Indiana Jones eat your heart out!

A few months ago I decided that it would be a good idea to encourage my darling boyf to expand his mind a little bit further than just re-building his precious classic Beetle\Karmann Ghia and so talked him into, or good-naturedly nagged him into, starting an OU course. “You’ll love it” I happily informed him, “it will give you something to do during the winter when it’s too cold to be in the garage”.

Now if I’m honest I have to admit that there was a certain ‘hidden’ reason for my enthusiasm, we haven’t been on holiday in absolutely ages and I did think that getting him involved in a world archaeology course might give me some ammunition when suggesting far-flung places to go and visit… I could just see myself gazing out at the pyramids from some posh hotel or soaking up the sun on the Mexican coast…

Well, it worked (kind of) and ‘we’re’ now halfway through the course (I say we as I’m sure I’m dreading deadlines and assignments just as much as he is) and I have now made a mental note that in future I should just keep my bright ideas to myself!

I have become an ‘OU widow’. Temporarily (I hope) sidelined in the pursuit of academic achievement… in addition to this ‘abandonment’, for at least one week each month I am required to transform into spell-checker, sounding-board and general ’secretary extraordinaire’! The living room is hidden under mounds of paper, post-it notes, highlighter pens and reference books and the tv is a thing of the past… the only archaeological excavations so far though have been seeing how deep you have to dig in order to find the cats hidden under the mounds of waste paper!

Then of course there is the dreadful wait once the assignments have actually been sent in… please god let him have got a good mark… Actually to be fair he’s doing fantastically well and averaging 90% in his assignments but I have to admit that I do miss just slobbing around in the evening doing nothing! And also when I envisioned ‘archaeology stuff’ my mind was veering more towards Indiana Jones than the British Museum…

Nevertheless, I am very proud of him and am praying that he does well when he gets his results (although I must admit, I’ve also got my fingers crossed that he doesn’t decide to do another course - at least not straight away!)

’tis the season to be jolly…

Something’s been bothering me for the past few days, I can’t seem to get my head around it and for some reason its really started to pee me off… The subject of my consternation… What is it about this time of year that seems to bring out the worst in people? Surely, in the approach to Christmas we should all be full of festive cheer, thinking happy thoughts and wishing goodwill to all? But nooooooo, it just seems to make some people grumpy, selfish and, sometimes, downright rude.

Take for example our office ‘xmas do’. I thought that this year it would be nice to organise something a bit different for everyone and in my naivety volunteered for the job – big mistake, big… HUGE!

Not only do you have to deal with responses such as “I will not be coming – at all – no matter when it is or what you do”, fair enough… but you also have to cope with the people who are happy to let you do all the work but then just criticise at every step of the way. Most people are happy that someone is actually doing the organising and will go along with whatever is decided, but its the odd one or two (and I do mean odd in all senses!) that just make you feel that you wish you hadn’t bothered! It doesn’t matter how far backwards you bend, they’ll always think they could have done better. Well lesson learned, next year I’ll let them do it!

I’m still going to have a good time with plenty of festive spirits and to my criticisers I’ll just raise my glass – or maybe my finger ;-) 

 Christmas… bah humbug!

The best laid plans…

So, I finally plucked up the courage to start my very own blog – not much of an achievement you might think, but when you spend most of your time in the world of ‘wordies’ where you are pretty much the only one who doesn’t write – in some shape or form – for a living, this is a pretty daunting prospect…

I hesitantly showed some friends my attempt at writing the ‘about me’ page, subconsciously hoping that they would shower me with praise for my witticisms and previously untapped, but blatently obvious, writing talent… not exactly what actually happened!

The first ‘kindly’ pointed out all my spelling mistakes in between laughing – she wouldn’t say about what… the second gave me the type of smile my mum used to give me when I took home a crayon scribble from nursery school, a mixture of misplaced pride and amusement. The third loyally saved the page to her favourites file but didn’t really say much – certainly none of them seemed worried I’d be poaching on their writing careers!

Anyway, I happily tootled off home, planning my first post and how to make myself sound fabulously intelligent, witty and creative… I happily powered up the computer and tried to connect to the internet when the bubble burst… no damn internet connection… all my ideas went up in smoke as I sat and fumed about the inadequacies of technology and how my friends would immediately think I’d bottled out of actually writing anything.

The evening was not completely lost though, the chilled bottle of white wine in the fridge, along with Gordon Ramsey effing and blinding at idiot restauranteurs for an hour did make me feel slightly more relaxed.

Ah well, the best laid plans and all that…