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Am still poorly

Was hoping to be cheered up by Strictly Come Dancing but it was not to be. That show is mental. People dance. Some are good. Some are crap. The judges tell us how it is. Then the public vote and it all goes horribly wrong. The crap people get saved and good ones go out. Dear oh dear oh dear. I seriously think anyone who has phoned in to vote for Kate and Anton should be banned from participating in all general elections ever. 

Oh boy, I can’t believe I am getting so bothered about Strictly Come Dancing…

I just don’t like unfairness is all.

On another note. Andrew has talked me into this. I have to write 1667 words every day for a whole month. If I have a nervous breakdown it is his fault.

Am I going mad or is the music towards the end of ‘Elizabeth’ from Elgar’s enigma variations? The bit where Christopher Ecclestone gets his head chopped off… I have seen this film loads and loads of times and never noticed. Or I could just be imagining it? I am a bit dosed up today…

And what’s the music at the end when she’s the Virgin Queen? Sounds familiar but I can’t place it.

 Bad day today. Cold and dark outside + nice warm bed =not very good at getting up in the morning.

Upset by some negative feedback left on Amazon. Has knocked our rating right down. Is my fault because the person felt the description wasn’t accurate and I am the person in charge of the descriptions and grading. It’s actually very difficult to grade books a lot of the time. I play it safe, much safer than the other sellers out there who all seem to just say everything’s ‘very good’ and grade it as such even if it’s ex-library, got a creased spine, etc. I don’t take this risk, ever, because of an awareness that the kind of situation that has now arisen could really mess things up for us. Most sellers list thousands of books at any one time so if they get a few bad responses it doesn’t matter (they’re done as a percentage). For us one bad report knocks us down from a very appealing 100% to a barely acceptable 93%. I am now paranoid about all the others and feeling really bad at letting the side down. But to be honest I’m not really sure what I could have done. It was in pretty good condition but the pages were slightly browning as it’s a fairly old book. I think perhaps the problem with online selling is that people expect the books to be like they are in Waterstone’s and if it has a slight scratch on the cover or shows some sign of having sat on a shelf for twenty years people aren’t expecting it. However, the clue is in the description ‘second-hand’.

Also, I am having some work done on my house in a desperate attempt to get it up to scratch for when the guy from the letting agency comes round. The only time the guys could come to do it was this evening. They’re installing an electric fire I’ve bought and I have been overwhelmingly stupid and selfish in not considering the implications of having people drilling and banging at 5.45 pm just when the family next door will be eating tea and watching soaps. I also envisaged it taking about an hour at most when in fact they didn’t finish. At 8 I had to ask them to finish for the night. They will come back but can only do evenings. Oh dear.

The neighbours did bang on the wall once or twice, perhaps out of sheer frustration. I really am stupid sometimes. Note to self: think things through properly before saying ‘yes’.*

So self esteem quite low at present but am snuggling under a blanket in the chaos that is my living room to read some more of Baroness Orczy’s ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’.

Things could be worse. At least I’m not fleeing the guillotine!

Yet.

*Actually, I think that advice could do with heeding at every point in my life. Saying ‘yes’ without thinking things through is becoming my trademark.

Hello! I have returned!

I am just giving a quick update before I retire to bed with a book and a hot chocolate.

1) I passed my Chartership. Great relief all round. I still haven’t been united with the parcel (long and tedious story…) but in the end CILIP put me out of my misery and gave me the unofficial word over the phone.

2) I have decided to move to Oxford and commute to London from there. I have made some enquiries about letting my house. Shouldn’t be a problem to get enough to cover the mortgage payments but might struggle to get someone in quickly at this time of year. Ah well. If the worst comes to the worst the Nottingham-London commute is not impossible for a month or two.

3) Still haven’t got an official start date for my job as there is yet more paperwork to complete. Am beginning to get frustrated, especially as my medical form has been waylaid in all the recent postal chaos.

