Book book...

Our plan for the weekend was to go out and about today and have a relatively quiet day tomorrow. I’d set the alarm so that we could have good early start. Well  when I got up at about 6 to go to the bathroom it was pretty foggy out there so i went back to bed and unset the alarm. If it’s a nice day tomorrow we’ll have an early start.

So what did we do today. Well I took advantage of the fact that it was Saturday and that the laundry in our building was open so to begin with I did the washing. Even though we have a decent sized back yard there’s no line out there. So even though it goes against my greeny principles it’s everything in the drier.  

Then I thought I’d wander around to the local library to do a bit of family tree research on their computors. Most libraries have free access to Ancestry; unfortunately I discovered that this one doesn’t.

Talking about the local library,  it is under threat of closure. Why, because all the councils here are having to tighten their belts and make very significant budget cuts. The powers that be have decided that our library has to go. Ours isn’t the only one either, oh dear no. And there have been many campaigns to save the local book repository and so far I don’t think any of them have been successful. It would be such a shame if this one were to close. Even though it is a stand-alone library, and we cannot interloan books it would still be a great loss to the community if it were to go.

http://uppernorwoodlibrary.org/

We see so many adds on TV begging for money for this charity or other and asking for just a few pounds a month by direct debit.  Pathetic animals or poorly children are pictured to tug at our heartstrings. Well I say it’s all very well to help those overseas charities, but isn’t charity supposed to state at home.

End of week drama...

This has to fall into the 'would you believe it, category. One of the politicians advised motorists to fill and store jerry cans of petrol at home, Because of a ‘potential’ shortage that might be caused by a possible tanker driver strike. As you can imagine this caused a major rush on petrol suppliers and what do you know a fuel shortage. Unfortunately it has also created a dangerous and potential fatal situation for one woman. She was decanting the fuel in her kitchen with the gas cooker on. I was going to say a sure fire recipe for disaster, but thought that the pun was in bad taste. What I will say instead is that it was inevitable that there would be an awful outcome. The woman is hospital with severe burns to 40% of her body.

Not only that the taker driver could earn  up to an extra £250 a week in overtime after the powers that be allowed them to work extra hours to get fuel to struggling garages.

I’ve had a pretty good Friday. This morning plenty of clients to keep me busy, too busy coming up to midday though, so instead of going for my planned lunchtime walk I decided to get the mornings work out of the way. Just had time for a quick dash to the local supermarket.

I had planned my day so that I could spend the last hour entering names onto a spreadsheet for a client satisfaction survey. Got to do one of them every quarter. Well those plans went right out the window; they would have if I had been able to open one. Just on 1600 got message from reception about a distressed client demanding to see one of the occupational health nurses. Now said occy health person was absolutely run off her feet and messaged reception asking if I could see her. Only thing I could do was to comply. Short version is I had to trot out my very very rusty counselling skills and then try to contact one of the counsellors.

Text and email messages flying hither and yon and a few phone calls to receptionist at the site where he was working to make sure he actually saw the email and just before it was time for me to leave at 1700 all was sorted . Entering those names will just have to wait for another day.

Well I never knew that ...

Do you know why the cricketing bowler bowls over arm? Well I didn’t,  until The Man told me. It never ceases to amaze me the interesting facts and figures he knows

It is, he informed me, because the game was originally played by women, OK I know that the fairer sex play this game today, but I am talking historically. Apparently they employed the over arm technique, because if the girls in their long and often full skirts bowled underarm their garments would hamper their delivery.  Howzat!!

Talk to him about the sky and he will give you speed and distance, size and all sorts of facts about the celestial bodies that we admire. For instance the sun is 93 million miles away, depending on whether or not we are in apogee. It takes 8 minutes for the light from the sun to reach us. We go around the sun, the moon goes around us. And we are rotating at about 1000kms per hour. Goodness me it is enough to make you head spin, well I does mine.

I have to say that one of the things we do miss about NZ is the clarity of the skies. Our difficulty here isn’t just from the light pollution either. Even on a blue sky day we are aware of the lack of clarity up there . Looking out from our third floor window into the far distance the view looks smudged, an effect created by particles in the atmosphere. At first we thought that there must have been a fire somewhere but we know better now. It is caused by pollution. I wonder if it is because there is not enough wind to blow it away.

We experienced similar skies when we lived in PNG, where there was defiantly very little wind, because it was only a few degrees off the equator. The only seasonal difference there was between the wet and dry .The trees held their leaves all year round and everything flowered or fruited all year round too. The sea was another matter. In the wet season it would become quite rough, often too much for our little boat. And there would be a bit of a breeze. In the dry, the sea would always be just about flat. Calm enough for us to take our 13 foot cathedral hull boat out more than 30 miles off the coast, that’s a bit more distance than across the Cook Straight. Wouldn’t dare do that in NZ even in a big boat. Our only major consideration was that we had to have enough fuel to get us out there and back. Thanks to The Man’s excellent planning we never once got caught short, always returning with fuel in the tank. In some cases even enough to tow some other less well planned travellers back.

Nothing to report, well not much...

Not a lot to write about today. A quiet day at work, but it did give me a chance to catch up on some of the admin stuff I have to do.' Well will you look at that' I said to myself when I found a fiver in the drawer underneath the papers. A five pound note. Isn’t it funny that back home in NZ we don’t call a five dollar note a fiver or a ten dollar note a tenner. Somehow it just sounds wrong.

