day 1 proper

Hello.

It’s the 26^th. In my infinite wisdom, to avoid being thrown out by total lack of sleep the previous day and because of the 4 hour time difference, I set my alarm last night for 4 hours different than I would normally get up. This would allow me a leisurely 9am breakfast, stroll around the island and then spend the morning on the beach before avoiding the midday sun in the lobby on Twitter and Facebook. I shall continue with this shortly..

Anyway, I can only blame sleep deprivation for the fact I set my alarm for 12.30pm. BST. We’re four hours AHEAD here. NOT behind. So if I hadn’t been woken by noisy neighbours at 9am Maldives time, I’d have doubtless been rising about 4pm today, thoroughly pissed off.

I’ve done a bit of tentative snorkeling today. I waited til the Japanese neighbours had finished so as not to make a show of myself (everyone except a handful of guests is Japanese). So I went in, trying to remember how to breathe ONLY through my mouth. It’s been 3 years since I last snorkeled. It’s not Lily Beach here. We were spoilt on our honeymoon with the amazing reef there. Here the fish are sporadic and so far I’ve only seen 2 really exciting fish of notable size but then I’ve not been brave yet with how far I’ve swum.  However, I’m utterly relaxed. It is odd going for breakfast etc alone but not awful. It means I don’t waste the day there in the restaurant.

I took some pics of the frangipani and hibiscus flowers by the restaurant. I love the flora here!

I’m off to the lobby in a bit to upload my next batch of pics and to catch up with the wider world. I’m allowed to do it. I’m here alone. What was sad was the number of Japanese couples last night sat engrossed in their own ipads/smartphones, ignoring each other. I wonder how many of them are on honeymoon???

In other news, I won’t die of thirst. The hotel do indeed provide water, contrary to what numpty at the booking office told me. I am squirrelling it away so as to get my full quota and not be dried up/be forced to sell a kidney to pay mini bar prices. I also had ‘post’ this morning by way of a dear Virgin customer satisfaction letter. Someone will apparently ring me in the next couple of days to ensure everything is tickety boo.

Once again, I know I will be longing to return to the Maldives as soon as I’ve left.

Holiday Blog

So lucky people, I’m going to blog the next ten days in an attempt to keep myself occupied whilst alone on holiday and because I’ve been totally shit at keeping my blog up to date.

I’m in Dubai. In Terminal 3. BST is 5:27am. It’s 8:27 in DXB. The gate isn’t open yet and the flight is at 9:45am DXB time.

I’ve had shit all sleep having been sat bolt upright and with a useless pillow that won’t stay up against the aeroplane seat. I was also sat next to two of the dourest Asian women in the entire world.

So now I’m in DXB. Trying hard not to sulk about the fact that one of my very best friends lives here and I won’t see them. I’m just passing through en route to Male and they're passing through the UK as I write this and back here tomorrow. Gutted. Actually gutted. It’s been nearly 2 years since I saw them in person.  I hate being here and not visiting the city because I love it. I seriously considered moving here. Accepted a job and everything.  Then turned it down. After the year I’ve just had, I’m not sure if that was a mistake or not.  It’s hot here. We got off the plane at about 7am and it was already approaching the mid 30’s temperature wise.

On the upside I can’t see a plethora of young, beautiful and in love couples. There are a lot of locals and Indians to whom the concept of queuing is apparently alien. There’s also a family. This is bizarre to me. The Maldives is most definitely NOT a family destination. Make that two families with small children in tow.  Apparently we’ll be boarding soon. The gate is open now!

Next time I write I’ll be on Furanafushi Island! Whoop Whoop!

Ta ta

So I’m here. It’s 1:25pm BST but 5:25 local time. The sun’s going down and there is a storm. It just came over all of a sudden but the palm trees are being blown all over the shop. I’ve had a swim, had a paddle, seen a few fish (but not many) and read my book on the beach feeling utterly relaxed.

On arrival at the airport I was personally met, bags carried and then taken directly to the hotel via speedboat where they proceeded to fleece me for $900 ‘blocked’ on my credit card. Hahahahh dream on Sheraton. I’m planning not to have a bill at the end. I’m paid up and half board.

