Jaded

The kayaking day was divine, and it'll deffo be part of my visitor package. I will say one thing however, organising it is not always straightforward because the company that hires out the equipment is totally dependent on tides and you have to keep ringing them beforehand to check. Still, we did it and it was splendid.

Now though, you can stop being jealous, because my life is being recycled. Well, that's what it feels like.

Once upon a time, when I was ..well, not very young, but young enough to be studying and working and bringing up a child without the help of a partner. I had some dreary jobs in those days. But it didn't matter so much because we got by somehow and like I said, I was studying and so there was a light shining at the end of the tunnel.

I think the most dreary job of all was working for the Singer Co.(UK)Ltd. I had to control the inventory coming into the warehouse in Liverpool and going out to the shops. I did this in an office in Guildford. I also had to bring the freight accounts up to date, because they were not very auditor-friendly.
It was soul-destroying work, it literally sapped the very will to live from me. And it taught me an absolute rock solid respect for the people who spend their whole lives doing those kind of jobs. It was in the days when every position of responsibility was held by a man, all except Personnel, and that was always some head prefect type of woman. And even she was answerable to a 'Personnel Director' who was..yes, a man.

And there I am again, doing office work. The Brit spirit and a mighty fear of karmic retribution keep me going in, even though Kevin keeps saying,
'You don't have to you know.' And of course, when your ship is becalmed, the very air around you seems to set solid. The good ship 'get my qualifications to work in Canada' was positively zipping along despite all sorts of dangerous coral reefs, like transcripts and ..oh, well, more transcripts (I think I've already explained what those are in a previous whinge) and such like and then suddenly...oops, I can feel myself being pulled against my will into a Tennyson poem, 'the Revenge', oh my god, hang on....it's a vortex...

'....Sir Richard spake and he laughed, and we roared a 'Hurrah!' and so...
The little Revenge ran on, sheer into the heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below,
For half their fleet to the right, and half to the left were seen,
But the little Revenge ran on through the long sea-lane between,
Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laughed,
Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft running on and on..
'Til delayed by the mountain-like San Philippe,
That of fifteen hundred tons, o'oer shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns.....
Took the breath from our sails...and we stay'd...'

Yeah, well, I feel like the mountain-like San Philippe, in the guise of Surrey County Council, who have done the most astonishingly half-arsed thing and contracted their 'education services' out to private industry, have taken the breath from my sails, and I've stay'd. And I keep bugging them, and they keep ignoring me.

I'm whining for little reason really, I have been my usual curmudgeonly self and said that I won't go in the week that Alex arrives and that I'll only go in mornings afterwards.

And for pudding? Oh yes, I remember this one too. Tonight, I pull out of the office into a solid line of traffic. An arsehole driving a juggernaut the size of a football pitch whilst talking on his cell phone, oh my dear lord yes, why, just because it's your profession, would you have any standards at all? pulls THROUGH the already grid-locked lanes of cars and makes it even worse. And to add insult to bloody injury, on the radio some person is saying,
'And traffic trying to get from Annacis island is completely at a standstill...' are you trying to wind me up? Because it is so working. Is there someone in an unmarked radio van looking into my car? And then....cyclists pass us, the final nail going in. That should be meeeeee...... That always used to be me. Holy high blood pressure batman, can the situation get any worse? Of course it can. Of course it can. I am upholding road courtesy standards, letting people trying to pull out of their offices into the line. Except the ones on phones, I block them off, make hand gestures at them. Does one single person that I let in either let anyone else in or acknowledge me?
Just one, just one, a smiling Japanese man.
And he made up for all the rest.