Automatic Writing - splurging the days events

so there we were, sitting in the horrific monday morning meeting. or HMMM. as it had become appropriately named. why. why do we have the meetings at such an horrific time. 8.30am. is the boss not human? does he not have a life outside of the office? he certainly seems t

he type to live life to the full. heck, he has so much energy he could power the whole building in a power cut.

ok. back to real life. the agenda has been passed round. the week ahead. targets. budgets. planning. staff bonuses (yes, we all perked up for that one). and finally, finally we near the end. AOB. what is it with abbreviations anyway. doesn't anyone know how to write in full. I mean, word processors are quite sophisticated these days. you can programme in abbreviations to auto-correct and produce the actual words. magic eh!

anyway. wow. I'm easily distracted today. some words were just repeated. was I meant to hear that? team building. that was it. we're going on a team building course which everyone hopes will remove the enormous gap between them and us. the void separating management from us minions at the bottom of the pile. we all have tension headaches because of the red tape, endless meetings and discussions (most recently the headache has been about the freestanding vending machine that appeared one monday morning right outside this very meeting room. now we can all get bored in the meetings and fat at the same time. next there'll be posters around the building offering rapid weight loss classes.

back to reality. the boss is speaking. he's talking about an away day where we'll all bond. has he actually asked anyone if they want to do this? we would all just prefer to have a day off. spend some quality time with our families instead of erecting the company banner stands and listening to The spontaneity shop sell us their expensive corporate acting workshops that promise to make us happy.

any more AOB....no response. meeting over. sixty long, wasted minutes. now we all have to play catch up until the next meeting where we'll once again slip into a parallel universe of eternal happiness inside our minds. 

Bell Ringing: Campanology is Fun!

The posh term for church bellringing is: "Campanology" - a word these days which is usually resticted to pub quizzes/crosswords and most 'campanologists' tend to call themselves ringers or bellringers.

Unfortuantely the general public cannot just wander up a random tower, pull a bell and hope to know what to do with it! The right way to go about it is to contact your local tower with bells - usually by searching through DOVE: dove.cccbr.org.uk/home.php and arranging a time when you can go and visit.

The best thing about church bellringing is that anyone from any profession can learn and the gamut runs from cosmetic doctors to someone who looks after dog insurance in London! It is also completely ageless. We had a situation recently when one of our more experienced young ringers around the age of 12 was explaining something quite complicated to a less experienced but older ringer in his 50s. The older ringer had complete concentration and, when asked afterwards, said he was able to understand more clearly what this young ringer had explained to him.

The "anyone can learn" idea creates a wide bell ringing social network. You can travel up and down the country even around the world (such as New Zealand, Australia or America) arrange to ring at a tower on a practice night and be welcomed by the local band. This gives us a chance to experience different places the general public do not usually get access to, explore new areas and make new friends. One recent example of such social networking is when a couple - who are both ringers - went to New Zealand and rang in various places such as Aukland and Wellington. In one tower, the captain asked where in the UK they were from; on hearing their reply, the captain said he knew some of the couples' ringing friends who had travelled there a few years earlier!

Bellringers who learn at a young age and go to a university can join a ringing society. These are located all over the country and one such example is the: "University of London Society of Change Ringers" - (www.ulscr.org.uk). This society arranges activites such as outings/tours usually for a day or weekend - (visiting another region and ringing in the surrounding towers), social evenings (ice skating, cinema, laser questing, dinners, picnics, treasure hunts...) and anything else society members suggest!

In a nutshell, bellringing is an enjoyable, social and mentally stimulating hobby that anyone can enjoy at any age.

Laser Hair Removal and Alice in Wonderland

Can anyone tell me how much laser hair removal costs? I’m getting so irritated with shaving my legs every couple days. Hah! I know that is common gripe from women, but seriously– it takes me a good thirty minutes every few days to get myself feeling clean and fresh. For me, it is not a physical or appearance thing, merely a personal hygiene preference. I hate body hair! All types of body hard. I’m wondering what it would be like to have laser hair removal all over my body.