I wasn’t even motion sick on the boat which is incredible. My room is lovely. I’m directly on the beach and upstairs above another hut. My view is gorgeous. My plan was to pack, wander over for dinner and then sit in the lobby area online and already start boring the arse off everyone with my pics. I’m going to wait for this storm to pass a bit. I should get some pictures!

25 more things about me

 I was going to write about my new job today but have decided it's far too early in the day.
I have nothing interesting to say and so what could be more dull than 25 more things about me.

1. I never had a crush on a school teacher/lecturer. However in my final teaching practice, my mentor had a crush on me and made a massively inappropriate pass at me whilst 'helping me' apply for jobs. Having been told this was not on, he turned up to my Saturday job with kids in tow to apologise. Spot on! 
2. I lived for 18 months in a caravan. Some days I'd just come home and cry. The floor was rotten, there were rats and often no hot water. I did it to be with my fiancee. Never again.
3. I have been told over the years that I look like- Elizabeth Hurley, Neve Campbell & Uma Thurman. Less joyous was being told I looked like Monica Lewinsky and Richard Vranch. (http://richardvranch.com/)
4. I have changed my name by deed poll twice. I will never change my name again. It is too much agro - not even if Sam Worthington goes down on one knee.
5. My own marriage proposal was made outside a nightclub toilet.
6. I spent Millennium New Year in London. It was one of the all time worst nights ever. We lost my 4'11 friend within minutes and then all the phones crashed. It was a shit night spent wondering how we'd explain to our friend's parents that she was 'somewhere' on the Embankment amongst 999,999 other people.
7. My claims to fame are - I have met Derren Brown. I shook his hand, asked him a question and he was perfectly lovely. The drummer from Dexys' Midnight Runners played for my Dad's band Windjammer before making Come on Eileen and other hits ????
8. Once when the girls who lived above my flat in Bath kept me and my bf awake at hideous o clock when we both had to get up early the next day, I cut their power. It was funny.
9. My nose is pierced. I'll be 34 soon. I had it done at 19 and every so often I wonder if I'm too sad and old for it. On the day I had it done, so did my friend. She decided the stud was too big and removed it within 10 minutes to replace with smaller stud. There was a lot of blood and some terrified children in Sainsbury's.
10. I am phobic about blood tests, well specifically veins. I once passed out at school watching a kidney dialysis procedure on video. To this today I have to be accompanied by my mum and have several staff restraining/calming me. It is a major NHS operation to take a few mls of blood from me.
11. My favourite book is Jerome K Jerome's Three Men In a Boat. I read it after I was told I was a philistine for not having read it. This was also on final teaching practice. My mentor was oddly jealous of the male teacher who told me about the book and so ceased speaking to me for a day.
12. I have an extensive 'self help' section in my personal library. FYI don't bother with The Sedona Method .... EVER- it is the the biggest load of horse crap I have ever read. Apart from when I was loaned a Jackie Collins book for 'escapism' and couldn't read beyond page 50. Drivel. Utter drivel.
13. I am allergic to horses. They hate me. They always bite me.
14. I invented Bearngo. Bingo with a Bear Grylls theme. Our secretary at work had a major crush and it was her 40th birthday theme. I also made 'Bear' party bags. I'm a saddo.
15. My primary school once sat me between the two naughtiest boys in the class on a school trip for my 'good influence' on them. I wound them up good and proper and they got in worse trouble than ever before.
16. Never fall asleep next to me on a coach trip. You will wake up in full make up. One ex boyfriend did not find this amusing.
17. At a fireworks party, my family thought it would be funny to spell out the bad c word with sparklers. It was funny. 
18. I have owned 3 cars since I learned to drive. Two of them have been Ford KA's. I drive one now.  Oddly enough I bought it EXACTLY 9 years after the first one...to the day.
19. I am interested in Buddhism. When I did the Metta Bhavana practice - my 'neutral person' became a friend and my 'difficult person' apologised to me out of the blue and recently wrote me a gushing letter of thanks and appreciation. Powerful stuff. 
20. I took my first flight abroad at the age of 12. I travelled alone and stayed with a family I didn't know but who were friends of my father. This horrifies some people but I think it was a good thing. 
21. This year I'm taking a 10 day holiday alone to the Maldives. I don't need to sell my gran after all.
22. I'm studying for British Sign Language 1. Yesterday I learned the word cauliflower - I'm sure it'll be very useful.
23. I should be on commission from Danny Wallace. I have probably shifted more of his books than Waterstones. I tell EVERYONE to read his stuff. Danny is my god. 
24. I have a blue belt in kick-boxing.
25. This year I invested in prescription sunglasses. It is a revelation! I can see AND drive in the sun!
    

