Holiday!

I've had a lovely long weekend at Sal's. After a very long drive straight after work on Wednesday night, it was lovely to wake up on Thursday knowing that I had 4 full days before I had to be back in work. We had a lot of wedding discussions, trying to figure out what shoes I will wear, and going through the long list of questions that I had pulled together from being with Mum the weekend before. After hearing and reading so much about Jill it was also good to meet her at last!

Friday evening we drove over to Shepton Mallet to see Alicia in her theatre school performance of Old School Musical which was a selection of songs from the musicals - a perfect evening for Sal and I. The show was really great and Alicia did really well, she looked like she was really enjoying herself the whole way through.

Saturday we went to Winchester with Jill to The Pottery Cafe. Although after the last time Sal and I did this we said that we would have to plan our patterns before we went again, we didn't. But we didn't take as long as last time deciding what it was that we were all going to do. Again I did finish much faster - my attention to detail obviously not as good as Sal's, or maybe I just pick simpler designs to do.... Pictures to follow when we pick up the final glazed pots.

It was another lovely weekend to get to spend some time with Sal, next time let's go to New York!

Tribunal

One experience I hope to never have to go through is giving evidence in an employment tribunal. Given the fact that I'm a HR Adviser I think this wish will be a little unrealistic. One of my colleagues, Emma had to go through the experience in December and we spent three days watching the conclusion of the case this week.

I always knew that it was similar to a court room situation but I was nervous just watching and listening to the barrister's firing questions, being very arrogant and condescending (theirs not ours) and starting sentences with 'I put it to you...' And I've decided I never want that sentence to end 'I put it to you Miss Greenwood'.

So I'm going to have to work even harder to make sure that all of my cases are dealt with so well that they never get that far, or work really hard on making sure that any that do turn into a claim are settled well before it gets to a hearing. For anyone that's wondering the outcome of this case will be decided on 14th April - and it's not looking good for us.

Funny Story

The funniest story that I heard this week came from Ruth, it was one of those 'this happened to a friend of a friend' things but it wasn't that far removed so that makes me believe that it is true.

A friend (of a friend) was looking after someones house and dog while they were on holiday.  During this time the dog, which was very old, died.  Now I thought that was enough for the story but there was much more than that....

It was fairly late so she decided that she would take the dog to the vet in the morning to have him cremated so that she had something to give to the owners when they came back from holiday. (Not being a big pet lover myself I find this a little strange but anyway).  So she put the dog in a hold all, in the back of the car overnight.  After driving to the vet's the next day she got out of the car and went to get the bag (with dog) out of the boot.  By this time rigor mortis had set in and the bag was very heavy so as she was struggling to move the heavy holdall from the back of the car a guy came up and asked if he could help.  He commented that it was heavy and asked what was in the bag.  As she didn't want to admit that she had a dead dog in the bag, she decided that it would be better to lie and say that it was a laptop instead.   

Big mistake, the guy ran off with the bag stealing what he thought was a laptop!  I'd love to know what happened after that when he stopped to look in the bag...