Farewell!

I walked into the office today to be confronted by a picture of my (very drunken) ugly mug, pulling one of my more attractive faces.  The larger than life poster, which had been put up in my honour for my last day at Bra Towers, gives a great view up both of my nostrils, (seriously, people shouldn’t be allowed to carry cameras when I’ve been drinking!) and the caption on the poster reads “Don’t ever change, we love you just the way you are xx”.

This pretty much affirms my Bridget Jones status once and for all, but I was overcome with a warm fuzzy feeling that I think…and I’m about as emotionally retarded as you can get, so there’s always the possibility I’m wrong…but I think it was probably a feeling of belonging.

Lots of people love what they do, or love the people they work with, but for me – well I started here as a nineteen year old, and I’ve actually grown up in this place.  Some of the people I started with on my first day are still here and have watched me grow from a stubborn teenager into…well a stubborn thirty year old (sorry guys, the stubborn bit is genetic I think).  They’ve celebrated each step forward with me, picked me up every time I’ve stumbled (granted many of them have laughed and pointed at me before picking me up…!) and helped me through all of the hard times, of which there have been many.

You spend on average, eight hours a day sleeping, two hours a day commuting, and eight hours a day working, leaving just six to be spent with family and friends, and that’s if you’re lucky.  Over the years I’ve spent more time with my work friends than I have with my husband or boyfriend (by the way for the record I didn’t have a husband and a boyfriend at the same time…just in case you were wondering).  Your colleagues can often become your friends, and here it’s just been made even easier, as they’re such a wonderful bunch of lads and lasses.

It’s going to be strange not turning up at the office every morning…not that I’ll miss the commute, but it’s a routine I’ve had for nearly 11 years…but more than anything I’ll miss my Bra Towers family, and know that wherever I go next, I’ll never get to work with a more wonderful, genuine, friendly, supportive and bloody gorgeous bunch of people.

Thank you everyone – for making my time here so special, and for putting up with my singing, and my sarcasm, and my verbal abuse towards our systems.  I’m going to miss you all heaps xxx

Big Bro's Big Day

My big bro is getting married, and last year I promised myself that I would never again look back on someone’s wedding photos, and see myself looking chunkier than I wanted to be. So naturally my diet for his big day has started in earnest. The only problem is, the numpty has decided to forsake the usual eighteen months worth of wedding preparations. Instead he got engaged just before Christmas, and is having his wedding in July! This combined with the fact that I only remembered the little promise I made to myself last week has put the pressure on somewhat!!!

Therefore I have disregarded all “healthy” weight loss efforts and have opted for a good old fashioned fad diet. I must say it’s working very well, and in the first week I’ve lost 6lbs (Yay for me). Originally I was thinking of going really traditional, and surviving purely on laxatives and smokes, but as I haven’t been living with my house mate for that long, I had second thoughts for her sake. It’s actually not a crazy fad diet...The last one I did saw me giving up actual food, in favour of meal replacement shakes for every meal. At least this one means I get to chew stuff. It’s a high protein, low carb diet, and whilst I usually live on Pasta and Pizza and other foodstuffs with a lot of carby goodness in them, I can honestly say at this point (let’s remember I’m only a week in) I don’t miss them too much.

I’ve got nine weeks until my bro’s big day, so if I can lose about 2lbs a week, then I should be feeling pretty good about myself, but then comes the trauma of finding something to wear for his wedding! Obviously I don’t want to buy something now, as it will (fingers crossed) be too big for me...but then what if there’s nothing nice in the shops when I go to buy something in July? Aaagh, nightmare! There is something very exciting about a wedding though – granted this one will be a bit weird for me, as I’ve only been to one wedding as a singleton, and that was a friend’s so therefore I was surrounded by my group of friends. This is a family wedding, and therefore I suppose I’ll be surrounded by my family...which is great, but there’s also a part of me thinking I might feel a little bit like I’ve regressed to being a teenager again, where you’re dragged along to Aunt Betty and Uncle Bob’s ruby wedding anniversary party – you don’t know anyone but your family, and you therefore end up stuck with them for the evening, when what you want to be doing is busting a few moves like Beyonce on the dance floor. Incidentally, nowadays, if you ever actually see me doing my best Beyonce impression, feel free to slap me hard across the face and remind me that I have no rhythm. (Unpleasant performances like that are best nipped in the bud quickly I find.)

