Uhm - so it's a rather been social week.....

Tuesday
So, after having a very, very relaxing bank holiday weekend getting up too nothin much, it was back to the grind.

Dorian was back in the office, I was back to more meetings, chasing up I.T., filling out security forms, chasing up the recruitment agency...... I was also trying to figure out how the hell to connect my new shiny phone to my work PC to sync up my calender.

So, whilst I'm sitting at my desk, fiddling unsucessfully with my phone, the Bernard pops down to gas with Dorian.... I can't resist playing with the camera function on my phone!!

Well hello there Dorian hmm.... very interesting!

hmmmm..... are you sure?

and after that brief encounter, time is marching on and before I know it's nearly home time! And of course since it's Vicki's second last day in the office before she leaves for bigger and better things..... well escaping Treasury is a start..... the immortal words are mentioned.

Pub?

Wine?

Old Monk?

Why, it would be rude not to!... so Vicki and I head down to the Old Monk for a couple of glasses of wine and we start to recall childhood summer holidays.

Now, for those who don't hail from north of the border, 'going to the Berries' will probably not mean that much to you;

Pickin yer drail clean?

Berry up?

Nabbling?

nippin up the drail for the lavvie?

Catching the Berry Bus at 6am in the morning?

Jam pieces?

It was bloody hard work as you can see from the photo above of me and my wee sister returning back after a hard day picking raspberries. Knackered!

Going to the berries consisted of catching the berry bus at 6am, getting bussed to a field and picking raspberries until it was berry up time around 3pm. There were no toliets, no facilities what so ever. You just stood in a field and nabbled all day, taking a break for lunch around 12, eating out jam pieces before going back to picking more rasps.

Och those were the days.....................

Glen also pops down to the Monk for a quick one, and then we all depart our seperate ways and head home.

Wednesday
Well, I thought the day was going quite well. Listening to Pink Floyd's 'Pulse' , album on the way into work. Meetings went okay. I was getting through my work okay..... then the Agency phoned.

One of the contractors I hired that was supposed to be starting working for my this coming Monday has pulled out.

Great.

Now I have to go through the whole fucking thing again.

• More CV's to look at.
• More interviews to do.
• More security forms to fill out.
• More notification forms to fill out.
• Another induction session to do.
• More phone calls to the Agency

It's just depressing.

So with that piece of good news, I sit at my desk and quietly fume, and grumble, grumble, grumble. Well until, Mary et al came over to Vicki's desk with a bunch of flowers and little leaving speech for her last day!

Awwwww....... Vicki wasn't expecting this!

He he he he he......

So, after all of that we head down to the Old Monk for Vicki's leaving drinks.

So, Vicki grabs a seat in the back of the pub...... Fenn turns up

and Glen, then Sunil with his new shiny phone, which Fenn loves

and I think Carmel also like Sunil's shiny phone!

So, after a couple of bottles of wine, Glen, Vicki and I jump in a cab and head up to Nusa Dua for a lovely malaysian/indonesian meal, washed down with another couple of bottles of wine.

A fantastic meal and converstion flows for another couple of hours and before we know it, it's gone 11pm! Ah, time to head home as we are all getting a bit worse for wear....

No, that would be the sensible thing to do wouldn't it?

And when have I ever not done the sensible thing?..... ;-)

I say my goodbye's to Glen & Vicki and head over to the CroBar and wait for Tim & Mark to turn up.

Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh Boy.

Thursday

I'm not sure what time I got home. But since that bar doesn't close until 3am, and the fact that I didn't wake up until after 1pm kinda gives me a rough idea.

God I feel rough.

Oh I feel bad.

Just as well, Jim, Kieran & Joanne are all off on leave, and Dorian is working from home today!

Oh I feel like hell.

Bed, sleep. Headache tablets. Sleep. No, it's not happening.

I venture downstairs to see what I have to eat in the house. Not much. It's hangover food time. All I have is diet coke and a pack of digestive biscuits.........I'm really living up to this health kick thing.

Ah ha... I see I have some mail. Bills, bills, oh and not a bill, a big brown envelope. What is this??

I rip open the envelope...... what is this?

Ah, it's my child! I have a child!

Confused yet?

I decided to do that world vision thing, where you sponser a child in the poorer areas of the world so that they can have an education, clean water and clean home etc etc....

So, I am now the proud sponser of Nafissa Djibo in Niger. I've been sent a picture, and an info pack about the whole sponser thing......I'll read through the rest of the details after I've recovered from my hangover! Head hurts too much.

Friday

Back into work. Back to chasing up various people, back to meetings! And yet another leaving do to go to!

This time, it's Claude's leaving do. He's leaving DCLG, and moving to DfT to work in Railways. Do DfT know what they are letting themselves in for? ;-). I meet up with Kate in the Litten Tree, who is still on the 'sparkling water' - cheap round for me then!

Claude eventually turns up - typical! Even late for his own leaving do! But that's Claude for you! :-)

and then Ken

and Nishi

and eventually Tim

So we now have a full house and the banter flows;

but I think Ken got a bit too much of the amber necter.....

Cause, he seemed to get drunk really quickly! Kate, Nishi & Tim didn't stay for too long, and not soon after they left the rest of us finished up and headed out seperate ways.

Ken & Claude wandered up to Walkers of Whitehall to meet up with Bumi and I jumped on the tube and bus home! Home by 9:45pm on a Friday night.

Today

I have no plans for today. Rest, clean the house, do a spot of washing and just relax. The weather ain't to great today so I reckon I'll just stay in, watch TV and potter about the house. If I'm really adventurous I may even pop out and grab a pizza later!

Organic, Organic, Organic - Stokey Darling, Stokey!

Have I lived in Stokey too long?

What's happening to me?

Remember I told you that I picked up some messages from Fresh & Wild on Saturday. And here's was me taking the piss at all the Stokey 'trendy media types', buying nothing but organic and reading the Guardian newspaper?

I made myself a ham piece yesterday, with;

• Organic Bread
• Organic Salad
• Organic Honey Roast Ham

Oh my god!

I never knew ham could taste so good! The bread, the salad - the flavours!

What have I been missing all these years? I never knew food had all these flavours.... How could I possibly go back to supermarket processed junk?

Even the organic milk tastes so much better.

Was this how food tasted in the old days? Christ, they are right - it was never as good as in the old days!

Okay, so it is more expensive than the normal supermarket stuff, but will my tastebuds ever forgive me if I go back to Sainsburys, Waitrose, Tesco's........??

Have I become a fully fledged stokey person? Well, I still read the Independent so there is hope for me yet........