![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jun. 27th, 2006 10:29 pmBack to work this morning. I went to sit in my usual (Wed/Thu) booth, then Christine #3 called out to me "That's Diane's booth."
"Oh yes, it's Tuesday, isn't it?" I said, prompting mirth from the ladies, and moved round to a spare booth next to Vanessa.
Several of the girls shared thoughts on the World Cup with me. I went into the shift fully intending to avoid the nibbles and stick to just water, but there were chocolate raisins and marshmallow biscuits on the nibbles table and my resistance didn't last long...
I asked Rachel whether she could swap with me to cover the Wednesday and Thursday in mid-September when my mother and I are attending civic days; she said she'd need to check with her calendar at home and promised to get back to me. Just after 1 pm, she came up, told me she'd phoned home and was OK to work those days, and said she'd fill in the swap forms.
Then at around 2 Rachel came over and asked whether I could do a double swap with her in the school holiday week in October. Naturally I really wanted to help her, but couldn't be 100% sure I hadn't already promised to swap Amanda one of those days, so I told Rachel I'd check with my diary and give her a ring, explaining about Amanda.
"You've got to share him around," Vanessa told Rachel, laughing.
"No, he's mine!" said Rachel, and draped her arm over my shoulders.
When, during my next call, I saw Amanda walking around, I remembered she was in the office today so I could simply ask her whether we'd already agreed anything. I came off my call at 2.22, which was perfect - if I then spent the next few minutes on legitimate work business, when I got back to my workstation it'd be so close to 2.30 I could straight away enter my payclaim, pack up my stuff and head for the bus stop.
So once I'd coded out that call, I walked over to Unit Alpha in search of Amanda...and found that whole side of the office deserted. I asked Christine #3 what had happened to all the Alphas and she said they must be having a unit meeting. So I wandered downstairs to the Meeting Room and slipped in. Fortunately Amanda was sat right near the front, so I went right over to near her and waited for an appropriate moment to whisper to her. Fortunately, one wasn't long in coming; I asked her whether I was covering her on the relevant day and, joy, she said no, Julie S was.
So I skipped back up to the telephone unit and told Rachel the good news. It was 2.30 before I finished typing my payclaim in, so I had to hurriedly dump my rubbish in the waste bins and put my headset back in its box - with my rushing around I gave one oldish lady a bit of a fright, and profoundly apologised - then ran out of the TU and downstairs, sprinted out to the bus stop and made it with 90 seconds to spare (though in the end the bus was a couple of minutes late anyway).
Switched on my phone to be greeted with a voicemail from Jade. It took me a few attempts to get to listen to it in full as my phone had a little bout of repeatedly switching itself off again (grrr). She'd just thanked me for the VIP pass for the W*t*rfr*nt F*st*v*l (sorry, but I'm taking no chances with Google), told me how she'd won cinema tickets in a competition on the radio, and asked me to text her to let her know how she'd get in to the VIP area. I texted to say she just needed to go up to the barrier and flash her VIP pass, or even wear it on a cord or lanyard round her neck.
Me ma and I spent the early part of the evening attending the Mayor's Cricket XI's match with Sultan Wardroom. Being a cricket enthusiast, I was asked to sit with Bob, the scorer, at his table and turn the knobs on the scoreboard. Meanwhile, as the cricket pavilion has been burnt out for some months meaning the teams had to change in Portakabins, my mother talked to a couple of guys to get the neighbouring football club opened up for the cricketers to have a shower and a pint after the game; when the club was opened, she promptly volunteered me to join her in humping refreshments across to the football club for the cricketers. By now it was 7 pm, when we had to be off to another function; with perfect timing, the Mayor's XI reached 100 just as we were going.
Our second function was at the Submarine Museum, and consisted of An Evening with Fiona Castle, in aid of Rowans Hospices. We got to have a quick word with Fiona before the start, and told her how much of a fan of Roy on Record Breakers I'd been as a kid - over the evening plenty more thirtysomethings would say the same to her. We were shown a 10-minute video of clips of Roy as an introduction, then Fiona took the stage. Me ma and I had expected her to talk about her life with and without Roy, but it turned out to be about her conversion to Christianity and how that made her life so much better. That wasn't a complete surprise, as the event was organised by a local church (my mother accepted the invitation as she's good buddies with the church's secretary). She did tell a couple of amusing anecdotes along the way.
