A little wobble...

I didn't sleep well last night and woke up feeling a bit down this morning. The change in Sheila had been worrying me, so when I went into work this morning, I asked Sheila exactly how stressful the job was. She had been in very early again, and I mentioned I'd hardly seen her drinking or getting up from her desk. She admitted it was stressful, and I said there was a fine line between being nicely busy and being overwhelmed with work. However, she did say that entering the timesheets would soon be a thing of the past, as this was becoming digitalised, thank goodness! I even found out I need to ask for holiday on a paper form!

I spent the rest of the day entering hours, and we had another Teams meeting at 11:00am with the payroll department, which nearly sent me to sleep. I was beginning to wonder if I'd made the right decision... What was also worrying was whether my contract had been received by the payroll department so that my wages would be sorted out by the next payday. I had a niggling feeling my contract hadn't been submitted in time, which could mean no pay this month, a very worrying prospect.

We worked through lunch again, and tried to sort out some of the problems on the timesheets, which had engulfed our desks again. I absolutely cannot work in a mess, or with loads of bits of paper everywhere. It just feels like I'm being overwhelmed!

I left at 4pm and felt even more miserable than this morning. When I got home, I burst into tears and said to Keith that I wished it was how it used to be... working for my old company, in my old office (not where we moved to) and doing my old job. It was an impossibility, but I needed to vent!

When Sophie arrived home, we sat in the kitchen and talked about my day. She quite rightly said that I had a history of getting tearful in a new job, but I admitted honestly that I really didn't want to work anymore; I'd had enough! I also said that I felt like I'd had no choice but to leave my old job, so I was trapped.

It felt good to let it all out, and by the time we had dinner, I felt a little better. To cheer me up, we watched an episode of Best Medicine, which was excellent. I've almost forgotten about Doc Martin now, as this new series is just as good!

Being the "newbie"!

It felt very strange indeed to be going back to the place I used to work this morning. It was the same, except it wasn't, if you know what I mean...

I said hello to Amanda, who was working on reception, and made my way upstairs to my new office. Our old office is being made into an extension of the gym, and we weren't allowed in there as it's a building site. Sheila was already in (she gets in at some unearthly hour), and we had a chat before making a start on my training. We had the office to ourselves today, but we still had a lot of people popping in with questions. One of the first things we did was gather up the timesheets to enter people's hours onto the computer. This turned out to be a time-consuming job that I really thought needed modernising! Surely, people could enter their own hours onto our payroll system and then get them checked by their supervisor? An app on their phones would work well!

We had a Teams meeting with two members of staff and spent the rest of the day sorting out the payroll. There were reams and reams of paper, and lots of them had to be checked again with a supervisor. This meant there were loads of sheets of paper everywhere with scribbled notes on some of them. I can't work in a mess! I'm hoping that things will improve when I work on my own, as Sheila can be a little disorganised!

I went to get a coffee mid-morning and was horrified to be charged £3.80 as I hadn't yet received my staff fob! I definitely won't be doing that every day! Can you imagine how much that would amount to every month?

Sheila doesn't take a break for lunch, so we both worked through, which I wasn't keen on. An eight-hour shift needs a break! She also didn't go and get herself as many cups of tea as she used to and hardly left her desk... hmmm!

At 4pm, I went to re-join Keith, who was waiting for me, and we had a much shorter commute home. I was parking on our driveway before 4:30pm! That was definitely a bonus!

Dinner tonight was an easy supper of fishcakes with mash, and then we watched World War II with Tom Hanks, which made for uncomfortable viewing. Sophie had wanted to watch the episode because it was about the resistance, but immediately wished she hadn't!

Making plans

Today has been spent catching up with housework and preparing tonight's dinner of chicken casserole and dumplings. It's been another sunny, dry day, and I'm certainly not having any trouble getting the laundry dry at the moment!

In the afternoon, we made an effort to sort out Keith's birthday celebrations. He is celebrating a special birthday this year and insisted on going to the coast so he could have fish and chips. But it had to be the coast in this country!

Sophie and I searched and searched, and I even went all the way around the coast of England to try to find somewhere suitable! Most houses were lacking in some way, and a lot were very expensive! I tentatively explored France, but he said he wasn't going to France; he wanted somewhere on the north-east coast! We eventually settled for an inland village near Alnwick and booked for his birthday weekend. From the cottage we booked, it's about forty minutes to the sea, so not too bad!

We also, sneakily, booked a few days in Antwerp in November (just Sophie and me) and a short weekend break to France in October for the three of us. Well, you have to have something to look forward to! I have to say that the bookings of these trips coincided with a little peach vodka cocktail! Life is to be enjoyed as much as possible!

We enjoyed the chicken casserole for dinner this evening, and I made some hearty dumplings to go with the dish, as well as roast potatoes and an array of vegetables. This weekend has been immensely enjoyable, and I started to feel a bit nervous about tomorrow!

