Ho, ho, ho

Christmas Day won’t be the same for us this year. There will be an empty seat at the dinner table where my son used to sit. Oh, don’t worry, he hasn’t died; he’s working at the Harvester. 

I knew this time would come. This isn’t the first December he has been working there, but until this year he’s always managed to negotiate himself the time off. On paper, of course, he’s the best person to work during the festivities. He’s single with no one to answer to, whereas some of his colleagues are married with children and complicated family situations. But for some reason his boss hasn’t taken my feelings into account. No, no, that’s selfish. I don’t want to be THAT MOTHER, the one who majors in emotional blackmail and puts pressure on her offspring.

If you’d asked me, I would have said we weren’t a particularly traditional family, and yet I now see that we have been following the same routine every Christmas for quite a few years, albeit keeping things age appropriate. There is the annual debate about when to put up the tree, for instance. I come from a family who would decorate the weekend before Christmas and take it all down again on Twelfth Night, but I’m married to a man whose way is to put it up much earlier than that and leave it only until New Year’s Eve. We compromise, one way or another, on the date, but always have a glass of something to accompany the task while The Muppet Christmas Carol or, if we’re feeling mawkish, It’s a Wonderful Life plays on TV in the background. That didn’t happen this year and it felt odd not to do it. After dinner on Christmas Eve we open one present each – something small and not from an immediate family member. I don’t know if that will happen this year either, because with number one son missing it won’t be the same. 

So we’re doing things a bit different this time and I’m trying to be cool about it. I’m a yoga teacher, for goodness sake, so I must be generous spirited and release my attachment to routine. I must be flexible, open-hearted and open-minded. Things change, we adapt, we move on.

Even so, I wonder if I can get away with leaving out a sherry and mince pie for Santa?

Season’s greetings to you all.

I beg your pardon?

At this time of year, attendance at my yoga classes is a bit hit and miss because everyone is so busy. Quite a few of my students are involved in education in some way, as teachers and support workers, parents and grandparents, so they are swamped with carol concerts and nativity performances. Others succumb to viruses or react adversely to the flu jab. Others still are simply overwhelmed. The irony is that this is when it is more important than ever to take a moment of stillness whenever we can, even if the only place that happens is when the queue at the checkout isn't moving.

But I've just had a phone call from one of my ladies to say she won't be at the class this afternoon. She had the best reason ever:

'Sorry I can't make it. I'm expecting some bull semen through the post.'

Anyone ever had a more bizarre apology?

Agreeing terms - and a gift idea!

I don't mind a bit of jargon, but there's a time and a place. In specialist publications, where all the readers know what's what, I don't see anything wrong in reducing terms to acronyms appropriately and in my editorial work I come across this a lot. I know that CAGR means compound annual growth rate, that TPL is a third-party logistics provider, and that MOD TSF is the Ministry of Defence's Total Support Force. Fair enough.

I don't even mind people thinking outside the box. It conjures up an image of some brave soul poking his head out from the cardboard flaps to discover a whole new way of doing things. I quite like the idea of drilling down to get to the bottom of a problem. What I don't like, however, is made-up terms being used when there is already a perfectly good word for the job. Top five annoyances at the moment are:

• The person being mentored is a protege, not a mentee
• Those people at the conference are delegates, not attendees
• You can grow a company from scratch, but from then on you expand it 
• You can look to the future, but you can't look to appoint
• You don't have to make a forecast going forward - there's nowhere else for a forecast to go

But there's a new annoyance, a buzzword that's all the rage in the world of transport: alliancing. This is what two or more companies are doing when they form an alliance - and there was me thinking that they were allying and had become allies.

Grr.

Shameless plug alert!

If you get a minute, please pop across to the website of Silver Link Publishing and check out the latest book by Will Adams in the British Railways Past & Present series: Northamptonshire Part 1 South and West. I declare my interest here because Will is a good friend (though I have nothing to gain from sales of the book other than vicarious pleasure). This is a great book full of fab pictures and fascinating details. If you have a railway enthusiast in your circle who needs another book - and my experience of enthusiasts is that they can never have too many books - whether or not they know Northants (or someone with connections to the county but who isn't necessarily a railway buff), I can recommend this. Plug over.

A hint of humbug?

Is the whole world losing its senses? I mean, I know it’s Christmas in a couple of weeks’ time and we all tend to act a little oddly at this time of year, but what is it about the whiff of pine needles that makes people lose all sense of proportion? I've just visited a local self-styled emporium, filled with seasonal wonders in the form of decorations, gifts, festive tableware and candles. And then there was the food.