Worse things happen at sea....

I'm doing a nightly meditation under strict instructions from my mother. Once again I have reached 'danger zone' on my worry and stress levels and something has to give. With luck it won't be me.
Every night when I go to bed, I have a 15 minute guided meditation with soothing music and some nice person saying nice things to me for a quarter of an hour. It's worth a shot. It's certainly nicer than Apeface next door hollering and banging on the wall.
I've mentioned Apeface before, in my post Leopards never change their spots. He's a prat of the highest order. I now have a battle on with my neighbour who is trying to pretend her dumb-arse boyfriend Apeface is not REALLY living there (her benefits will suffer) and that he isn't REALLY keeping us all awake. Silly little girl- I will win.

A friend of mine said to me today that despite this and other things I am currently worried about, Worse things happen at sea and that there are monsters there too. Apparently worse than the kraken, though I find that hard to believe - Unless of course you mean the woman who until then end of February, I worked for- now she I DO believe is a monster. Incidentally, last man standing at my previous workplace is no longer standing. We did all jump ship as I predicted. Time will tell whether jumping into monster ridden seas was a better option than working for one.

Meanwhile I wait for my CRB check to come through and have never been more painfully aware that a watched pot never boils. I'm as squeaky clean as they come so it's all very frustrating.
Next Tuesday I have to travel to Cambridge to register at another agency. I cannot WAIT to get this all sorted. This leads me nicely to my next thought...

 I have also been thinking a lot about William and the very lovely Kate now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Some years ago...and we're talking a loooong time now, I thought it would be rather nice if William married me. We share a birthday (though he never sends me a card). This is about all I can think of that we would have in common. Watching Kate and her father walk down the aisle of Wabbey (they call themselves that on Twitter) I thought it was probably for the best that William had not met me at Bath Spa University and seen me in some see through lacy get up. If my father made it up the aisle of Westminster Abbey, that would be a remarkable feat in itself. He is about as unfit a man as you can imagine, having decided to give up on food and concentrate solely on alcohol as fuel. We are also estranged, him having pretty much decided that his children were of little importance to him. My parents have been divorced a long time. I'm pretty sure that would be 'frowned upon' by the Palace too. Yes they have their divorces, but in 'commoners' coming in, NOT so desirable.
I'm also pretty sure they would not like my attitude to their pastimes and sporting interests. I'm in camp 'fox' and not in camp 'twat on a horse'. Like my mother frequently says, the idea of sport should be a genuine competition. Not where one side is HUGELY outnumbered and had no choice about their participation. I think it'd be interesting to send the royals out and chase them down on horseback for fun. See how sporting they thought it was then?

I'd not have been as dignified as Kate either. Her peering over her shoulder at the crowd as she left the balcony and her 'Oh wow' would have been me jumping up and down and making a show of myself. I wore a green dress on my wedding day - I'm guessing that wouldn't have been ok either.

Tomorrow it is the AV vote. I shall be voting the way Mr Cameron does NOT want me to vote. What will be will be. Worse things happen at sea. David Cameron and George Osborne could be running the country.
Oh wait.....

and the next line is.......

