Who would have thought such a simple thing could make me so happy? Just something relatively inexpensive and at no time cost to myself...
I did it. I hired a cleaner. It makes me feel so decadent and I love it!
Boyf and I work long hours (especially Boyf) and the last thing we want is to spend half the weekend making the flat look presentable and dirt-free. "The cleaning" has caused rows, tears (mainly his!) and much resentment and it's so ridiculous as it's just not worth it. So I bit the bullet, did my research and now a lovely Spanish lady called Sandra is coming for 2 hours a week for the price of pub bottle of wine. Bargain.
She was due yesterday whilst we were at work , so at 8pm I opened the front door in eager anticipation to see what awaited me... Oh! The beautiful clean smell hit me immediately! As i turned on the kitchen light, the hob sparkled and the taps gleamed. She'd even cleaned my grubby bin to a sparkling metallic piece of artwork. I sat on the sofa and realised she'd used the leather wipes hidden in the cupboard to buff that up too... something I'd forgotten to do in about 6 months.
But the best was yet to come. My bathroom looked like a hotel bathroom with the loo roll folded neatly into a little point, all the lotions and potions lined up neatly on the window sill and the towels folded into a bale and hung oh so elegantly.
It's official. I love her. I can say that her existence in the flat makes my life so much better. Yes, there is a credit crunch, yes we should be tightening our belts but for the price of a takeaway for 2 once a week, then I'm prepared to cut back elsewhere. If it eliminates the tension and resentment over who's turn it is to clean the loo then it's money well spent. Sandra, you are my saviour and I love you.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Do you ever wonder why you bother? I've been with my current employer for almost 10 years, survived 3 rounds of redundancies and am now one of only 2 members of my department (down from 10 when i started here). I've got a fair amount of responsibility but I'm by no means the boss.
The problem is that my boss is a Director and I am a Manager and we have no admin support whatsoever. He books his own travel and I've spent the morning setting up new vendors for accounts purposes and packaging up cds for an artist (all 150 of them and it's a pain in the backside!). Surely we have better things to do? I must be best paid photocopying clerk in the world!
Effectively I am meant to be an events planner (in quite a specialised industry but the end result is similar). I'm used to doing the nitty gritty as well as the meaty and the kicking ass stuff! I'm meant to be negotiating, guiding, researching, planning, reassuring and badgering my boss - not ordering stock and sending it out, not chasing the accounts department (again) because they're too bloody stupid to follow instructions, not returning invoices to suppliers because they're not capable of reading their terms and conditions/PO instructions etc and certainly not hand-holding certain suppliers who seem incapable to checking travel timetables or maps...
Since we went down to such a skeleton staff life is pretty much impossible for every department so please don't think i'm doing the 'boo hoo poor little me' routine. Our parent company have, in the last few weeks
1) taken away all office plants as they are too expensive to 'rent'
2) taken away our courier company (some poor bugger in the postroom now has to research which company is best to use on an individual basis now... like he doesn't have enough to do with over 300 people in this building...)
3) increased the prices in the subsidised restaurant but not given everyone their payrise (that has been promised for over 4 months)
4) removed our departments' President (possible not a bad thing i have to say) but also removed his emails and contacts from his PA's computer by accident leaving some poor guy in Delhi (cos that's where our computer helpdesk is....) telling her not to worry and to just get on with something else for now... hahahha!
Oh yes and they're moving our accounts department to somewhere in Eastern Europe to save money. I kid you not.
This all looks pretty tame actually and you're probably wondering what I'm whinging about but this is just the latest stream of crap. Our problem is that such a huge cut in staff has resulted in appalling customer service and nothing being finished in a way that I'm particularly proud of but needs must. It either gets finished badly and on time or we miss deadlines. There are only so many hours in the day and I didn't sign up for a 15 hour day at my own expense!
I know there is a credit crunch/recession/generally crap economic crisis happening but this started waaaaaaaaay before all the banks started crumbling.
God I'm a grump. must cheer up!
The problem is that my boss is a Director and I am a Manager and we have no admin support whatsoever. He books his own travel and I've spent the morning setting up new vendors for accounts purposes and packaging up cds for an artist (all 150 of them and it's a pain in the backside!). Surely we have better things to do? I must be best paid photocopying clerk in the world!