Saturday indulgence

Sophie and I, after a lovely relaxed start to the day, drove to Market Harborough this morning for lunch and some shopping. We went to Just So Italian first and enjoyed a coffee and pastry each. As usual, the ambience was great and the food delicious.

Sophie didn't want to visit any charity shops today, as she felt she had enough clothes, so we concentrated on bookshops instead. Outside Waterstones, she ran into a friend from work, and they had a good look at the books on the ground floor, while I went up to the second floor and mooched about there. Sophie ended up buying several interesting-looking books, and we headed for the Oxfam next. On the way, we spotted a new art gallery, and we were drawn in! There were some beautiful works of art, and we spotted one by Damien Hirstent! A lot of the artwork was priced in the hundreds of pounds, but we saw a couple that were tens of thousands! I know that Market Harborough is an affluent town, and Leicestershire a rich county, but the gallery looked like it would be at home on any elite London street (and in fact, later, when I looked them up, they do!).

In the Oxfam shop we both bought books, and I picked up a great hardback book by Bill Bryson, "The Road to Little Dribbling." It was only £2.99! 

From the bookshop, we popped into an old-fashioned bedding/towels/carpet shop as I was on the hunt for king-size pillowcases, something I find difficult to find. I did find some, so I'll make a note for future reference. My pay this month has been dire, as I owed the company holiday pay (well, we did go for it in the first six months of this year!) and the expenditure will have to be carefully watched until I get paid again!

It didn't stop us from having lunch at the little Thai, though, and we enjoyed prawn crackers, fishcakes and chicken moneybags followed by Mussamun curry with chicken. We chose a small glass of wine each and a bottle of sparkling water. After we'd paid the bill, we called in to see Duncan, had wine tasting, and bought a bottle of wine each. It was great to chat with Nick and Duncan and catch up with their news.

Our last stop before going home was The Wine Shed, and we sat outside enjoying the lovely afternoon sunshine. It was relaxing to sit and natter and do some people watching!

Minutes before our parking ticket expired, we returned to the car and drove home via the scenic route (Maidwell and Draughton). Along the way, we stopped to take some photos of the sun-baked countryside:

Sophie and Olive

Back home, Keith was out watching Sileby play and Sophie and I pootled about before deciding to watch the film Copycat starring Sigourney Weaver and Dermot Mulroney. We don't normally watch films so early in the evening, so it made it a bit of a treat! While watching, we later enjoyed a plate of garlicky doughballs, and I made a strawberry Eton Mess. Delicious!

We finished our evening with The Proms and the beautiful Concerto de Aranjuez by Joaquin Rodrigo! It was so gorgeous, it brought a tear to my eye!

Saying goodbye

Typically, I was late leaving this morning and encountered the bin men in "cut-throat" alley in Holcot. Two vans in front of me reversed, so I did the same. I tried to make up time on the rest of the journey and arrived in the car park at work on the dot of 7:30am.

When Kathy arrived at work, I was given a lovely leaving card, a £50 voucher to spend at Beckworth, or any Blue Diamond garden centre, and a bottle of peach fizz. I tried very hard not to get emotional, and it was wonderful seeing all the kind messages people had written.

Unfortunately, the rest of the day was extremely quiet, and I had nothing, and I mean nothing, to do. It wasn't how I wanted my last day to be. I sent off the moan report and said how much I'd enjoyed working with everyone, and had some very kind messages in return. The rest of the time was spent tidying up my emails, and the time dragged. It was a huge relief when 4:00pm arrived, and we could leave. I bid a fond farewell to Nicola and Kathy and walked away for the last time. These are the things, for posterity, that I will not miss:

1. The horrible commute to work
2. The niggling worry that I won't find a parking space
3. Driving through the hospital grounds
4. The odour as I walk into the building. It's a kind of sewage smell
5. The horrible kitchen, which I can't ever see getting finished and being somewhere nice to sit and relax! The water from the tap is never cold!
6. Walking through the sports hall to get to our office and disturbing a class or people playing badminton
7. The heat we've suffered recently in the office and the lack of air conditioning
8. The dismal outlook
9. The wooden floor
10. The lack of drawers or cupboards to store our things. It was unbelievable that we weren't allowed to take our drawers with us
11. It took ages to fetch my lunch, and it was even worse if I had to heat it up in the microwave. Half of my fifteen minutes had gone by the time I sat back down at my desk!
12. No printer or shredder in the office
13. Nicola being so close behind me when she used to have her own office
14. No cleaner to empty our bins or keep the office clean
15. Getting off the hospital grounds to go home. On some occasions, it's taken me almost twenty minutes!
16. I hated going to the loo, as well!

I think the time has come for something different! 

I drove home and relaxed, and when Sophie arrived, we opened a bottle of English Pinot Noir rosé and munched on some lentil crisps with a salsa dip.

