Second Tuesday

We head off to the pub and meet with the old school chums! Old we are indeed now :-) In our early 50s well we are 50! Anyway - you now what I mean.

Had a nice call from a friend and he cheered me up as he said he hadn't seen me looking or sounding so well in years. Well - that lifted me even more. Today was good, I was really pleased with the reception I got at committee and my project is on the roll. I am really making an effort to get this right. It is very important to them (and me of course) that this goes off well.

As for my past, I am learning to put that behind me now and to get on with this opportunity.

The Dust Has Settled Now

I had to go out tonight and I feel surprisingly relieved of the weight of all of this. The evidence is given and they must have expended a fortune on briefs, copies of documents and everything else. I suppose they feel it was worth it. Not sure what all the other creditors are doing. I can't imagine they are waiting for me to give them a lead. One of them or all of them collectively needs to shut them down.

Anyhow, hopefully this is now gone away and win or lose it can be firmly put in a drawer or burnt.

It made me feel quite ill but I can see that go away now and can get on with something far more important - that of making a difference to underprivileged and distressed children. I have a committee meeting tomorrow which will "rubber stamp" my first project. I will be working on some major initiatives in the next 6 months and I am really looking forward to showing them what I can do and bring to the role.

What a day

What a headache just starting too. Got to the Station - arrived in time - got a ticket - the cancelled the Train due to the Snow. Had to get back out of the Station call C, half walked half ran home, got picked up and shot off. Managed to find a car park walked up the stairs - there was the Tribunal Offices - had made it before I would have by train and walking!

Large breakfast, they were delayed, then they wanted time and then, we started - not pleasant and all a bit confusing but think it went as well as expected but not know certain of the outcome as their brief was very good I thought. We sparred a bit but some stuff was way beyond my comprehension. There was some obvious left field stuff coming in and the old boss was there to taunt me but kept quiet and only sat in the corner and glared and glowered at me. Old trick meant to unsettle but actually did the opposite.

Anyway, we have to wait and see - perhaps for up to 4 weeks for a ruling. It was made very complicated due to the other relationships that were around at the time.

So, I can close the door on this apart from it took all day to do this. Anyway, home now, one major worry off my chest, had my day in court and let the Judge decide. I probably wouldn't have got much satisfaction anyway. Mind you it must have cost them a fortune in documents, files, fares and a brief for all day. So there is a cost I doubt they can afford unless funded by other means.

Back to real and meaningful work tomorrow. A real job and my first committee meeting too. Looking forward to that immensely.

Wound UP all day

We awoke to Snow - we hadn't gotten finished from the party to 2:30 or so in the morning. I was shattered and have spent a lot of the day refining and revising my Tribunal stuff. I feel really rough - nerves are a terrible thing even if I feel that I am right, I don't fancy sitting there and listening to the two Witness statements they have provided they are pretty disgusting but I hope the Tribunal will pick up on the facts of the case.

I have no doubt that I will feel a lot better this time tomorrow.

The snow has melted - I hope it keeps away tomorrow I don't want to have any excuses to have to go through all of this lot again.

At last

After 15 months or more trying to sort out these accounts I found where I had made a mess of them last time, altered that which nicely rippled through and meant this year's accounts balance too. Thank goodness for that - I have those ready for audit now.

The Tribunal is on for Monday - more paperwork arrived this morning that they issued yesterday - I have no idea what they think they are doing issuing it this late? Absolutely crazy and not relevant either. It will be interesting but a little annoying too that this has to proceed but I suppose that is the way of things. We shall see what the Tribunal make of all of this irrelevant stuff. The case is quite straight forward and buying something you cannot afford and saying after you have it that you aren't going to pay is hardly a defence. Oh well, at least I don't have to say that to the Judge!

Mind you it is all pretty bizarre behaviour as they must have spent as much on the solicitor as they would have spent to settle in the first place.

Seriously this is doing my head in

Accounts. Now I have been doing what I call contract accounting for years and I can do project accounting budgeting and just about everything else, IRR, NPV and all that good stuff but can I work out a balance sheet? Not on your life! I ave just been through my accounts and they look fine as I can account for every penny in and out but can I get the balance sheet to balance? No way!

I think I am going to have to admit defeat and let an accountant look at the figures so that they can show me where I have gone wrong. I wonder if I made a mistake on the accounts a year back and I have pulled it through with these accounts?

It is too late now - I am going to bed retiring hurt :-)

Oh well

Home - early day on Friday which is nice. Gets me home ahead of the traffic and rush hour. No word about the Tribunal so looks as if I will have to attend that on Monday - I could have done without that but I am making the right impression at work and so far they can see some results coming through and are beginning to get a flavour of the sort of things I can do. It isn't great timing of course. I hope that they have a good argument for having put the first hearing back as it will be (I think) a straight forward case no matter what they say.