Afterwards there was wine and assorted nibbles including, hooray, peanuts. A bubbly middle-aged lady called Anne spotted the civic badge around my neck and started asking me about my mother's role as Mayor and how we were enjoying the year, then she set about her real mission : saving my soul. She asked whether I attended a church, I said no, and she asked whether I had any faith. I wasn't about to tell her that any spiritual leanings I have lie in the direction of Ancient Greece, so I just said I had an open mind about such things.
"Ooh," said Anne, "you need to hurry up and make a decision like Fiona!" Then she asked what I thought of creationism. I said I had to confess I'm an evolutionist. She said "What about the scientists that believe in God?" I diplomatically pointed out that evolutionism doesn't actually contradict the Bible : they both say that things came into being in the order 'light, water, land, plants, fish, animals, man'. You just have to accept that 'and on the nth day' just means 'and then what happened is'. She didn't seem over-impressed, so to sugar the pill further I pointed out that Charles Darwin was a theologian. That made her perk up for a little while, but then she began to lament the lack of teaching creationism in British schools - although she added that she could accept people saying 'Intelligent Design' instead of referring specifically to the Judaeo-Christian God.
Thinking it best to move on, I shook hands with Anne and said 'nice meeting you'. As we parted company, she said best wishes for the rest of our mayoral year - and that she hoped I'd let the Lord Jesus into my heart. Me ma was back from the Ladies by now, so I went over to join her talking to some people, we wandered around till pick-up time, then she told David, one of the organisers, that we'd better go so I'd at least be home for some of Spain v France. He saw the funny side of that. On our way out we got stopped by a couple of guys my mother knows. David accompanied us down to the car park; as we got to the mayoral car I asked John what the score was, bringing a smile to David's face and highly amusing my mother who said "Ah, bless him." We got home for the last 15 minutes.
"Oh yes, it's Tuesday, isn't it?" I said, prompting mirth from the ladies, and moved round to a spare booth next to Vanessa.
Several of the girls shared thoughts on the World Cup with me. I went into the shift fully intending to avoid the nibbles and stick to just water, but there were chocolate raisins and marshmallow biscuits on the nibbles table and my resistance didn't last long...
I asked Rachel whether she could swap with me to cover the Wednesday and Thursday in mid-September when my mother and I are attending civic days; she said she'd need to check with her calendar at home and promised to get back to me. Just after 1 pm, she came up, told me she'd phoned home and was OK to work those days, and said she'd fill in the swap forms.
Then at around 2 Rachel came over and asked whether I could do a double swap with her in the school holiday week in October. Naturally I really wanted to help her, but couldn't be 100% sure I hadn't already promised to swap Amanda one of those days, so I told Rachel I'd check with my diary and give her a ring, explaining about Amanda.
"You've got to share him around," Vanessa told Rachel, laughing.
"No, he's mine!" said Rachel, and draped her arm over my shoulders.
When, during my next call, I saw Amanda walking around, I remembered she was in the office today so I could simply ask her whether we'd already agreed anything. I came off my call at 2.22, which was perfect - if I then spent the next few minutes on legitimate work business, when I got back to my workstation it'd be so close to 2.30 I could straight away enter my payclaim, pack up my stuff and head for the bus stop.
So once I'd coded out that call, I walked over to Unit Alpha in search of Amanda...and found that whole side of the office deserted. I asked Christine #3 what had happened to all the Alphas and she said they must be having a unit meeting. So I wandered downstairs to the Meeting Room and slipped in. Fortunately Amanda was sat right near the front, so I went right over to near her and waited for an appropriate moment to whisper to her. Fortunately, one wasn't long in coming; I asked her whether I was covering her on the relevant day and, joy, she said no, Julie S was.
