Journeys to work

I sold my car about a year ago – to save money but also to be more environmentally friendly! For the last year I’ve made my way to work, either by bus, train, walking or on the odd occasion, cycling and generally, I quite enjoy the short commute. It certainly beats sitting in a traffic jam or having to leave home an extra hour early so I can guarantee getting a space in the staff car park.

Most days I have my METRO newspaper handed to me as I leave the train, I occasionally buy a coffee, usually a tall-skinny-latte-with-an-extra-shot and if the reception is good I listen to radio 4 for a bit of culture and watch the same people going about their morning routine.

It’s true, we are creatures of habit and I just love watching people on their way to work. For example, there’s a man with a strange growth in the groin region, who has lop-sided walk because he has to put all his effort into swinging his leg and the balloon sized growth forward as he walks. He usually stops for a coffee and a paper and I think he works for the Council…

There’s also a lady with a gammy eye that points in an unusual direction who always has a small cappuccino, a croissant, reads the paper and listens to her i-pod, before carrying on with her day. She’s on first name terms with the staff at the coffee place and I’m intrigued to find out where she works. Maybe when I’m a student I’ll follow her.

My worst journeys are almost always on the bus which is usually crammed with people. 7 out of 10 times there’s a drunk man who hasn’t washed for an eternity, a mother with 8 kids all of who don’t know the meaning of ‘SHUDUP YA LIL' S***!’ and someone having a very loud conversation on their mobile.

I’m usually quite tolerant on the bus but with the added irritation of a bad driver who swings around corners, accelerating in short sharp bursts, throwing the passengers forwards and backwards in unison, my stress levels can reach boiling point.

It never ceases to annoy me when the conductor drives off before the frail, old lady, with a walking stick and hunchback can sit down. I regularly find myself holding my breath, poised on the edge of my seat, ready to catch a falling granny (wonder woman style) then sighing with relief when she finally sits down.

And do you know what? No matter how queasy I feel or how fast my heart is pumping from screeching around the roundabout on two wheels, I always say ‘Thank You’! How English! and How Polite!

BUFF or BULGE

Now, I’m not obese but I admit I’m not my ‘ideal’ weight. So what is the ideal weight? Women are always striving to be thinner no matter what size they actually are.

There’s a rake thin girl at work who looks like she’d snap if she had to carry anything other than her own body weight plus a very small handbag yet she still thinks she needs to lose the pounds. And no she’s not anorexic, she’s just like every other woman who looks at herself in the mirror and thinks ‘with a handful off here and a pinch off there I’d look much better’.

I put my battle with the bulge down to boredom at work and general inactivity. Our bodies were not designed to sit at a desk, in front of a computer for 8-9 hours a day with no physical exercise apart from the occasional bicep curl when answering the phone or a good jaw stretch during a gossip session around the kettle.

I once measured how many steps I did in the average day. Bearing in mind the recommended number of steps (to ensure general fitness) is 10,000, I was surprised to find over a 12 hour period, even with a 15 minute walk to and from the train station, I could only manage 9,000!

Only 9,000! Even with my regular ‘I’m-so-bored-so-I’ll-waste-time-going-to-the-toilet’ trips and a 30 minute lunchtime saunter around the shops I can only clock up NINE THOUSAND! A snail could do more than that and they only have one foot! By comparison my other half managed to clock up 9,000 steps in a morning at the hospital – I guess its dashing between all the emergencies "he’s crashing – Resus! STAT”

Sooo to combat this downward spiral into a lifestyle more sedentary than a rock, I joined a gym. In the last five weeks I have been jogging, pumping, cycling, bouncing, stepping, pulling, pushing and crunching at least three times a week. The main goal is to lose weight but I’d also like to be fit enough to climb the stairs at work without hyperventilating.

Until now, I thought I was doing pretty well but it would seem in the last 4 days I’ve managed to gain 3lbs! Where did it come from? How could this happen?? Has someone secretly been sowing bags of sugar onto my thighs without my knowledge?

