The Big Un'

It's been a while so where to start? I know, lets be sensible for once and start chrnologically from my last post. I can't however guarantee anything about the sensibility of what follows. :-)

Well that means we start with my car. It has been restored back to working order. They told me that there was somethign wrong with the ignition system, so they replaced bits of it until it started working again. It also needed 2 back tyres so I had them replace those while it was in the workshop. I eventually collected it back on the Saturday (21stJuly). It hadn't been cleaned, but at least it worked, which was good as I needed it for the following week.

The following week was of course the week of my holiday. As last year Iwent to Whitehaven on the edge of the Lake Distrct to visit some of my friends from university. Thankfully the weather wasn't too bad, compared to what it had been the previous week. We still had some dull, grey days, punctuated by rain, but we also had one or two dry ones which we could get out and about.

I must admit I was glad to get away from work for the week. Things have been rather stressful at work recently so I was just thankful to get away from Leeds entirely (and cleanly I might add, more later). Anyway, I stayed with Mark and Hannah 2 friends from uni who both work at Sellafield.

As usual they were very kind in putting me up for the week and also for feeding me during the week. Those days when the rain failed to keep us inside we went out to Whitehaven, or went further down the coast to a place called St. Bees. I especially liked the little cafe on the edge of the beach at St. Bees, it serves rather nice Tifin.

Don't ask me to describe Tifin. It's very much a chocolate, flapjack, biscuit, type thing. The best thing I can say about it is that it is delicious and that I ate 2 slices. ;-)

The holiday was rounded off nicely by a barbeque (again at Mark and Hannah's) with more of my coursemates/former house mates from university coming up just for the BBQ. Considering my job you wouldn't think we'd have any difficulty lighting a barbeque, btu we did. We must have had the worlds worst matches. They would light, but then they would immediately go out. The wooden part of the match refused to burn at all. Eventually we had to use bits of rolled up newspaper and the cooker hobs to light the BBQ.

I think I also came back from that weekend at leadt half a stone heavy than when I went there. But I don't mind it's all in a good cause (me).

I'm also now offically an Adult sergeat within the ATC. My paperwork came through a week last Tuesday and I went to collect my uniform the day after. However this has meant that some of my free time has been spent ironing shirts and trousers and doing other parts of my uniform. As an Adult sergeant I am expected to have a standard of uniform much greater than the cadets. The worst parts of the uniform to do are the beret and the cadet shoes.

The beret has to be moulded into the correct shape before it can be word properly. To do this, you must immerse it in cold water and then wear it on your head (in the correct shape) until it dries. So I spent Saturday morning with a wet lump of beret on my head, trying to read a book without getting water dripped onto it. the shoes just take ages to polish. The toe caps have to be a very shiny, dark black and the only way to get them like that is to keep applying polish and buffing them for hours on end. I've made a good start, but it will take me a few weeks before they are perfect.

I'll post pictures whenever I can get somebody to take them.

Also while I was away I got plenty of leaflets for "Micklefield against the Wind Turbines". It looks like around my way they've caught the "Not in my Backyard" desease. One of the leaflets had a picture of the town with a massive turnbine towering over the top of it with the words "Don't let this happen". I had to chuckle as the scale is just so obvioiusly wrong in the picture. The turbine could have been something straight out of war of the worlds.

I can't really think that they can complain that they'll be noisy either! I mean we'll have the A1 motorway between us and the Windfarm, I can't see them generating anymore noise than that. Still I haven't seen the plans yet so I'm witholding judgement until I see the plans for myself.

Finally, I got back to work last week and straight away got snowed under by various requests from various departments. I even snapped at one point and almost started shouting at somebody from the French office down the phone. At the end of the day I'd had enough. So I emailed my boss with a critique of everything I could think of that could be run better (both for our department and communications from other departments). I also voiced my concerns for the future if thigns continues the way they were heading.

My boss surprisingly said he agreed with me entirely. I thought then he would then discuss some of the matters with his boss. What I didn't expect him to do was send a copy of the email to the Managing Director! I'm now scheduled to have "Frank Talks" with the Managing Director on Wednesday.

I'm not looking forward to those.