On that note, for all of you that said I would regret my tattoo, you were wrong! I am still not interested in removing my gorgeous tattoo.I have a rendition of the Cheshire Cat as pictured in American McGee’s Alice in Wonderland on my left calve. It takes up my entire calve and is very detailed. It took seven and a half hours of pain on this bad boy. I had a great tattoo artist though at a place called Warlocks. We had to take smoke breaks during because it was a bit intense. Still, I go for my touch ups once per year and get it looking nice again. It still looks gorgeous.

For those of you that have not placed American McGee’s Alice in Wonderland, give it a try. The gameplay is nothing impressive but the artwork is just absolutely overwhelming. If I wasn’t getting older and a mother of three boys, I would probably get all of the characters from the game around my calves.

The calve is a great place on your body to get a tattoo if you are considering one, and trust me, if you have a good, you'll never even consider tattoo removal. I never wear skirts or shorts, so no one ever knows I have a tattoo until I explicitly show it to them. Since I have had the tattoo, I have had three children and lost more than a hundred pounds. My calve, since it was so muscular to begin with, barely experienced any changes. Some very minor touch ups to the tattoo (under an hour) took care of all the very minor distortions.

Weight Loss Woes

What am I doing worrying about weight loss

when the entire financial infrastructure is falling down around the ears of the politicians who supported the schemes that contributed towards its downfall? Why should a few extra pounds matter when there’s world hunger, child abuse, wars, and other untold misery in every newspaper I pick up?

It’s the current magazine trend that's to blame of course. The magazines that make me look at myself and ignore the friendly, happy person who rarely says a bad word about anyone but instead focus my attention on my flaws. This brings up an interesting question – am I less worthy of positive attention than my children. Every day I contribute towards my children’s self esteem by pointing out their strengths. I know they have things they’re not so good at and we work at those, but I focus on the positive knowing that their self confidence is more important than being able to tie their own shoelaces.

Somehow the logic that I have in parenting issues is lost when it comes to myself however and I although I don’t much like the way many of the celebrities look, I mentally buy-in to the image of how I’m supposed to be. This naturally leads me down the path to mentally beating myself up about how far I am from this image. Suddenly I'm thinking about having botox or going for a lunchtime smart lipo session, where I would never normally consider such a thing.

The funny thing is that during the moments when I’m not a media follower, I actually like who I am. I like what I wear. I like what I eat and don’t see any reason to change my eating patterns just because some person in a movie, or worse, wife of a football player, tells the world that their way is the only way to be. The fact that this or that celebrity has done very little in the world except give out these opinions and doesn’t really look that great anyway, seems irrelevant to the magazine industry.

Meanwhile I have to decide whether to grabble with the extra pounds and put some concentrated effort into losing them, stop reading the magazines, or alternatively accept that I’m a good person just as I am, and if I’m happy with how I look then who cares what anyone else thinks!

The Terminator movie - still got it!

Flicking through the television the other day, I caught some of the original Terminator movie. Now I remember the Terminator movie quite well from when it was first released almost 2 decades ago, but I’d forgotten what an amazing movie it actually is! It really is good. Of course many of the special effects have dated quite badly, but getting down to the nuts and bolts of how the effects were done, there were a surprising amount of things that were done by camera work rather than relying on CGI – because CGI wasn’t around in the same way. The best example I can give you is the beginning when Arny first arrives as the terminator. There is lightening flashing about (bit dodgy), but the big landing is just a camera pan across to where he is sitting surrounded by smoke from his transfer. It still looks really good, and hasn’t dated because there are no special effects as such, he has used camera work and theatrical effect to bring across the action. It really is quite clever.