After this discovery, I came into work with a mood blacker than an inkwell in a dark room and whinged to my collegues. To give them credit, they tried to cheer me up with sympathetic comments like ‘muscle weighs more than fat’ and ‘ don’t worry its probably water retention’. HAH! WHATEVER! I don’t think I'm carrying around 3lbs of water and I certainly don’t think I’m buff so either my scales are faulty or I’m just FAT!

I think I’ll be hitting the gym tonight for a bit more pumping and bouncing…

Baby Talk

My friend and I have decided to attempt writing a children’s book… let me rephrase that… she is going to write it and I’m going to illustrate it.

I suppose this is another of my harebrained ideas but there’s certainly potential to see this through to completion. We’re lucky to have a useful contact who works in the children section of a large publishing company. We hope the tips and advice will put us in good stead to become then next Sisters Grimm!

And of course my friend has a 17 month old baby so the market research side is pretty well covered. We spent a good portion of the weekend flicking through children’s books, reading to the baby and each other, testing rhymes and story lines, and discussing books my friend likes vs. the books her baby likes.

Babies and their parents are always great fun to watch, all you need is a box of popcorn, a soda and ‘TA DA’, you have a whole day of entertainment in 3-D! At 17 months, my friends’ baby is a great babbler and has a pretty good grip on the words Mummy and Daddy. Her parents however, swear she has a much larger vocabulary but to the untrained ear it is difficult to distinguish between ‘cat’ and ‘dog’. We were, of course, very lucky to have her parents there to interpret for us –she’s very advanced you know:

Dadadaaaadddaada waaahah eeeeee = daddy look at the beautiful golden retriever over there
ababadabada, = I'm really looking forward to a our trip to Abu Dhabi in December
idddty dididdi mummy = I would love a large plate of your delicious, home-made roast dinner mummy

I was extremely lucky to be the first person to hear her say ‘Zebra’ - she did say it! And to prove it, I made her say it over and over again like a parrot. I’m going to teach her to say ‘Uzbekistan next time I visit!

Elephants in Disguise

I’ve been wanting to share this with the world since the beginning of 2005. In the good ol’ days, in my last job, where there was a real feeling of camaraderie, I used to arrange small scale art competitions.

The rules were simple, I’d suggest a theme, then, armed with a mouse and Microsoft paint (only) the entrants would draw pictures to be judged by an independent panel of judges.

The crucial part was the use of Microsoft paint. Any self respecting designer would banish this dreadful software to a far corner of the earth where it would live out the rest of its days in a bamboo cage subjected to regular intervals of Chinese water torcher. Incidentally, it is the same place where Comic Sans (the font) and really bad clip-art should be sent.

Anyhoo, back to the art competitions, and there have been several. Themes have ranged from Hamsters to Easter and Rudolph to Elephants in Disguise. It’s quite entertaining seeing the level of competitiveness between the ‘artists’ but it’s equally entertaining to see the level of skill! So here are just a couple of images from the ‘Elephants in Disguise’ competition.

Chavant

Ele Salvador Dali - Winner

Between the Buses

Ele at the seaside - you really need to see this full scale

Roll on University

Since handing in my resignation, my time at work has seemed a little pointless. There are now approximately 147 hours left at this computer in this hot, open plan office. All my motivation is slowly seeping away through these horrible blue carpet tiles, into the concrete floor, down 3 levels of unsued building space and away in into the bowels of the earth.

The left side of my brain is saying ' oi! when can we get a move on with the creativity thang' and the right side is saying 'I'm fed up of waste legislation and energy strategies so when can we we have a break?' Effectivley both are saying 'I can't wait for the next 21 days to be over' - that's when I finish up and prepare myself for the joys of education.

Its also raining today and that just adds to my melancholy mood - there seems little point in starting any new projects and everything else is bubbling along without the need for my intereference. My work diary for the next 21 days is empty, no meetings, no conferences, no report writing - nada, zip, zero, zilch - just mindless I'm-actually-doing-work-but-not-really type activities. Tip tapping on the computer, making endless cups of coffee, internet surfing, emailing, the occasional spurt of text messaging, countless trips to toilet spurred on by the coffee and of course blogging.

To pass the time this morning I engaged my workmates in a conversation about colloquial words and phrases. Interestingly, most of them are rude so I'll refrain from putting them on my blog but there were one or two that made me laugh and a few that could be good cartoon material.