Money has some funny names, well I think it does. A tanner was a sixpence, and probably still is. In NZ a shilling was a ‘bob’. Is there anyone out there who remembers 'bob-a-job week’? It was something the boy scouts used to do. No boy scout today would think it worth his while to do any job for a mere ten cents. Though according to Wiki (so it must be true) ‘bob’ is British slang. And why do the Brits call a pound a quid. I ever did like that word. Wiki has something to say about that too. 

Quid (singular and plural) is used for pound sterling or £, in British slang. It is thought to derive from the Latin phrase "quid pro quo".^[3] A pound (£1) may also be referred to as a "nicker" or "nugget" (rarer).

I get ha’penny or a half-penny, but why on earth a half of a halfpenny was called a farthing. Aha. Good old Google. It has something to do with a fourth or a quarter. I have also discovered that a florin, which is what we used to call a two shilling piece was also a British term, haven’t clue why thought. Google again tells me that it is from the Latin for flower. Don’t get the connection there at all. So while I’m on financial bender a five shilling piece was called a crown so a two and sixpenny piece was half a crown. I never remember spending a crown but the half version definitely rattled around in my pockets. .

That makes me think of a science teacher I had at Hutt Intermediate School. Mr Ritzema. He was a long nosed moustachioed chap with a funny accent. Ask me why money makes me think of him, go on… Oh alright I’ll tell you. During a science class when he was telling us about acids he asked if any of us had a penny he could use, and yes I was first to whip out my purse and offer him one of mine. He carefully put the coin into a small beaker of acid. When he drew it out it was almost paper thin. I was the envy of my classmates and many of them offered to buy it from me, but I didn’t want to part with it. Still don’t.  I very clearly remember my very first science lesson with him. It was all about the amoeba and paramecium.

I tod you I didn’t have much to write about today.

Vroom vroom...

Quite a chilly start to the day today, but with the promise of warmth later. And it did live up to its promise too. Not that I actually got out to bask in it. I had intended to go for a walk at lunch time but like those best laid plans of mice and men, mine went gang aft agley too and I wound up working through part of it. 

I had intended to finish up dead on time so that The Man, who was coming to meet me, and I would be able to catch the 1715. All went well until about 1645 when a chappie came in with a badly upset gut. Well what could I do but see him.

We had hoped to get to Crystal Palace Park earlier than we did, to see something of the movie  makingthat is being made there. We had chanced upon the preparations of it on Sunday on our way down to the station. The chap minding the gate said that the crew were filming part of a movie that would be called ’Rush’, and would be about formula three racing. On our way home that day we strolled through the park, past the start finish line. No cars or people just hay bales, advertising banners, lots of seating and tents. We were excited to see the covered transporter trailers and to learn that we might just get a look at the cars on Tuesday on our way home.

So needless to say I was disappointed when I wasn’t able to get away from work on time. We’d gotten the West Croydon train home, which meant that we got off at Anerly and caught the bus up the hill to Crystal Palace Station. OMG will you just look at that. The man nudged me, goodness me even I was surprised, there at the bus stop among the other people waiting for the bus was a young woman with her boobs hanging on to her top for dear life. Any further out and she might as well not have had any top on at all. She got on the same bus as we did and it was interesting to watch peoples reaction as the got an eyeful, well more than an eyeful.  

At the park we were initially disappointed thinking that the cars had been put away as it looked as though the crew had packed up a lot of their equipment. But the full throated roar of an engine told us that at least one car still had its freedom. We were rewarded when several of them were either towed or driven past us on their way to the trailers. Now we can’t wait to see the movie. 

Bikes Barbershop and BBC comedy

I meant to tell you about the skate boarders and trick cyclist we saw at the Clissold Park yesterday. There were two ‘pits’ for want of a better word. In the smaller one a little chap no more than about ten years old was whizzing around very fast, up and over the humps and hollows like a professional. We were both very pleased to see that he had a skid lid on. The bigger pit had steeper sides and more humps and hollows that the smaller one. In this one a group of cyclists showed off their tricks and turns and had the occasional spill too. There was a trio of guys who played follow the leader and had a couple of near misses. Something that did surprise us was the age of some of these guys; they would have had to have been all of thirty years old.

Today courtesy of British Summer Time we are back to getting up in the dark so we didn’t know if it was foggy or not.  By the time we were ready to leave the sun had gotten up, and yes it was a bit foggy. As usual I got to Canary Wharf early and was soon being handed my regular coffee. The staff are great and remember the regulars orders. So there I am, sat in my usual spot by the window skyping the kids back at home in NZ. The store usually has music playing, but I could hear another different sound over the top of the in store music.  Just outside the window was a quartet of chaps singing. Yes that's right singing. Like they had spontaneously burst into song. I watched them for a while and realised that they weren’t on their own. Their entourage consisted of three or four young men and women. By the time I had finished my coffee and was ready to head to work they had moved their barber shop harmony to the other side of the station. Curiosity got the better of me, well it would you too, and I could now see that they all had purple tee shirts on with ‘Bullied by the Boss’ written across the front. It turned out that they were promoting a book of the same name; According to the promo literature they were handing out the book was part memoir part self-help book. 

Late last year we went to the BBC to watch the filming of a TV version of an old radio show. Called ‘Just a Minute’. We had just about given up seeing it come up in the TV listing. And finally tonight it did.  Tonight’s episode wasn’t the one we saw being made, but there is another episode scheduled to  screen tomorrow night.