Queuing

Isn't it funny how we queue when there's no need to. After a weekend at Mum & Dad's I planned my drive home via Tesco for food and fuel. When I arrived in the car park all the shoppers were standing outside the shop as the fire alarm was ringing. Unlike many other people I sensibly stayed in the car and waited until people started moving in - it was raining at the time as well. But others decided to get out of their cars and wait in the rain and seemed strangely drawn to what would appear to be the back of the queue so that they weren't cutting in the front when people were eventually allowed back in. I was waiting about 15 mins in my lovely warm car with music to pass the time. Once they were allowed back in though it was chaos as everyone started their shopping at the same time and moved around at roughly the same pace, while others searched for which aisle they had abandoned their trolleys in when the alarm had started! It reminded me that online shopping and delivery looks a very attractive alternative.

New Car Things

So it turns out I do have an alarm on my new car, as I discovered this morning - along with the rest of my neighbours. I blame Ruth for talking to me as she walked past so that I hadn't opened the door within the required 15 seconds before it locked again. Which I didn't realise until I then went to open the door and tested the alarm! I guess it's good that I know that it is there, and that I know how to stop it ringing as well. Although it did take a little while this morning while I got over the initial shock so my apologies to the neighbours, but it was after 8am so if I have to up then you should be too.

New Hair

After the hair trial last weekend didn't go quite as planned I've decided to leave my hair down for the wedding but get it cut shorter. I described to Kirsty, the hairdresser what I wanted - as instructed by Sal before I got there. At one point Kirsty did check with me that I was ok as I think there was a rather pained, scared, unsure etc look on my face, to which I replied 'It's very short isn't it?' I suppose it was a bit late then for her to stop so she just smiled and carried on chopping!

Thankfully she did a great job and I'm really pleased with it, 3 weeks for it to get a bit of length back and then it should look good for the wedding.

More West Wing....

I recently spent about 5.5 weeks watching all 7 series of The West Wing, morning, noon and night.  It was an obsession, I'd watch as soon as I got in from work, all evening, on the cross trainer, in bed - fall asleep watching it, rewind what I'd missed by being asleep and watch it while drying my hair in the morning, eating breakfast.... You get the idea.

Anyway this morning I linked through from another blog to Sam Allberry's blog because I was intrigued about a reference to a West Wing episode and Shibboleth that was mentioned and I found this post about West Wing episodes.  You need to read through the comments as well, I found it really amusing - and for the references that I couldn't quite remember I think it's time to start from Series 1 Episode 1 again....

No further questions

I got a letter a few weeks ago asking whether I would take part in a MORI poll about my recent experience with the criminal system. I quickly realised that it wasn't suggesting that I had committed a crime but it was referring to me being a victim of crime. It then took me a bit longer to realise what it was actually talking about because I didn't remember being a victim of crime. A little bit longer and I remembered, although I wasn't the one that reported the crime, I did end up having the longest witness statement and pretty much all of the evidence relating to a case at work that I had to investigate for disciplinary action into a fraud.

I had no idea whether the phone number I had given at the time was my old work phone or my own personal number so I thought I'd just wait and see whether anyone one rang. And they did, this evening. There I was with nothing much to do but watch TV and the phone rang and rather than saying I was too busy, I thought it would be quite interesting to see what they wanted to know so I was quite looking forward to spending the 15 mins required taking part in the poll.

First question - was I involved in the case because I am a police officer, expert witness, member of a legal body or the victim? Victim

Second question - is the status of the case still ongoing, closed with outcome or closed with no outcome? Closed with outcome.

Third question - am I over 18? Yes

Fourth question - what was the nature of the crime that was reported? Fraud / Theft

At that point the guy says because it was a fraud then that's it, no more questions! I was so disappointed, I wanted to give my comments about what happened and how rubbish I thought they had been. How even though I had a huge statement, and the police were very helpful at the start, I was never told of the date that the case was in court, or of the outcome. Instead I found out along with everyone else when it was on the front page of the local paper.

I guess I won't be a statistic this time.

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...

Pictures of the Year

I don't normally look at the Telegraph website, I usually end up sticking with the BBC news to find out what's happening in the world even though I find the whole set up of the site very annoying (but that's another story). Tonight I happened to link through to a story in the Telegraph and saw a link for these picures of 2008. I think they are amazing, and I'm also shocked at some of the things that are depicted here that I don't recall happening, like this volcano erupting in Chile -


Now why is it that I know from the news all the ins and outs of the divorce settlements of McCartney/Mills and Madonna/Ritchie and the weekly details of the X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing contestants but I didn't know about some of these disasters?

Fruit Salad Berthdays

It was my friend's birthday on Wednesday and as she's a school teacher and spends the day with 6 year olds she planned a Fruit Salad Day. Now why don't I get to do things like this during the day! The day before they had to draw their fruit bowls and plan what fruit they were going to put in them and so that she knew what fruit to buy so that on Wednesday they spent the whole day cutting up fruit arranging it in their bowls and then eating it! I'm going to suggest this at work!