Tomorrow is As 18th Birthday party and we are hoping that we will have a lovely evening. A bit worried about the number of 18 year olds there and not many places will take them for obvious reasons.

She appeared to have a good day yesterday - now she can vote and go to the pub! Amazing - she hasn't taken me to the pub yet though!!

The Dreams

How strange it is - noticing that I fall asleep easier, have pleasant dreams and feel a lot better in myself. It feels good so far but I am pretty tired. I need to get some work done tonight as I have been tied up these past few days and unable to get onto these figures.

I can't work out how I have managed to increase the balance at the Bank and yet cannot make the balance sheet show that? It is one of those things that I really never did understand and I've already said to these guys that they need to relieve me of the job as soon as they can as I find it difficult to do. I'm normally quite good at most things and I'm quite OK with figures but I am afraid that balance sheets leave me cold.

Shaken to my core

I really have been shaken by the revelations of the way people treat each other but more especially their children.

As a children's charity you expect to have cases of hardship and tragedy. I hadn't realised that people would treat their children so badly. It has come as a shock to me what people find acceptable. It puts my own horror at my previous employer's behaviour into context. My goodness, they are amateurs in the scheme of things I have read in the past few days.

Don't get me wrong - I am more convinced now than ever that I am going to make a difference here.

I was out tonight at a Jazz night - it has been 20 years since it started and I have been going almost all f that time. A lady walked in with headscarf, no eyebrows and the obvious signs of Radio/Chemo - we chatted and she had just completed her course. I said "This is what living looks like" - then sort of said "well kind of - you wouldn't want to look like this!. I think she understood what I meant. She came out and wore her headscarf with pride. We agreed that we were fighters. I like the Esprit de Corps you get with cancer. If you haven't had it you probably wont get it.

As a further aside, my dreams are back in full flow and they are generally hopeful and pleasant. I haven't had that sort of dream for perhaps 18 months or more. I can't even begin to tell you what a relief it is to have dreams that settle me down and don't upset me!

I think I am beginning to enjoy my job and the responsibility to perform its duties.

How was it for you?

Well - pretty harrowing really. I spent most of the day running through a series of case studies that can only be called pretty distressing at the least. It is a lovely place to work - great people as you would expect.

I did a number of early bits of work on the cases studies which certainly made me consider what we were all really there for. I ended up getting home late as a friend called me on the way out and we had a few beers on the way home. I got home gone 9 which considering I left the office at about 5:20 was some one or two drinks!

Anyway - a different day to the one I was expecting but nonetheless, I did enjoy it and the day rattled past pretty quickly.

Last Minute Preparations

I managed to get my accounts done but have an anomaly in them - again - I need to spend a bit of time sorting that out as they need to be audited on Friday..... Mind you it is so far out that there should be an obvious explanation.

I've got all my stuff ready - I need a note to remind me to pack my sandwiches and bits to take tomorrow. I will go off early which will allow me to stroll down there and have a breakfast just opposite. I can then roll in early and see what happens. It is quite exciting really and I am looking forward to getting started and to some of the work I'll be able to do.

There is a fair amount of "wordsmithing" to do and the opportunity to get stuck into some real "make the difference" work already makes me feel good. Once I have made my mind up to do something I'm pretty good at getting going and doing it. I need a couple of neat attention grabbers to start the ball rolling and then I can build the role from there.

Last Day Sat Here

I hope for a while anyway. Mind you I need to get some work done and the PC decided to fall over on me I thought I had saved all my work - I was backing up regularly but it appears that none of the figures I entered into the accounts have been saved. I now have to do another hour to get them all in there properly! Nightmare.

I'm feeling relatively fit at the moment but still awaiting the letter from the Hospital for my Operation and assessment day. Once I have those I can plan things out. It is always the problem with these things that you cannot actually commit to anything which makes you look a bit of a numpty but it is the way of things that you have to work around them not vice versa.

I can only imagine how tired I am going to feel after this week is up but I don't mind. At least I'll be doing something useful and with a bit of luck these guys will actually pay me this time!

Blimey that was close

We had a light aircraft crash just - I guess - a mile away at most. We heard it go over us low and screaming but it felt that it was just low but it was making a hell of a racket.

A few minutes later there was a loud boom and a mushroom cloud of smoke across the main road and the small plane had come down - it killed all 5 on board but luckily no one on the ground was killed. The planes fly over here regularly and the plane is one of the small jets that regularly fly out - we used to get the F1 Jets too at one time. The trouble is that it isn't far from the school or the Hospital and they are on the flight path and have been for years.