Effectively I am meant to be an events planner (in quite a specialised industry but the end result is similar). I'm used to doing the nitty gritty as well as the meaty and the kicking ass stuff! I'm meant to be negotiating, guiding, researching, planning, reassuring and badgering my boss - not ordering stock and sending it out, not chasing the accounts department (again) because they're too bloody stupid to follow instructions, not returning invoices to suppliers because they're not capable of reading their terms and conditions/PO instructions etc and certainly not hand-holding certain suppliers who seem incapable to checking travel timetables or maps...
Since we went down to such a skeleton staff life is pretty much impossible for every department so please don't think i'm doing the 'boo hoo poor little me' routine. Our parent company have, in the last few weeks
1) taken away all office plants as they are too expensive to 'rent'
2) taken away our courier company (some poor bugger in the postroom now has to research which company is best to use on an individual basis now... like he doesn't have enough to do with over 300 people in this building...)
3) increased the prices in the subsidised restaurant but not given everyone their payrise (that has been promised for over 4 months)
4) removed our departments' President (possible not a bad thing i have to say) but also removed his emails and contacts from his PA's computer by accident leaving some poor guy in Delhi (cos that's where our computer helpdesk is....) telling her not to worry and to just get on with something else for now... hahahha!
Oh yes and they're moving our accounts department to somewhere in Eastern Europe to save money. I kid you not.
This all looks pretty tame actually and you're probably wondering what I'm whinging about but this is just the latest stream of crap. Our problem is that such a huge cut in staff has resulted in appalling customer service and nothing being finished in a way that I'm particularly proud of but needs must. It either gets finished badly and on time or we miss deadlines. There are only so many hours in the day and I didn't sign up for a 15 hour day at my own expense!
I know there is a credit crunch/recession/generally crap economic crisis happening but this started waaaaaaaaay before all the banks started crumbling.
God I'm a grump. must cheer up!
Saturday, September 20, 2008
The youth of today...!
okay so maybe the title is a bit strong seeing as i am only 35 but some things really make my blood boil!
Boyf moved into my place in January. He has a little car - nothing flash, nothing expensive but not a heap of junk either. Within a few weeks someone had ripped off his passenger wing mirror for no apparent reason. He was, understandably a bit p***ed off.
One week later when he was about to go and get it repaired he realised that a passing car had taken off his drivers-side mirror too... now he was really p***sed!!! 250 quid later he had 2 spangly new mirrors (note that his car cost only twice that amount in the first place.)
That night whilst laying in bed about to fall asleep, we heard a group of 'yoofs' laughing and shouting as they walked up the road...closely followed by a series of thuds. We rushed to the window to see them systematically whacking each wing mirror they came across with a baseball bat. Boyf, seeing red, pulled on some jeans and headed for the door. By the time he got there they were gone leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Thankfully his car was fine (more luck than judgement) but still leapt into the car hellbent on revenge. I, meanwhile, called the police. Amazingly they responded and within minutes were outside the flat, by which point Boyf had calmed down and decided not to go and run over the little sods. Whilst he chatted with them they heard that another unit had found the culprits and were giving them an earful - very little else they could do as the oldest was only 15 years old!!
Two weeks later, his passenger wing mirror was vandalised again but luckily not to the point of destruction. Two weeks after that we discovered someone had drawn pretty patterns with a key (or somthing similar) in the paintwork all up one side of his car.
One month ago i realised some cheeky bugger had worked on my car too and taken off the white casing from the drivers wing mirror! Not vandalised, not hit by a passing car, but carefully removed the casing - presumably as his/her own one had been damaged and needed a replacement.
Half an hour ago I came home from a night out and saw that someone had laid an advertising board across the roof of Boyf's car. Luckily he is still out and is oblivious to this fact as I gingerly removed it trying not to scrape the paintwork. It's dark - around midnight - and so i have no idea if it has done any damage to his car. If it hasn't then i may not tell him about it - he doesn't need the stress.
What is it with some people???? Every Friday and Saturday night when we retire to bed we're on tenterhooks everytime we hear someone walk up the street in groups of more than 2. I'm sure that 99% of them are purely in high spirits on their way home but that 1% are just looking for something to kick/thump/scrape or destroy. With every bump we hear we turn into curtain twitchers but never see anything untoward.