For the time in between making fruit salad they had some free time so they sat at the craft table and knowing that it was her birthday most of them made her a card. Some of them were so cute! As they are still in the early years of school they've been taught different word sounds and how there are different spellings for the same sounds. They've not really got as far as knowing exactly which ones to use yet so my favourite card read "Happy Berthday Miss Larner, I hoap you have a good berthday"!

I think that was better than the letter I had in at work on the same day, from someone a lot older than 6 years old, which I will give full marks for consistency but was amazed at the spelling of Cud and Cuddent (for Could and Couldn't in case you hadn't guessed!).

Justice on the buses

As I left work slightly later today I decided I was justified in getting the bus home instead of walking. Obviously the moral of the story is that I shouldn't have been so lazy. As I was waiting to cross the road one bus came past me, pulled up to the bus stop and left while I was still waiting for the lights to change. So I decided to walk past that stop and go to the next one, after waiting 10 mins I could see a bus approaching, the other guy waiting had already stuck his hand out to stop the bus but as it still seemed to be moving quite fast I did the same. Which made absolutely no difference whatsoever. The driver obviously decided he just didn't want to stop there this evening. This isn't uncommon, it's a very busy route and if they're full already they just keep going. But this one wasn't! I could see empty seats as it pulled past me.

So rather than taking the hint that I should really be walking home, I sat back down on the bench and waited for the next bus to come along ten minutes later and got home at the same time that I would have done if I'd walked straight from work in the first place.

There was one amusing moment on the bus though while the opposite lane of traffic was queuing at the lights and one particularly smug looking chav finished his cigarette and threw it out his car window but it hit the side of the door as he did. I saw it drop to the road but he didn't and there was that second of mild panic that crossed his face while he tried to decide whether it was better to check that the cigarette hadn't fallen inside the car or move off as quickly as possible as the lights were changing!

Miising

I meant to take a photo of this poster I'd seen just to prove to you that it was real but I think they've all been taken down now. On a missing cat poster that was stuck on every other lamp-post on the streets around my house last week was titled MIISING. At what point of staring at the computer, getting the wording right, putting the picture in the right place did they not think it would be a good idea to do a spell check? The poor cat, maybe that's why it ran away....

At the end of the day

In my usual search around the BBC website at lunchtime today I found and article about 50 office speak phrases you love to hate. I've generally found that the phrase that winds me up the most is 'let's touch base' but the phase that I've heard a lot recently - and ashamed to say have said myself on occasion is 'we are where we are'. What a pointless phrase of course we are where we are - where else would we be! The phrase in the list that reminded me of Sally is no 13-14 - "The business-speak that I abhor is pre-prepare and forward planning. Is there any other kind of preparedness or planning?"

So then when I was on the bus home this evening I found myself listening to a woman repeating the phrase 'that's bang out of order' a number of times, which I also thought was a stupid phrase. When I got home I decided to look it up and found this site called The Phrase Finder so now I can look up all those random phrases and find out where they come from. Now I'm off to read about Ne'er cast a clout til May be out, hours of fun!

I blame Barry...

...for the inexplicable obsession with watching Deal or No Deal at the moment.

As Rob has pointed out before this is a ridiculous programme, there are no tactics that can be played other than the often used 'it's my special number so I'll save that until last' type plan for opening the boxes. But this week I have become obsessed with watching it because Barry is on it, so for 20 mins each day (I fast forward through most of it) I watch the programme and wait for the bit where Barry opens his box. Not exactly riveting stuff but I feel I need to do this to fully appreciated the full hour of the programme when it finally comes round to being 'Barry's show'.

Sad, yes but I will keep watching each one while I can sit here and point at the screen saying look there's someone I know on the telly!

Sympathy or not...?

After waiting what felt like hours for a bus home this evening, but was probably only about 25 mins, there were loads of people waiting so eventually a small old bus turned up instead of the usual ftr. Thankfully there were still some seats when I got on so off I went to sit down. The last couple to get on the bus ended up standing near the front and I noticed that she was very pregnant but nobody nearby seemed to take the initiative to offer their seat to her. The woman standing next to me then made a comment about how terrible it was that nobody gave up their seat for her and I and the lady next to me agreed that it was shocking. Then I realised that there I was, also happily sitting in my seat having thought that the 20 people (yes I did count them) in the seats between me and the pregnant girl should all volunteer before I did.

While I was having a dilemma as to whether I should stand up from near the back of the bus and go and ask her if she wanted my seat, I realised that there actually was a spare seat near where she was standing so she must have decided that she didn't want to sit down. I also remember that before she got on the bus she'd walked past me smoking her cigarette so I decided I didn't have that much sympathy for her. I'm sure the distance of one stop that she had to stand up for before more people got off and she got a seat did her and baby less harm than the number of cigarettes that she must have smoked throughout the pregnancy so far. So I decided I didn't need to feel guilty or sympathetic....fair or not?