It isn't the first accident we have had around here - we had a few when we lived nearer the airport including a very nasty one that actually crashed on our road.

It just goes to show, you never know. It was very busy around here today with all the sirens, helicopters and road closures.

Forgetting

It is good occasionally to forget that I started this blog off about bladder cancer as some days it doesn't enter my head at all. Other days I think about it a number of times. It is a strange thing - I can have quite vivid recollections and also "fears" flash in and out of my mind. I flashed into a brief playback of a treatment day earlier and realised that I didn't fancy it but then looked at the upside that I may just have another 12 of those to go and I may be able to be pronounced in remission or whatever they call it these days.

The weekend

I'm out an about tomorrow and have a full day - the office is looking tidier and I've dumped so much stuff. Where does it all come from/ I still have plenty to do before I start on Tuesday but at least I ave made a significant dent in the workload.

I now need to get some rest as I am off out to a meeting first thing. When I get home late afternoon I have to get changed and then go out again in the evening. I hope I don't fall asleep around at our friends!

procrastination again

Life should be simple. I wanted to upgrade my mobile phone - it is 2 years old now and showing signs of battery weakness and it is getting a bit slow. So I got an e-mail offering a free upgrade. I spent an hour looking at all the new handsets, decided what one I'd like and a second choice, got together my account number went to the call centre and found that they started offering me a cheap account where I could go and buy my own phone? Umm, I wanted to upgrade - ah but this way you can - by then my brain had turned to mush and so I now have a second proposition I have to find out about when all I wanted to do was upgrade my phone. That has just wasted about 2 hours of time in total and I'm still none the wiser.

Now I've done that I am sitting in front of a pile of paper and wondering which one to attack first and I'm back to square one on lots of them. Instead of clearing the decks I'm just moving bits of paper from one pile to another. I suppose I could be ruthless here and just dump loads of it but I do need to read it through first to make sure I can.

Life is never that easy is it. Anyway, I now have another e-mail request requiring my attention - it will be good to get back to working for a living and getting a rest from all of this!

Blimey

My office is beginning to look a bit different now that I have started to throw out all my old junk and archive the other stuff. I've turned the drawing board through 90 degrees and can finally get to the bookshelves in the corner. I'll have another little rearrange tomorrow and then get on with my outstanding bits.

As you can imagine my demeanour has gone up a lot knowing that I have this job. I actually need to slow down a bit as they wont be used to the sort of pace and energy that I'm used to working in.

On a bit of a strange note - I saw my neighbour the other day not looking too perky out and about with a stick and slowly walking around. I thought he had gotten his bad back problems he had a good few years ago back again (so to speak). C bumped into him today and asked what the problem was? Lung Cancer and he had a lung removed just before Christmas - we really hadn't seen him and it appears he is all clear which is good. I must try and bump into him and say hello and welcome someone else to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Got it!

Well that is a relief. I got the job this morning definitely and I start next Tuesday. I'm now going through the shock and relief bit. It wasn't quite what I was planning to do but it is a relief to get out of the Rat Race and to be able to move on. We agreed to give it a year and to review it after that time. That should give us enough time to see if we like each other and then we can decide whether to take that forward on a more permanent basis. I'm actually quite pleased about that now. I have a load of work to do to change all my online details but happy to do that too.

There are some loose strings that need sorting out and I need to sort out myself and get ready to become a disciplined worker again. I haven't worn a suit for work for years either. The one yesterday didn't fit particularly well.

Right - I need to catch up with all my work now and finish off all these outstanding bits of work too.

Mixed Day

Seems to be great news on the job front and a boost really - I have something to aim at and something honourable to do with my skills.

The mixed stuff - I just met up with a friend who's Dad died last week just before Easter. Not nice. My - possibly - closest friend just dropped me a line to say his Mum will probably not last the night out and another friend's dad has just had a Stroke and been admitted to Hospital. I suppose that I have now got to an age when that is the real deal - that our parents are in the waiting room.

Tomorrow is an important day as I can finalise my new contract and hopefully start working for this charity next Tuesday. the relief is immense and I will bring a lot to the role - I am really looking forward to it.

Great stuff

Well it looks as if the deal is on. More discussions tomorrow but in general terms - the job is mine. Thank goodness for that.

I came home and went to the pub and did my usual post meeting analysis and thought to myself, as you do, wouldn't it be great to go and work there. Well - subject to negotiations tomorrow - I could be starting on the 1st April (subject to the usual April Fool's rituals of course) - BRILLIANT!!!!!

More when I calm down and sleep off the couple of beers :-)