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...