4)  I’ve been picking up with my reading again and life seems somehow richer and fuller than it did back in my two-novels-a-month phase. I don’t want to go through that again and am going to make sure that despite the many demanding changes coming up I still make enough time to read.  I am going to put some reviews online. Probably do that tomorrow. Sorry I haven’t been keeping them up-to-date but I simply haven’t had time. Will try to be better about it in future. I nipped into Beeston Library this afternoon and sat in a sunlit window seat where I finished ‘Brave New World’ and I have lots to say about it so watch this space…

5) I am enjoying ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. A few annoyances though. Even though I am getting a little better about Bruce I still hate the way they spin it all out and have this absurd elongated (?) silence before announcing results. For me it doesn’t create suspense, just impatience. Also, one of the celebrities played just a little too much on a foot injury last week and was rescued by the public vote (always partial to a sob story), thereby condemning to elimination someone who was actually quite good.  However, I liked it this week. The jive is really a great dance. I can’t wait to learn it! And some of the dancers were really, really impressive. I’m pretty sure Alesha will be the eventual winner.

6) A few other things on TV have caught my attention. There was a great series with Nicholas Crane going around Britain recreating journeys others had written about in the past. It’s one of those things that I discovered quite late and now it seems to have finished. What I did see was excellent though. I hope the DVD is out in time for Christmas. I also wish I’d caught more of Michael Palin’s trip around Eastern Europe. I saw most of today’s installment and it took him through places I’ve been to -Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Curonian Spit, Kaliningrad, …and next week he’ll be going to Poland. I’d better not miss it. Again, I think this will be one for the Christmas list. Last night I caught a bit of ‘The Tudors’ and found it good in many ways but slightly odd. I’m a sucker for historical drama and with reasonably good amateur knowledge of the period I was always going to be entertained by it. I loved Jeremy Northam (well, I always do, to be honest) as Thomas More and Sam Neill as Cardinal Wolsey but beyond them there wasn’t really much substance to it. It all seemed too clean, smooth, and pretty, and it’s a shame when there’s so much politics and scheming they could have gone into. Anyway, I didn’t see it all so will try to catch the whole thing next time to get a fairer picture.

7) I watched most of the Rugby World Cup Final while catching up on ironing. Didn’t really ‘get’ it but have been to a few Rugby League Games in my time so it wasn’t all completely alien. Not that I understand the rules… and I’m sorry Lynsey (and others) but Rugby players are really, really not attractive.  It’s tennis players for me, definitely.

Anyway …to that hot chocolate.

The latest things in my life…My house is being invaded by giant spiders. And when I say giant I mean it -they are the size of my hand! They seem to have a habit of scurrying across the floor at top speed and scaring the crap out of me. And crawling across my bed when I want to get into it. I haven’t decided yet whether it’s three separate spiders or one very well traveled one.

I have held a two week old baby and realised just how gorgeous tiny fingernails are.

I went to a wedding in Devon and enjoyed it despite not knowing the bride or groom and feeling like a bit of an impostor.

There is too much about Princess Diana on TV and I wish it would stop. It was tedious enough the first time round.

I find myself feeling sorry for Britney Spears. Being constantly humiliated and having to give your kids up to your ex -that’s not a nice state of affairs.

I am having another drama with a parcel. I now have two little cards through my letterbox saying I have missed a parcel. This is a different company, one I haven’t come across so far. But, like all the others, it only delivers between 9 and 5 Monday to Friday when I am at work and is located on the opposite side of the city. Unable to think of anything I have ordered or could be expecting I phoned them up. The lady was very nice, said ‘no, we cannot deliver in the evening’, ‘no, you won’t be able  to reach us easily if you don’t have a car’ and then said ‘we may be able to deliver at the weekend but only if informed by the people who posted it!’. Rather struck by the strangeness of arranging delivery time according to the sender not the recipient I then spent about five minutes trying to coax from her the details of the sender -hardly a cause of secrecy I would have thought. She finally said ‘it’s from something called C.I.L.I.P.’ at which point I think I exclaimed ‘shit!’ rather loudly.

So, I have a parcel from CILIP. There is only one thing it could be. My Chartership portfolio. I can’t work out whether this is good news or bad. Probably bad as they have returned one copy of my portfolio to me and apparently they are supposed to keep the other two. I can only assume it is being returned with suggestions for improvement. I am now no longer so keen to get hold of it and may leave it to languish in a post depot somewhere.