Inspired by seeing some of the first one, I decided to go on to watch Terminator 2 - Judgement day. Again, what a great film. In terms of being dated however, made in 1991 they set the end of the world in 1997 to make in not that far away. Judgement day has already happened! That was slightly weird to see, and I loved the mushroom cloud sequences. More than anything else though, I loved the change in the character of Sarah Conner. In the first movie she is the scared freaked out woman. She spends the movie running and relying on the strength of those helping her (namely Rece), and whist she does find inner steel, she does spend the film running. I love the fact that in this movie, knowing what is to come she has become hard as nails! She is rock solid, and takes no prisoners... and she looks great! I’m not sure if the actress doing it had a face lift or something, but damn she looks good in it.

I think I will at some point have to watch the third one again, but since I haven’t I’ll withhold my opinion till then.

The Tower of London - a childs prespective

This bank holiday I went to the Tower Of London With my friend to see the crown jewels. It was cold and raining all day and once it snowed but we didn’t care because we had lots of fun in the Tower Of London. The Tower Of London Was built in the Protestant times as a way of keeping all the swords and guns safe from the French, because in the olden times there was a war with the French so they built a castle and then everyone was safe. Then guy Fawkes came along and attempted to blow up Queen Victoria Using some Catholics. This made the prime minister at the time, Henry Four, very cross indeed. So they decided to put Guy Fawkes in the Tower next to Anne Berlin and some priests and they put him on a rack and then he said sorry. Then there was some fireworks, then there was the great fire of London And all the rats went away. Then Henry the 6th came along and he had 8 wives and he was married to William Mary and there was a diamond mine. Then the queen came along who is the queen now of all the land but she is old now. When she was young in the olden days they put the crown on her head and she had a golden cloak. I learned a lot in the Tower Of London About history and about England. There were lots of people there from other countries also learning about history and about England. There was a picture of one and he had a big black spot on his face. Acne laser treatment hadn't been invented back then so they were all quite ugly. My favourite fact that I learned in the Tower Of London Is that medieval people were really little also they slept sitting up it said this on one of the notice boards in the room. And I said this to my friend and she didn’t believe me she said they didn’t sleep sitting up they were just really short but then I said to my mum that they slept sitting up and she believed me. The crown jewels were best because they were shiny and the gift shop was second best because you could buy a shiny ring. Also I liked the café where we had scones and tea, but I got my tea from the vending machine because it was cheeper. Also at lunchtime we had noodles. Written by Jules. (Class 4) At work they have arranged for a discount at an omnilux light clinic for all cosmetic surgery to make us all into clones from Hollyoaks. While I have in the past expressed to the company how difficult it is being surounded by so many uglys, I have to admit I am both surprised and pleased that they have finally moved on it!

Wierd week

It has been the weirdest week at work, I have honestly felt like I have been on an episode of neighbours or some kind of comedy sitcom. It started on Monday with this team building thing that we all had to go on. It sounded like fun to begin with, but when we got there it turned out we all had to wear bunny ears and do a role play where we experienced the world as we would if we were the afore mentioned animal. Seriously. Afterwards we all jumped the guy who was supposed to have carefully planned it months in advance. Turned out he’d forgotten, and in a panic had done a search for corporate events London and booked the first people that were free that day!

So after we got back to the office, I realised that grace wasn’t around. Now Grace would have looked great in a pair of bunny ears. Its widely acknowledged that she is the hottest thing in the office. Seriously, she’s beautiful, great body and is a bit if a melon smuggler. Anyway, it seems the internet was going to strike again. Grace had gone on a client visit to Birmingham, but before going she’d done a search for breast reduction Birmingham and whilst up north where no one could talk her out of it she’d gone and done it! She could have had any man in this office, and she was something we all looked forward to seeing in the morning, and now all we could think of was how much better she used to look. I know this is very un pc, but my world that surgeon should be done for crimes against humanity. There was a slim chance that karma was going to balance things out for us with Jenifer having the female hair loss treatments, which did work well in fact. However there is only one Grace and she’s ruined it for all of us.

So now I’m sitting here just waiting for the end of the week, already. My only solace is to know that the little bunny rabbit in me knows that it doesn’t matter what someone looks like, as long as they have good bunny bearing hips.