We don't live in the poshest part of town but we certainly don't live in the worst part either. There are dozens of cars up the street - some quite new and some quite old but none are burnt out or beaten up wrecks but for some reason the local empty-headed morons are fascinated by a little purple micra worth less than a holiday in the sun. But more to the point, if this is always being done by young teenagers (I don't know if that's true but given the previous history it's highly likely) why the hell are they roaming the streets at midnight???
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't some goody-two-shoes but at 15 I was at home by midnight (actually well before midnight!) and if I wasn't my folks wanted to know where the hell I was and were ready to read the riot act. Why don't their parents care? And why do they get pleasure from deliberately vandalising other people's stuff. It's not a Porsche, it's not a brand new BMW, it's a 12 year old 1 litre micra for crying out loud so it can't be jealousy. Why aren't they touching the 3 year old Peugeot next to it, or the 5 year old Astra???
Even as I type I can hear the 'high-spirited' youngsters calling to each other up the street and i have to resist the urge to look out of the window. I hate to say it but I'm getting a little sick of London. I'm in poxy zone 4, not the centre of town, there are no pubs within a 25 minute walk of here and certainly no clubs so where are the little sods coming from? This is a new phenomenon, only within the last year at most...strangely ever since the worst of all 'estates' 3 miles away began to get emptied ready for demolition. Rumour has it they have moved several families from there into the council flats less than a mile from here. I hate to stereotype and would hope that it is merely a coincidence but you've got to admit there might be something in it...
I was no saint and neither were my friends but our thing usually involved being too noisy, playing with traffic cones and singing very loudly whilst walking home from the pub - hardly hanging offences. Even then, when we were stopped by the police for the 'noise' we tugged our forelock, tried not to laugh and prayed they wouldn't tell our parents. These days the cops are lucky not get a mouthful or a smack...
See, told you i was turning into Victor Meldrew...
Boyf moved into my place in January. He has a little car - nothing flash, nothing expensive but not a heap of junk either. Within a few weeks someone had ripped off his passenger wing mirror for no apparent reason. He was, understandably a bit p***ed off.
One week later when he was about to go and get it repaired he realised that a passing car had taken off his drivers-side mirror too... now he was really p***sed!!! 250 quid later he had 2 spangly new mirrors (note that his car cost only twice that amount in the first place.)
That night whilst laying in bed about to fall asleep, we heard a group of 'yoofs' laughing and shouting as they walked up the road...closely followed by a series of thuds. We rushed to the window to see them systematically whacking each wing mirror they came across with a baseball bat. Boyf, seeing red, pulled on some jeans and headed for the door. By the time he got there they were gone leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Thankfully his car was fine (more luck than judgement) but still leapt into the car hellbent on revenge. I, meanwhile, called the police. Amazingly they responded and within minutes were outside the flat, by which point Boyf had calmed down and decided not to go and run over the little sods. Whilst he chatted with them they heard that another unit had found the culprits and were giving them an earful - very little else they could do as the oldest was only 15 years old!!
Two weeks later, his passenger wing mirror was vandalised again but luckily not to the point of destruction. Two weeks after that we discovered someone had drawn pretty patterns with a key (or somthing similar) in the paintwork all up one side of his car.
One month ago i realised some cheeky bugger had worked on my car too and taken off the white casing from the drivers wing mirror! Not vandalised, not hit by a passing car, but carefully removed the casing - presumably as his/her own one had been damaged and needed a replacement.
Half an hour ago I came home from a night out and saw that someone had laid an advertising board across the roof of Boyf's car. Luckily he is still out and is oblivious to this fact as I gingerly removed it trying not to scrape the paintwork. It's dark - around midnight - and so i have no idea if it has done any damage to his car. If it hasn't then i may not tell him about it - he doesn't need the stress.
What is it with some people???? Every Friday and Saturday night when we retire to bed we're on tenterhooks everytime we hear someone walk up the street in groups of more than 2. I'm sure that 99% of them are purely in high spirits on their way home but that 1% are just looking for something to kick/thump/scrape or destroy. With every bump we hear we turn into curtain twitchers but never see anything untoward.
We don't live in the poshest part of town but we certainly don't live in the worst part either. There are dozens of cars up the street - some quite new and some quite old but none are burnt out or beaten up wrecks but for some reason the local empty-headed morons are fascinated by a little purple micra worth less than a holiday in the sun. But more to the point, if this is always being done by young teenagers (I don't know if that's true but given the previous history it's highly likely) why the hell are they roaming the streets at midnight???