I am feeling some sympathy for the postal workers but glad the strike is over. At work and in bookselling it has been a crisis. I think the Royal Mail is in a strange situation. I think I’m right in saying that it is still government owned and so still a public service of sorts. In which case it is competing in a tough market against delivery companies that can afford to run on lower overheads. It’s like the RM is half one thing and half another and I don’t see how this can last. Unfortunately for the workers, striking might just be another nail in the coffin.  For my part, though, I’d rather it was left to Royal Mail and not to the muppets I have encountered so far in delivery companies (for example, see above).

I have passed the security clearance for my new job and things are starting to happen. Still uncertain about where to live etc. and change my mind about it every day.

I have been entered into a University Challenge team. I hope they’re not going to be disappointed.

I feel another phase of blog silence coming on. It seems to me I just don’t have the time to write and that I only make time when I am either really angry about something or really excited. And who cares? Why should anyone care? It’s a fair question.

Nothing I have written really seems to say what I mean (hence a certain quote on my homepage) and from peoples’ comments it’s clear I am not always getting the point across. I guess I just don’t want to be shouting to the world about what I think or feel at one tiny moment and I don’t think the world should have to hear it. I’ve been getting pretty angry lately about the self-important morons (with terrible grammar) who seem to populate the web. As someone said to me just now, it’s pub chat gone global. I don’t think I want to be part of that.

So I might have to disappear for a while to think things through and do some good old-fashioned reading.

Feling sorry for myself. Am absurdly jealous of my own boyfriend who is down in London starting what sounds like a great degree course. Keeps sending me texts saying things like ‘just approaching the Tate Modern now…’ and sending me pictures of book fairs he happened upon on the South Bank.

Grrrr. Did I mention that I’m envious.

Maybe living in London wouldn’t be so bad after all. If only I could afford an apartment to myself in Camden…

Is anyone else watching ‘Heroes’? What are you making of it so far?

Am busy. And confused. Lots going on. I wasn’t going to say anything because you never know who might read this blog (though I have a hunch my audience is small). To explain as simply as I can: I have got a job in London. It is a very good opportunity and I’m looking forward to it.

The security checks I need to go through before they confirm the offer are in-depth because of where I’m going to work. I don’t expect to fail the checks or anything (being a very unthreatening type) but it can take a few months. I am not supposed to hand in my notice or inform my current employer until the checks have been completed. So I am going to work every day and having discussions about what ‘we’ will be doing in March and feeling really uncomfortable. I hate a lie and I can’t help feeling that that’s what my life is at the moment.

In addition I have only been in my current job for a mere six months and feel like a dishonest, quitting scumbag.

Sigh.

 I recently ordered some clothes online. I don’t think I am ever going to do so again.

OK, what usually happens if I order something online is that the postman tries to deliver it and if it doesn’t go through the letterbox it gets left at the depot. This is not very far away so I usually walk there and collect it. What I should have remembered from the one time in the past I have done it is that these clothing companies use private delivery companies that only deliver while I’m at work and who never answer the phone when I call up to get it redelivered.

The one time in the past when this company did deliver they left the parcel with my next door neighbours who didn’t seem to mind at all. Apparently this time they had tried to do so again and the official response has been recorded as ‘number 10 refuses to take deliveries for number 9′. So now I am wondering what on earth I have done to the neighbours to make them hate me so much, wondering why they have become so mean spirited all of a sudden, and am at the same time deeply annoyed as I now have only one option -find out where the depot is and collect it. It is not the Royal Mail depot I usually go to and I have a horrible feeling it will be out on an industrial estate somewhere. This really would be a good time to get a car.

Apart from the general inconvenience I am feeling genuinely upset at how unaccommodating people can be -my neighbours who won’t put a box in their porch for a few hours until I get home, my work who frown upon personal deliveries arriving at reception, and a delivery company who don’t open at weekends.

I just feel a bit like no-one cares and people are cross with me. It’s jus a box. It’s not like I’m being unreasonable…