I've listed some of my favourites, but I'm hesitant to say these are just Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire sayings, they could just be general Northernisms. Wherever they're from, I definately hadn't heard any of them until I'd moved to the area and most of them I hadn't heard until I started working in this office.

Some of my favourites are:

"I could eat a horse box between two bread vans" = I'm hungry
"I could eat a scabby dog" = also means I'm hungry
"I'm spitting feathers" = I'm thirsty
"He couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo" = pertaining to England's performance in the football
"I've had a roggie" = I've had a haircut
"Are you mashin' " = are you making a cup of tea?
"I'm mardy" = I'm in a bad mood
"duck" = a general term of endearment like mate or friend,

My partner is a doctor and its common practice for doctors to get a list of local words or phrases used by patients. Of course if you're a foriegn doctor or not au fait with the lingo, it makes diagnosis easier to know that 'gut rot' means tummy ache or that 'a pain in my lug holes' means I have ear ache.

so anyway, now I only have 146 hours and 15 minutes left to waste...

Monsters from Socks

I never knew it could be so therapeutic to sit, sewing little creatures out of socks after a long day at work!

I bought my other half a book for Christmas ('05) called 'Sock Monsters' but its not until now that we've opened it with the intention of being creative. I can't remember who the book is by, but I found this website http://www.stupidcreatures.com/gallery.html which gives you an idea of the variety of monsters that can evolve from manky, old, worn socks! We do seem to have a large number of old socks or socks who've lost their life long partners but, if you're like me, you'll get really excited and rush out to buy the craziest socks you can find at the cheapest prices... Woolworths has done me proud!

I've spent the last two days covered in bits of thread and sock oddments, irresponsibly putting my freelance work to one side for several hours of crafty fun!
So, here are a couple of my sock monsters - the picture quality is a little poor but that's because I used my phone.

Short rant - Shaving Closer

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old woman - is it just me or is there something ridiculous about Gillette's new 5-blade Razor!!? Apparently it shaves 30% closer than the last Mach 3, which in my eyes does legs very well! I mean, THIRTY percent closer!? I just don't understand! My legs are as smooth as a baby's bum with the Mach 3 and if the shave got any closer I'd be walking around with exposed muscle.

Marketing is an extraordinary thing - take for instance babies nappies! Every so often you get a new type of diaper that helps your child walk better or crawl better while sucking it dry. They pull up and down, you can go swimming in them, mop the floor effciently... what happened to good ol' fashioned fold-and-fix-with-a pin diapers? Anyway, if parents aren't careful, by process of osmosis, they will have a prune crawling around their living room instead of a child.

And interestingly the slogan is always 'The Best EVER' - so the last 'best' wasn't 'best' at all?? I suppose this is the sort of thing I'll have to deal with when I'm a fully fledged designer working for a big corporation. I'll be employed to come up with witty ways of selling a product that nobody really needs because the last one worked perfectly well. I suspect by the time I graduate, Gillette will probably be marketing the MACH 10-Blade with the slogan 'Close to the Bone'.

.

In the beginning...

Just two weeks ago I handed in my resignation after making the decision to return to University as a Mature Student! Now I'm counting down the days before my life changes and I start out on a different path, to a different career and a whole new me!

For those of you who've ever had to decide whether to give up the security and comfort of full time employment or face the 'unknown' as a poor, beans-on-toast-eating student then I tip my hat to you. It certainly isn't easy! BUT I'VE DONE IT - ARRRRRRRRRRGH!!!

I can, without a doubt, say this has been one of the most difficult decisions I've ever had to make, and if it hadn't been for my long suffering other half, the advice of caring friends and family then this choice could never have been made.

Now, I'm sure there are much bigger, more difficult decisions to be made by other people, in other places with far worse consequences e.g. Blair and Bush sendin' us to war but sorry, this is about ME ... me and my decisions, me and my worries, me and my journey.... This is all starting to sound rather egotistical!

Anyway, what better way to let your thoughts take shape than by writing it all down and, hey, if you're going to write it down, why not let everyone else (and his dog) see it.