 A short one today and probably tedious but I'm less ranty today and feeling upbeat. So you can share in my sunnier mood. FYI the flower is one we sell and it is today's favourite. 
This week at work it's been alright. I earn sod all. There is no earthly way I could continue living in my house and earn what I'm on now for very long.
However, as people keep reminding me, I am healthy and I'm considerably healthier than I was in Autumn and Winter and I'm certainly not blaming the seasons.
Up in the call centre this week I was a little taken aback when I was on a call and had a giant tub of Cadbury's Creme eggs waved under my nose to help myself to. This was followed by tubs of chilled drinks and yesterday, ice lollies.
Today I was approached by my team leader, and in my usual way, I expected I'd cocked up. No, I was being invited to take a break from the phones to come and play a quiz game with some fellow employees. It was a finish the next song line game. We did alright. (I got 11 right and came 2nd to Joe who got 13.) "We" as in the people who work the same contract as me, are playing against "them" the other major contract our firm deals with. Yes I really did just say 'our firm'. I'm starting to feel part of the furniture. All the major players in the office know my name - not sure if that's good or bad but I've not yet been kicked up the arse for anything. I have my group of buddies I sit with every day and it's ok. I'm SO much happier than I was in Mordor. I have my sanity.
There was a point just before Christmas back in Mordor where I really did think I'd lost the plot. I know I haven't now.

I've just got off the phone with my mum. I am panicking about the future and whether this supply work will start when I need it to but we both said that everything really does happen for a reason and maybe at the time you just can't see it. We think I might have had this time to get better from the three years of stress that have been accumulating. I certainly felt more stress free than I did at all since last August coming out of work today. The sun was shining, I had a purse full of vouchers for Tesco with which to eek out a week's shop but I didn't feel like my mind had gone.

There is much to be said for my friend's words of wisdom.
Health is wealth.

Misspent Youth

I've never taken class A drugs. I have never been arrested or even close. I have never drunk so much I have needed my stomach pumped or woken up with someone and thought- "Who the bloody hell is this?"
The closest I came to that was waking up with a revolting love bite on my neck and some vague recollections of passing out in front of the night club and all my friends giving up on my whereabouts. In NO WAY did I kick a man out at 7am....OK I did, but REALLY nothing happened - he wrote to me a bit afterwards while I was at university but from the letters I still have, evidently I didn't write back.

I smoked cannabis a couple of times. Once in my teenage years and all I recall is a VERY difficult conversation with my boyfriend's father and some dreams where weapons were being hurled in my general direction. At university and throughout my formative years, whilst others partook in the green stuff, I stood well clear.

I made a second attempt at the stuff in my mid twenties. It was a mistake. My ex-husband had baked some 'special cookies' for my dreadful back pain. I ate one. He claimed he had barely put any into the mix. I went to bed and in the minutes and hours that followed, I lost use of my tongue and speech and became paralysed temporarily from the neck down. I actually thought I was dying. The next day I still felt terrible and the floor felt like it was sponge when I waked.
Yes a 'special cannabis cookie' did that to me. Thank CHRIST I never decided to try anything else.

I can count my sexual partners on less than 10 fingers. I have had ONE one-night stand and I knew it would be such. Though to be truthful it was a 'one afternoon stand'.
It was a little out of character but he was several years my junior with the body of a god. Fortunately he will never read this - it WOULD go to his head.
I have never 'experimented' with anyone of the same sex or even questioned whether I could bat for both teams. I tend to like to actually really care for someone or at least be insanely attracted to them as in last fling. It took me two years to get over one of my relationships. I was TOTALLY devastated by the end of it.

I did have a period in my early twenties, shortly after finishing university and before I began full time employment, of going out several nights a week and getting absolutely TRASHED on Southern Comfort. My best friend and I would pride ourselves on drinking a double, neat and then whatever revolting shot we could get our hands on. To this day she cannot LOOK at a bottle of Aftershock.I think we had a few messy nights and spent one evening - the pair of us in my looong time on-off-on-off boyfriend's bed with him. It wasn't what you think.

One of the posts I put on here was 25 things about me. When I first wrote it- for one of those silly Facebook things, I concluded I was pretty dull.
I do NOT like late nights, I don't have my music really loud, I have never done an extreme sport or activity. I HATE the idea of motorbikes. I told my old boss that I'd never be into gardening as she predicted. This year I have paid my brother to tidy up my tiny garden. I have planted a bed of heather, a buddleia and am waiting on some bluebells and dwarf lavender munstead. Yes that's right, I said dwarf lavender munstead. It is a variety and I know what it is.
This birthday I'll be 34. There are no wild times to look back on. And it's not even because I've settled into family life young. I told my brother-in-law the other day he was sensible. He immediately decided I meant dull. I didn't. Perhaps I'm sensible too?