So I skipped back up to the telephone unit and told Rachel the good news. It was 2.30 before I finished typing my payclaim in, so I had to hurriedly dump my rubbish in the waste bins and put my headset back in its box - with my rushing around I gave one oldish lady a bit of a fright, and profoundly apologised - then ran out of the TU and downstairs, sprinted out to the bus stop and made it with 90 seconds to spare (though in the end the bus was a couple of minutes late anyway).
Switched on my phone to be greeted with a voicemail from Jade. It took me a few attempts to get to listen to it in full as my phone had a little bout of repeatedly switching itself off again (grrr). She'd just thanked me for the VIP pass for the W*t*rfr*nt F*st*v*l (sorry, but I'm taking no chances with Google), told me how she'd won cinema tickets in a competition on the radio, and asked me to text her to let her know how she'd get in to the VIP area. I texted to say she just needed to go up to the barrier and flash her VIP pass, or even wear it on a cord or lanyard round her neck.
Me ma and I spent the early part of the evening attending the Mayor's Cricket XI's match with Sultan Wardroom. Being a cricket enthusiast, I was asked to sit with Bob, the scorer, at his table and turn the knobs on the scoreboard. Meanwhile, as the cricket pavilion has been burnt out for some months meaning the teams had to change in Portakabins, my mother talked to a couple of guys to get the neighbouring football club opened up for the cricketers to have a shower and a pint after the game; when the club was opened, she promptly volunteered me to join her in humping refreshments across to the football club for the cricketers. By now it was 7 pm, when we had to be off to another function; with perfect timing, the Mayor's XI reached 100 just as we were going.
Our second function was at the Submarine Museum, and consisted of An Evening with Fiona Castle, in aid of Rowans Hospices. We got to have a quick word with Fiona before the start, and told her how much of a fan of Roy on Record Breakers I'd been as a kid - over the evening plenty more thirtysomethings would say the same to her. We were shown a 10-minute video of clips of Roy as an introduction, then Fiona took the stage. Me ma and I had expected her to talk about her life with and without Roy, but it turned out to be about her conversion to Christianity and how that made her life so much better. That wasn't a complete surprise, as the event was organised by a local church (my mother accepted the invitation as she's good buddies with the church's secretary). She did tell a couple of amusing anecdotes along the way.
Afterwards there was wine and assorted nibbles including, hooray, peanuts. A bubbly middle-aged lady called Anne spotted the civic badge around my neck and started asking me about my mother's role as Mayor and how we were enjoying the year, then she set about her real mission : saving my soul. She asked whether I attended a church, I said no, and she asked whether I had any faith. I wasn't about to tell her that any spiritual leanings I have lie in the direction of Ancient Greece, so I just said I had an open mind about such things.
"Ooh," said Anne, "you need to hurry up and make a decision like Fiona!" Then she asked what I thought of creationism. I said I had to confess I'm an evolutionist. She said "What about the scientists that believe in God?" I diplomatically pointed out that evolutionism doesn't actually contradict the Bible : they both say that things came into being in the order 'light, water, land, plants, fish, animals, man'. You just have to accept that 'and on the nth day' just means 'and then what happened is'. She didn't seem over-impressed, so to sugar the pill further I pointed out that Charles Darwin was a theologian. That made her perk up for a little while, but then she began to lament the lack of teaching creationism in British schools - although she added that she could accept people saying 'Intelligent Design' instead of referring specifically to the Judaeo-Christian God.
Thinking it best to move on, I shook hands with Anne and said 'nice meeting you'. As we parted company, she said best wishes for the rest of our mayoral year - and that she hoped I'd let the Lord Jesus into my heart. Me ma was back from the Ladies by now, so I went over to join her talking to some people, we wandered around till pick-up time, then she told David, one of the organisers, that we'd better go so I'd at least be home for some of Spain v France. He saw the funny side of that. On our way out we got stopped by a couple of guys my mother knows. David accompanied us down to the car park; as we got to the mayoral car I asked John what the score was, bringing a smile to David's face and highly amusing my mother who said "Ah, bless him." We got home for the last 15 minutes.
