: my last 4 concerts were Take That, Robbie Williams, T-Rextasy and The Sweet ... Pretty rockin', I thought.

I've just booked the first of my gigs for next year. Wembley (if it's finished!) here I come on 14 April for 'Once in a Lifetime' - THE OSMONDS, David Essex, David Cassidy (that's when I'll be going to the bar or the loo) and Showaddywaddy.

Hang on, I saw the Once in a Lifetime tour earlier this year - so it can't be once in a lifetime ... but who am I to argue when it's the opportunity to see the Osmonds again? Be still my beating heart ...

Maybe not exactly a rock chick, more a rockin' old bird ...

Me and my big mouth

Do you sometimes wish you'd kept your mouth shut? I do.

I've been beefing about not having enough work to do for ages now, and this week I've been sooo busy I've hardly had enough time for all my blogs (did you think this was the only one?!?) my NaNoWriMo page and my website, let alone writing up client notes and doing paperwork for my agency. How on earth I find time to do any work at all is beyond me!

AND I have an interview at 9 tomorrow morning. It's unfortunate that Kay has got the day off, because it means that Mozzie will be on her own in the office tomorrow morning. I'm toying with suitable excuses for being in late. One of my colleagues 'stole' what I was going to do - call in and say I had a dental emergency and would be sitting in the surgery until there was a free slot - so I'll have to think of something else that doesn't tempt fate too much ...

To give you a clue about tomorrow's interview, here's a picture :

Wish me luck!

Why me?

Not being the most organised person in the world (well, that's not true, I am very organised, but I just don't like getting up early in the morning) I rarely bring my lunch to work and usually grab something to eat in the canteen. NEVER AGAIN!!!

There was a rather nice-looking pizza for lunch so I had a slice of that, sat down with some colleagues and tucked in. As I cut into the pizza for the 2nd time, I saw something sticking out of the base. 'Aha!' I thought. 'A piece of dried herb stalk perhaps? Just the thing to stick in my throat and make me choke.' So I pulled it out. It wasn't a piece of dried herb stalk, but it was something that would have stuck in my throat and made me choke ... A PUBIC HAIR!!!

Lucky me. I shall never eat in that canteen again. If this had been McDonald's I'd have some shit-hot 'no win no fee' company negotiating me millions in compensation. This being the University I haven't even had the courtesy of a reply to my complaint from the head of catering.

Another music-filled weekend!

It's been a fun-filled week since I last updated you on what's been going on in the Land of Linda!

I've had various meetings with managers at work to voice my complaints about my line manager and in the end had to talk to him myself - no-one can do it for me. The upshot is that he's not going to agree to my changing line manager (he can't actually stop me but, for now, I'm going to let him think he can) but I think he's going to be a bit more careful of how he behaves around me from now on. If he doesn't, then over his head I go ... Can't cope any more with being the bottom of the food chain here and the one who gets kicked whenever my line manager gets kicked ...

A good part of the week was sorting out Christmas! Yes, Swims with Crocodiles* and Swims with Sharks* will be swimming together for Christmas! I'm flying up to Manchester for almost a week and looking forward to it already. It means that Dances with Anyone* will be on her own with her daughters (don't get me started!) and her ex-husband and his twin brother. The only way to get through that recipe for disaster is to get thoroughly pissed and I don't want to spend another Christmas too tipsy to eat the dinner I've been helping prepare since the night before. I don't want to spend another Christmas listening to the girls snipe at each other and their father about the 'quality' of their presents. That might sound harsh but hey, it's my Christmas too!

To round off the week nicely I travelled to Trowbridge in the dark, wind and rain, to see the first appearance on UK soil of the lovely Peter Lincoln as front-man of The Sweet. Now, anyone who knows me, knows I am a die-hard Sailor fan, and Pete has been their 'Captain' for 10 years, and a very lovely and talented Captain he's been too. But he had the opportunity to join The Sweet and treble the number of gigs a year he does so although I'll still be trailing in Sailor's wake as often as possible, I'll also be upping the number of Sweet gigs I go to.

I must admit, it was very nice to be standing around in a bar full of strangers, feeling a bit nervous, and then see Pete, who gave me a kiss and bought me a drink and had a chat. People then realised who he was and, by default, who I was from comments I'd made on the Sweet forum, so I felt very welcome - no more nerves!

It was a great show - and good to see that other fans (not just Sailor fans!) are mad as hatters!

Shame I had to come to work today (especially as my line manager is trying not to be a prat but can't help himself) because I could have happily sat at home singing all day! But I bet the neighbours are relieved ...

Next (known) gig for me is Culture Club on 21 December in the Guildhall - with Phil Pickett (one of the founder members of Sailor and writer of some of CC's songs). Pity I can't fit into the clothes I wore in the 80s but I'm sure I can still plaster on the make-up!