Finally, at the age of 24, my mama is teaching me how to knit. So far I have a… very small scarf/narrow blanket/strip of cloth/whatever, with a lot of dropped stitches. Hooray! I intend to practice lots because I’ve wanted to knit for ages.
Back at my mum & dad’s for a few days. Best place to be now winter is properly setting in. Roast dinners, tea, cheese on toast & the countryside. Love it.
Shove. It. Never, ever, EVER call me again. I will give you no more money.
No love,
Coffeebucks.
… is something I did a few years ago around this time of year, and this date remains ever special. I wonder for how long it will do so.
This is the part of being ill that I really hate - insomnia from a bad throat & scratchy cough. Gaaaaah. Hope it improves soon.
I went to London on Thursday, something I get to do quite often now as my organisation works from Edinburgh, London & Cardiff, and once or twice a year we all get together for team planning. I was quite terribly disorganised & managed to forget my toothbrush, didn’t notice until bedtime on Thursday, did the best that I could the next morning but went out at the crack of dawn in Docklands & found a nearby Waitrose that thankfully supplied toothbrushes. Getting all 60-odd staff members in the same place is a big job & more than the office can support, so we use the rooms of our major corporate donors. This year it was Credit Suisse, halfway up One Canada Square and very swish & imposing. I regularly get a bit overwhelmed by having a professional, real job (Me? Really?) but days like yesterday really bring it home. Very distracted watching the planes coming in to City Airport.
The day was primarily team-building, corporate cheese, but better than at a lot of other places I’ve worked at. Everyone is so passionate about their job, it’s really heart-warming. The Chief Exec always makes time to talk to all employees, which is nice, even if he is a little embarrassing (“Is your hair fashionable, then?” he questioned of me, but asked my colleague Rob what the ‘benefits’ of Rob’s tongue piercing were, which is way worse.)
One I’d stopped being overwhelmed by hanging out in an investment bank in Canary Wharf, I went to the washroom to brush my teeth. In the lovely marble & dark wood room, with designer taps, Molton Brown toiletries & fresh flowers everywhere, I was gracefully spitting mouthwash into the basin & trying to make sure my eyeliner was sharp enough when two impeccably coiffed & suited ladies walked in and looked slightly horrified at my presence. I made a quick exit. I don’t think I’m posh London corporate material, at least not yet.
I had a lovely time talking to lots of people I don’t see very often, but ended up looking a bit silly as I’d come down with a cold that had been circulating around the rest of the office & was really struggling by lunchtime. Gillian, who always has an array of tablets & painkillers for all situations, gave me some really strong medication. It sorted me out, but I try & refrain from medication as much as possible & two ibuprofen is strong enough for me, so after popping two cold & flu capsules with some codeine it only took 2 glasses of wine for me to be really slurring my words & tripping over a bit. I don’t remember going to bed, really, but I didn’t have a hangover due to not actually drinking very much at all. I’m sure I would feel more ill now had I not taken them, but I hope everyone realises I was heavily medicated & I’m not just a lightweight, problem drinker, or idiot.
This story is so terribly, awfully sad. I’ve settled on the Guardian as my source of choice as all the other papers seem riddled with scare quotes and qualifying phrases like ‘Apparently’, ‘According to…” and other such phrasing. It is what it is.
I’m not sure why this story has affected me so much, when most tragic news stories don’t make me feel this bad. I haven’t got any suicide issues, and it’s not particularly local although I do drive over the Erskine Bridge quite a lot. It’s not the ages at which they died, although that’s upsetting. But I can’t stop thinking about this story.
14 and 15, though. So young. I had a really great childhood and the idea of being away from my family, not getting on with my family, in a secure unit far from the place I grew up, at that age, is simply awful. I don’t know the specifics of what brought those poor girls to the centre or what had happened in their lives to bring them there, but it can’t be good. To have a loved one die of a drug overdose, too, must be awful.
I hope everything is better for them now.