Christmas Goose by Jan Pashley Art Print - WorldGallery.co.uk

Displayed amid the handmade chutney and nets of walnuts was a tower of goose fat, which as any self-respecting modern cook knows is THE essential ingredient for roasting potatoes. Anything else simply won’t do. (Politeness prevents me from expressing my views on this.) 

Incredible though it seems, a 300g jar of this precious commodity was priced at £4.59. 

That’s £15.30 a kilogram. 

For fat.  

That’s just daft.

A little bird tells me

One for sorrow...

I've just been disturbed from my work by the tap-tap-tap of a beak against my patio door. It seems I am a little late feeding the birds this morning, and Blacky is getting impatient.

The room at the back of my house where I work looks over the garden. I used to work at the front, but not only was it very chilly, but also I found I was forever going to the window to look into the street for the postman or just to have a nose. At the back of the house, my room faces south and gets all the sun. Even at this time of year I benefit from the 'solar heating' and if I wear a large-brimmed hat I don't have to draw the blinds to see my screen - although I did get a funny look from the window-cleaner this morning.

I've only got a small garden, but I like to put out food for the birds and get quite a variety of visitors: 'Trotty' wagtails are prevalent at the moment, plus the usuals - blackbirds, sparrows, finches (even goldfinches, when I remember to top up the niger seeds) and robins, too, of course. Excitingly, there is often a red kite hovering overhead. And am I the only person being invaded by magpies? Incidentally, one of the only things I ever learnt how to do in art classes at school was to draw a magpie, because it is simply a series of overlapping triangles.

...two for joy

I'm on the mailing list for the e-newsletter from the RSPB: 'Wild About Gardens', which this month has a link about a new BBC series that is look for people whose garden is a haven for wildlife. Sounds interesting - although I was alarmed to hear that: 'Outline Productions are making a new landmark series for BBC ONE about the perilous [sic]  state of Britain’s wildlife and what we can all do to help.'

It's a jungle out there.

Who am I today?

Life is a many stranded thing

We all wear different hats. I'm mother, wife, sister, auntie, daughter, friend (and perhaps enemy!), business colleague, fellow alto, yoga student, community busybody etc etc etc. Professionally, I also have multiple roles. One of the joys of being self-employed is that I can do lots of different things to earn a crust, but the two main threads are teaching yoga and word-wrangling. There is some cross-over between the two - I write for Om magazine and have just had an article published in the British Wheel of Yoga's journal, Spectrum, for instance - but I tend to promote them separately. I have a website for my yoga and place ads in local publications to publicise my classes; but I also have entries in business directories for my editorial stuff.

But it's getting complicated. My website has a contacts form that doesn't feature my email address, but nevertheless any enquiries are forwarded to my all-purpose Googlemail. I have this blog, which is, again, a multipurpose outlet for my writing but takes in whatever is on my mind at the time. I monitor my choir's email address (admin@) which is diverted to my personal one and am the fingers behind the choir's Twitter feed. I've also got a fairly idle Facebook account, but that is so I can look at stuff, rather than post it.

However, I've just uploaded a couple of stories to Ether books, a site from which folk can download stories (some free, some not) to be read on a mobile phone. (Thanks to the Literary Pig for the tip.) The site suggests social networking as a really good way to promote my stuff, which makes sense, given the target market. I can't be bothered with Facebook, and don't want to tweet personal trivia, but quite like the idea of having a 'Julia as writer' Twitter that I can just use for wordy news. But this means another account and, for simplicity and to reduce the risk of my posting details of a new writing competition to the choral music community, another email address.

Does this sound like a rational way to carry on?

Who is liable?

 

Here's a thing for you to consider.

I've just drawn out £250 from the cash machine outside the Santander branch where I hold an account. I then went straight to HSBC to pay the same notes into my account there.

The HSBC machine clicked and whirred and then spat out a receipt for £230, with a message  that one suspected counterfeit note had been detected and retained. The staff in the branch confirmed that the note would be examined and that if it was indeed a phony I would lose the £20. Whoever handles it last before it is detected is deemed to be guilty. This process will take a couple of weeks.

Needless to say I have rung Santander, who claim this has never happened before. Really? Does the bank check its notes before putting them in the ATMs, I wonder? If the HSBC machine was able to detect a fake note on the way in, surely the Santander system must also have similar technology in place.

Of course, it might turn out that the machine has made a mistake (surely not!). If, not, I'm sure that the good people of Santander will reimburse me (well, Rory in the call centre said they would, which is good enough for me).

The annoying thing is that if I'd queued up at the counter and handed the money over to a human, this problem wouldn't have arisen.