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't some goody-two-shoes but at 15 I was at home by midnight (actually well before midnight!) and if I wasn't my folks wanted to know where the hell I was and were ready to read the riot act. Why don't their parents care? And why do they get pleasure from deliberately vandalising other people's stuff. It's not a Porsche, it's not a brand new BMW, it's a 12 year old 1 litre micra for crying out loud so it can't be jealousy. Why aren't they touching the 3 year old Peugeot next to it, or the 5 year old Astra???
Even as I type I can hear the 'high-spirited' youngsters calling to each other up the street and i have to resist the urge to look out of the window. I hate to say it but I'm getting a little sick of London. I'm in poxy zone 4, not the centre of town, there are no pubs within a 25 minute walk of here and certainly no clubs so where are the little sods coming from? This is a new phenomenon, only within the last year at most...strangely ever since the worst of all 'estates' 3 miles away began to get emptied ready for demolition. Rumour has it they have moved several families from there into the council flats less than a mile from here. I hate to stereotype and would hope that it is merely a coincidence but you've got to admit there might be something in it...
I was no saint and neither were my friends but our thing usually involved being too noisy, playing with traffic cones and singing very loudly whilst walking home from the pub - hardly hanging offences. Even then, when we were stopped by the police for the 'noise' we tugged our forelock, tried not to laugh and prayed they wouldn't tell our parents. These days the cops are lucky not get a mouthful or a smack...
See, told you i was turning into Victor Meldrew...
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Strange tastes
So is it normal to get very excited about a new game show starting on the Beeb on Saturday night?
Whilst in New York last week (on hols - very exciting, more about that some other time), we stumbled upon an American show called 'Hole in the Wall' and became instantly hooked. It's ridiculous, it's pointless and it's bloody funny. Basically a wall with a strange shape cut out of it moves towards you, you then have to contort yourself into a shape which will enable the wall to move around you. If you fail then it sweeps you into a swimming pool and you get rescued by lifeguards.
Oh yes, and you get to wear a neck to ankle silver leotard. Really.
Probably not grabbing your attention yet... very simple concept made all the more ridiculous by the fact most of the contestants on the show I saw were not exactly built for maximum flexibility and contortionism - in fact one team were made up of Sumo Wrestlers (i'm sure you can imagine how they looked in the aforementioned leotards...).
After wasting an hour watching this instead of showering and preparing for a nice meal out we pondered on why the hell this wasn't on UK telly. And now it will be. I'm not convinced it will have the same impact over here though as I think it's going to be celebrity teams (and i use this term quite loosely as the captains will be a cricketer and some bloke from Strictly Come Dancing...). Noooooo, this is not what we need - it needs to be real people! Anyway, I'll reserve judgement til Saturday when I have already booked the slot in my busy schedule to veg out on the sofa for half an hour (clearly we don't have any ad breaks on the BBC compared the ones that appeared every 4 minutes in the US).
Watch this space. I'm bound to have an opinion on this next week.
Whilst in New York last week (on hols - very exciting, more about that some other time), we stumbled upon an American show called 'Hole in the Wall' and became instantly hooked. It's ridiculous, it's pointless and it's bloody funny. Basically a wall with a strange shape cut out of it moves towards you, you then have to contort yourself into a shape which will enable the wall to move around you. If you fail then it sweeps you into a swimming pool and you get rescued by lifeguards.
Oh yes, and you get to wear a neck to ankle silver leotard. Really.
Probably not grabbing your attention yet... very simple concept made all the more ridiculous by the fact most of the contestants on the show I saw were not exactly built for maximum flexibility and contortionism - in fact one team were made up of Sumo Wrestlers (i'm sure you can imagine how they looked in the aforementioned leotards...).
After wasting an hour watching this instead of showering and preparing for a nice meal out we pondered on why the hell this wasn't on UK telly. And now it will be. I'm not convinced it will have the same impact over here though as I think it's going to be celebrity teams (and i use this term quite loosely as the captains will be a cricketer and some bloke from Strictly Come Dancing...). Noooooo, this is not what we need - it needs to be real people! Anyway, I'll reserve judgement til Saturday when I have already booked the slot in my busy schedule to veg out on the sofa for half an hour (clearly we don't have any ad breaks on the BBC compared the ones that appeared every 4 minutes in the US).
Watch this space. I'm bound to have an opinion on this next week.
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