Bear with me...

So I wasn't sure what I was going to blog about today and there is little idea of structure in my head so 'bear with me'. I was going to blog about 'Men' and then decided it would be either;

• full of stereotypes
• repetitive 
• insanely boring
• too personal and a little too revealing about my barren love life and latest traumas

So I decided not to. Instead you can read about the joys of my minimum wage job.

I am REALLY tired of hearing above phrase. 'Bear with me'. I am determined NOT to use it as it rings in my ears all day from the office I work in. I am currently fortunate enough to work in a call centre, taking orders and customer service calls. Unless you have worked in a similar scenario, it would be hard for you to imagine the type of moron you have to deal with on a daily basis. A lot of the people I have to talk to are bloody lucky I am bearing with them for less than £6 an hour. I'm not allowed to say - "it's not the end of the fucking world- you were expecting 'pink' and you have 'peachy-pink', YOU ARE NOT IN LIBYA, YOU ARE NOT REBUILDING YOUR LIFE IN JAPAN. You have an item which is not 100% as bloody perfect as you hoped. Well shit. You paid £9.99. You didn't lose an eye."
They record your calls so I have to bite my tongue.

Yesterday a customer rang in barely understandable tones about some goods he had received in 2009 that he wanted to get credit for in order to get new things this year. He had not bothered to ring in in 2009 and I as the phone operator was apparently meant to take his word that the goods from 2009 were a bit shit and give him lots of free stuff.
Even if I believed him, which I don't as his story was very sketchy, I would not be thanked by the powers that be for sending out free goods/vouchers etc on the say-so of slightly confused elderly man re goods received in 2009.

Today a nasty snappy woman rang in wanting me to resend goods whilst her order is still being dispatched. Apparently I am to 'get on to the courier and have a word'. The courier is Royal Mail. My office is based about 300 miles from where the goods are dispatched. When I say 'my office' I mean my bit of desk with a decrepit computer and a headset that is so precious to me now, I get in 15 minutes before my shift will start in order to have THIS chair and THIS computer and headset which I clean daily with germ killing wipes as a man in the office has recently been off with impetigo.
I know that if I get in later, I will have to sit opposite miserable 'J' or next to very loud 'G' or cannot do anything for herself  'D' barely holding onto her job, under a flickering fluorescent tube with a phone with a non-working transfer button. Customers don't like when you cut them off instead of transferring them.

I'm aware I am bemoaning a job and I ought to be grateful I even HAVE a job under the Tory Reich but it is hard when you have studied for 4 years, trained and built a good reputation for yourself, to be doing this. Hard isn't the word. There are days I have total meltdowns and think I should run away and join the circus. I won't. I would have to have an act that incorporated my dog and cat. My dog is stubborn as a mule and my cat is half wild.

So for now, you and my family will have to 'bear with me' while I feel my brain soften or as in the words of Bernard Black- 'fall away like wet cake' and clock watch, knowing that in the last 15 minutes I will have earned enough to buy a sandwich at lunch. I had a five minute conversation with some old bat today about a picture in the catalogue. It was 6.04pm and I was there 4 minutes past the clocking out time. Precious, non-paid minutes wasting my life.

Minutes are not just precious to me, but for the company I work for. If I am at lunch- I have to enter a code onto my phone- the same for a break. I even have a number for loo breaks, an; "I am going to the toilet" code. I am a machine. Mary Portas would have a field day here. There are NO incentives to work harder- and if you do not take enough calls, your name goes on a name and shame list in red. Nice.

I am learning to find small things interesting to keep me from drowning in a pool of my own drool whilst I rock slowly and bang my head on the desk. Today I found the street name 'Electric Avenue' highly amusing. And when a customer has an incorrect code - I like to say - 'computer says no' but this is wasted on pensioners.

God help me I need a new teaching post.