I also have the added dilemma of finding a new signature. That sounds like a really random thing to throw into conversation, but my divorce is imminent (is it wrong to want to shout "Thank F**K for that!" when writing a blog about an impending marriage?) and so by that point I should be fully reverted back to my maiden name (Whoop). I’m actually going to be a witness at the wedding, so will have to sign the marriage book thingy. You may say, well just use the one you had before you got married, which would make sense, but it’s really long, and I’ve got used to the very quick little one I use now...so it’s going to have to change. I better get practicing! I certainly don’t want to fluff it up on the big day....

"Do any persons here present...have an ink eraser pen??"

DVD Heaven

At a recent house party, my friend’s boyfriend asked whether my new house mate was a guy. He was in fact sitting right next to my new house mate, and she’s very definitely all woman, but what made him question it was the DVD collection he was currently admiring – which is in fact mine. In his mind it was a very masculine collection of films, and he couldn’t match up my taste in films with the person he knew me to be. I should probably have been offended, but it’s not the first time someone has commented on it. I once went on a date with a squaddie, who when he dropped me home and saw my DVD collection, automatically asked whether I had a “thing” for soldiers, due to the fact that a) I was on a date with him, and b) I have over twenty films/documentaries which follow a military theme. I don’t (for the record) but obviously I have a military background so it’s something I have an interest in. He wasn’t as observant as he thought he was though, because if he’d looked more closely he would have noticed than many of my DVD’s feature Matt Damon...I have a “thing” for him...not soldiers! Your DVD collection is like your iPod. It’s a window to your soul, and once you put it out there for people to see, they’re able to make assumptions about you, and your personality. I was once on a photo shoot with work, and our photographer had forgotten his iPod. He wasn’t happy to be shooting without music so I offered him the use of mine without really thinking it through, and then witnessed the horror unfold as he hit the “shuffle” button. Annoyingly, I think I was doing okay until Enya’s Orinoco Flow deprived me of any cool points I’d earned up to that point. Was I ashamed though? Was I hell! My musical taste is MY musical taste. Sometimes I want to brood listening to The Cure, other times I want to lie in the bath with a glass of wine unwinding whilst Andrea Bocelli serenades me with Canto Della Terra. When I’m getting ready for a night out I want to listen to something that gets me in the mood to dance, and when I feel the need to be angry at my lot in life, and the men who’ve made me mad, I’ve got Alanis Morrisette and Skunk Anansie to help me vent. I can get lost in a song as easily as I can get lost in a film. Men look at my DVD collection and see the CSI and Spooks series box sets...they see Jarhead, Full Metal Jacket, The Hurtlocker and Black Hawk Down and make assumptions, like my squaddie date did...but that’s because they’re so preoccupied with the films they see that they like they don’t bother to look any further. My girlfriends see the Bridget Jones films, the Titanic’s, Pride & Prejudice’s and the PS I Love You’s of my collection. They see the chick-flicks and Rom Coms that I rely on when I’m feeling low to cheer me up because they're the films they love too. There’s a film for every mood on my DVD shelf, just like there’s a song for every emotion on my iPod, and a book for every occasion on my Kindle. Perhaps the conclusion people should come to, is that I love escapism...and if you want to hold my attention, you’re going to have to make my time around you as much as an escape from the bland reality of day to day life as movies, books and music do. I love my life, and the world I live in, but sometimes it’s just better to get lost in another place altogether. That’s real freedom. That’s my little slice of heaven.