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Dec. 27th, 2006 11:37 pmBack to work this morning. As I said hello to Val, Janine and Heather #1, they asked me if I'd had a nice Christmas and I replied "It was all right." "That about sums it up for us," Heather grinned, to nods of agreement from Val, then she added "Glad it's all over, really." Hmm, I wouldn't go that far.
Not a bad shift, though I did get several refusals. There was a woman who didn't want to do the survey this week as "this is my special holiday time with my children"; she wanted to go further and drop out altogether, claiming the last one had taken 'much longer' than we said it would, but I persuaded her to let us call her for the next wave in March. Then there was an 18-year-old girl who didn't seem to remember us, and when I explained a bit about who we were she just hung up on me. A real-life Vicky Pollard, methinks. Then there was a really old bloke, who I'm not sure understood what I was saying at all, and just said "Sorry, thank you, goodbye" and hung up.
The coffee machine in our temporary lounge was on the fritz, and the canteen is closed this week, so I had to settle for a cup of hot brown water with lumps of coalesced coffee granules in from the machine downstairs.
I caught an old lady in at 2.21, so tried to get an appointment with her for another time, but she said she'd quite like to do the survey now. Thankfully she was retired and her husband was over 70, so I finished their interview at 2.32 and legged it down to the bus stop, making it with seconds to spare.
Into town after work with my Christmas book token. The bookshop had Simon Hoggart's new book of letters from gap year students, but that was reduced to £8.99, so to use the £10 token I had to buy a second book and put the extra in cash. I scanned the sport shelves for '23 Sweet FAs' by Andy Sloan, but they didn't have it so I settled for a book by a Hibs fan who followed bitter rivals Hearts for a year - looked interesting.
This evening was Aunt Cynthia's 60th birthday party. Minutes before I was setting off, my cousin Jacqui texted me asking me to bring a CD player and some music. It was fancy dress - everyone had to come as something beginning with 'C' - so I wore my Slavia Prague football shirt and carried a bottle of Budvar and went as a Czech. Earlier, I'd looked up the Czech for 'good evening' and 'happy birthday' online; I said the former to everyone as I met them, and the latter to Aunt Cynthia as I handed her her present. Jacqui cheated; she came as Sally Bowles - she had a good costume, I had to admit - she claimed that counted because Cabaret begins with C. Another cheat was Uncle Graham, who wore a devil outfit, wrapped some tinsel round his trident and claimed he was a 'Christmas devil'. Aunt Marian was a cowgirl; my mother promptly christened her Calamity Jane.
It was a pretty genteel affair, everyone brought food to contribute to the buffet (Aunt Cynthia had some German Gluhwein, which she warmed and served in a bowl mulled wine-style) and we mostly just sat around talking. My cousin Sam (another cowgirl, so I called her Annie Oakley) came up from Malvern with her boyfriend Mike (cowboy), so I spent much of the evening catching up with her. After the food, half a dozen people wanted to dance. They wanted to get the others up on the floor with them, and deemed my mixtape and my Capital Gold 60s and 80s Legends CDs not danceworthy enough, so I was sacked as DJ and replaced by Mike. He put on some Abba and Scissor Sisters, but it was still only the same half-dozen dancing.
Uncle Ron asked my mother to do the speech proposing the toast to Aunt Cynthia, and announced her as 'the old Mayor of Gosport' (for North American readers, in England 'mayor' and 'mare' are pronounced the same). At the end of her speech, my mother draped a silver '60' badge round Aunt Cynthia's neck - Cynthia turned to her and joked 'Mine is bigger than yours' (referring to me ma's mayoral chain). My mother shot back "Mine's a lot heavier". Towards the end of the evening someone got a tub of 'Party Forfeits' out, we all had to do one each (with varying degrees of success, and Damo flat out refused to do his one, 'sing the theme from a soap') then it was just winding-down chat, goodbyes and clearing up...
Not a bad shift, though I did get several refusals. There was a woman who didn't want to do the survey this week as "this is my special holiday time with my children"; she wanted to go further and drop out altogether, claiming the last one had taken 'much longer' than we said it would, but I persuaded her to let us call her for the next wave in March. Then there was an 18-year-old girl who didn't seem to remember us, and when I explained a bit about who we were she just hung up on me. A real-life Vicky Pollard, methinks. Then there was a really old bloke, who I'm not sure understood what I was saying at all, and just said "Sorry, thank you, goodbye" and hung up.
The coffee machine in our temporary lounge was on the fritz, and the canteen is closed this week, so I had to settle for a cup of hot brown water with lumps of coalesced coffee granules in from the machine downstairs.
I caught an old lady in at 2.21, so tried to get an appointment with her for another time, but she said she'd quite like to do the survey now. Thankfully she was retired and her husband was over 70, so I finished their interview at 2.32 and legged it down to the bus stop, making it with seconds to spare.
Into town after work with my Christmas book token. The bookshop had Simon Hoggart's new book of letters from gap year students, but that was reduced to £8.99, so to use the £10 token I had to buy a second book and put the extra in cash. I scanned the sport shelves for '23 Sweet FAs' by Andy Sloan, but they didn't have it so I settled for a book by a Hibs fan who followed bitter rivals Hearts for a year - looked interesting.
This evening was Aunt Cynthia's 60th birthday party. Minutes before I was setting off, my cousin Jacqui texted me asking me to bring a CD player and some music. It was fancy dress - everyone had to come as something beginning with 'C' - so I wore my Slavia Prague football shirt and carried a bottle of Budvar and went as a Czech. Earlier, I'd looked up the Czech for 'good evening' and 'happy birthday' online; I said the former to everyone as I met them, and the latter to Aunt Cynthia as I handed her her present. Jacqui cheated; she came as Sally Bowles - she had a good costume, I had to admit - she claimed that counted because Cabaret begins with C. Another cheat was Uncle Graham, who wore a devil outfit, wrapped some tinsel round his trident and claimed he was a 'Christmas devil'. Aunt Marian was a cowgirl; my mother promptly christened her Calamity Jane.
It was a pretty genteel affair, everyone brought food to contribute to the buffet (Aunt Cynthia had some German Gluhwein, which she warmed and served in a bowl mulled wine-style) and we mostly just sat around talking. My cousin Sam (another cowgirl, so I called her Annie Oakley) came up from Malvern with her boyfriend Mike (cowboy), so I spent much of the evening catching up with her. After the food, half a dozen people wanted to dance. They wanted to get the others up on the floor with them, and deemed my mixtape and my Capital Gold 60s and 80s Legends CDs not danceworthy enough, so I was sacked as DJ and replaced by Mike. He put on some Abba and Scissor Sisters, but it was still only the same half-dozen dancing.
Uncle Ron asked my mother to do the speech proposing the toast to Aunt Cynthia, and announced her as 'the old Mayor of Gosport' (for North American readers, in England 'mayor' and 'mare' are pronounced the same). At the end of her speech, my mother draped a silver '60' badge round Aunt Cynthia's neck - Cynthia turned to her and joked 'Mine is bigger than yours' (referring to me ma's mayoral chain). My mother shot back "Mine's a lot heavier". Towards the end of the evening someone got a tub of 'Party Forfeits' out, we all had to do one each (with varying degrees of success, and Damo flat out refused to do his one, 'sing the theme from a soap') then it was just winding-down chat, goodbyes and clearing up...