We watched Fake or Fortune again, and it was riveting! I'd like to see a whole series of fakers and forgers!

Dinner was a spicy chilli con carne, and after dinner we continued watching a Netflix documentary about the 2012 sinking of the Costa Concordia. I'll never look at cruise ships in the same way again!

Visiting old haunts

I offered to go shopping with Keith this morning, just for a change, and it was quite enjoyable! We went to Costa first and had a coffee (and an almond croissant for me), and then did some of the shopping in Aldi. There was an unpleasant aroma of "cows' bums" about this morning, so somewhere, a farmer was spreading manure over the fields!

We sped through Tesco and arrived home at midday. I pootled about for a while, and then drove over to Kettering to see Mum. She had been out at a garden centre on Monday, and I'd seen photos of her just with her Zimmer frame, so I felt a bit more confident taking her out. I decided we'd go for a drive as I really didn't fancy sitting in her stuffy room for an hour.

As usual, it was a gorgeous day; we'd seen some cloud this morning and the tiniest spots of rain, but it had come to nothing. We drove past her old house first, did a lap of our estate and then headed into Northampton via the Brixworth bypass. I wanted to go and see our old soft play business, and to be honest, I was shocked when I drove into the car park. The surface of the car park was still potholed, with one cone standing forlornly over one deep rut. The car park nearest the building, which used to have a lovely area of grass and trees (and where I used to feed the crows), had a huge amount of old dead wood and greenery piled up next to the fence... It looked awful. Were they trying to stop people from coming over from the area of wasteland behind the car park? It used to be so lovely here with the cut grass and trees!

There weren't many cars in the car park, but then, with the weather, I didn't expect anything else. It was a little worrying, I have to admit! We drove into Northampton and around the estate where we used to live. The houses and gardens looked a little scruffy, and when we stopped outside our old house, I couldn't believe how much the trees and bushes had grown. We used to be able to see the dual carriageway and the Weston Favell Centre from our garden, but not any more! I am amazed the little spinney opposite the house was still there! It was a perfect spot for new houses!

We left the estate and drove into the centre of Northampton and past Tricker's in St Michael's Road, where my Mum used to work. She was very happy there, and she wondered why she had left. It was great to see her recognising our old haunts and looking happy!

Before taking her back, I decided to call at the reservoir car park and buy an ice cream for us, but the van wasn't there! Typical! We had both thoroughly enjoyed our little trip, and we'll definitely do it more often!

Back home, I did some housework and then tried to cool down in the kitchen by having all the doors and windows open. It was an easy dinner tonight: chicken Kievs, asparagus, long-stem broccoli and crushed new potatoes.

After we'd eaten, we watched an episode of World War II with Tom Hanks. Tonight's episode was about the aerial bombardment of Germany, with Hamburg obliterated by bombs and fire. A million people were made homeless, and I hadn't realised that the city was so badly affected. I am learning a lot about the war by watching this and just wish I'd studied history at A-level!

Still a bit mopey...

I wasn't in the best of moods this morning because I was dreading a GP appointment this afternoon to see about a mole on my back, and I was facing a load of online training courses for my new job. I snapped at Keith, and then apologised, so it wasn't the best of mornings! 

I knuckled down and did as many courses as I could, so at least I've made inroads into them! Most of them were common sense, and the health and safety one was something I used to deal with when we ran our own business. I suppose the courses are aimed at young people starting work!

Keith offered to come to the surgery with me, which I appreciated. I was very anxious about the mole, and Sophie had wanted me to go after worrying about it for ages. I was seeing the lovely doctor I'd seen before, and he took a good look at the mole, which is on my left shoulder and under where my bra strap lies. He was able to put my mind at rest immediately, saying it was some kind of sebaceous wart (it would be, wouldn't it? So sexy...) and that it was common in people over 40. It was completely benign and nothing to worry about, but if it ever became a problem, one of the specialist doctors at the surgery could whip it off.

I felt a huge sense of relief, and then he went through the details of my abdominal scan on Saturday, which showed no problems at all with all my internal organs. Phew! This has been a year of poking, prodding and pricking, and I hope that I can stay away from the surgery for a while now, although I had to book a blood test in August to see how my liver is doing after my indulgences!

Keith suggested a drink at the village pub, and I readily agreed. I stuck to Guinness Zero, and we sat in the window and chatted. The pub was very quiet, and it was a lovely hour of relaxation. Maybe we should do this every Wednesday!

Back home, I pootled about, did another online course and tried to stay cool. The weather has been hot, dry and sunny again, but it's supposed to get a little cooler over the next few days.

Sophie cooked a delicious nachos and chicken dish, and Keith and I watched two episodes of Best Medicine after we'd eaten. In the second episode, Martin Clunes made an appearance as Doctor Best's father, with a silly American accent. I felt a bit confused, to be honest! Why wasn't he with Louisa?!