Tomorrow isn't promised....

Its been a strange few weeks.  In fact this month really has demonstrated my theory about every year having highs and lows.  I survived January, so that was a good start to February! I heard of a number of deaths which have touched people I know, and crazily three serious car accidents affecting the lives of people I know.  I got back in touch with an old friend on Facebook, I haven't seen her for years.  I almost lost one of my closest friends.  And my baby turned 16!!!

Death has affected a few people I know this month, and some of them are people I am close to.  My heart goes out to them all.  There are no words.....

The three serious RTC's were all in or close to Coventry and all within the space of a couple of weeks.  I don't know any of the people involved well, one chap I know from school, one is the husband of a lady I worked with and the other a daughter of someone I know a little.  None of the people I know were killed however in two of the three accidents people were killed, and all of the people I know had serious life threatening, and/or life changing injuries.  This is a pretty sobering thought.  My city is a fairly small one really, and it makes you realise its not just something you see on the news that happens to other people.  There but for the grace of God?

My old friend is also my name sake.  We were the two M's! We were good friends for a number of years, but lost touch when I got sick and she was in a new relationship.  I guess our lives just headed in different directions at the time.  I saw a name pop up on Facebook of someone connected to her, and clicked on their page and there was her name, Voila...... Fate!!  It was lovely to catch up and see what was happening in her life.  We said we'll meet up for a cuppa and that would be good.  She's also a Granny.  That's mad, she's not that much older than me, and I can't imagine being a Nan!!

My baby turned 16, how did that happen?  How did I get to be the mother of an almost grown up person?  We had celebrations, and cake, and pressies, and trips out!  She also has a prom coming up, so we've been prom dress shopping too.  And we've booked a cottage in Scotland for a week after exams finish, so lots to look forward to! 

One of my bestest buddies J has been waiting for a shoulder op for a while.  She was booked in to have it last year, but her husband was taken seriously ill and almost died so she had to postpone.  He's on the mend now, so she finally got a date through to have it and was looking forward to getting it out of the way and being pain free.  It was scheduled as day surgery so she should have been in and out quite simply.  I sent her a text in the morning wishing her luck, and saying this would be the first day of the rest of her life!  How right I was!  I was standing in Tesco in the evening when I got a call from her husband to say she'd arrested in theatre.  They got her back and she's OK, but it was a shock to the system I can tell you!  It literally was the first day of the rest of her life.  Coming that close to losing one of my best friends really shook me up.  It also made me want to make sure the people I care about know how much they mean to me!!  

Tomorrow isn't promised to any of us, and this month more than ever I've realised that.  So apologies to all of you that I care about, but you will get an extra tight hug from time to time, and you might get tired of hearing that I love you!  But there's worse things....... surely? 

C xx

Does it really have to be this hard?

I was chatting to a friend in another part of the firm we both work for earlier and we were remarking how systems within large organisations such as ours often make things so much harder than they need to be.  I launched in to one of my trademark rants, and it inspired me to put hand to keyboard once more and get it out of my system by means of a blog!

What I am about to tell you sums up the bureaucratic processes that slow our public services down.  There is a lot of talk about how we should be enabling people and making things happen rather than the current culture of telling people what they can't do and putting barriers in the way.  This shows that we still have some way to go......

We have just had a new chap start in our department, not someone new to the organisation, but someone transferring from elsewhere within the company.  We've had a long wait for him, but he finally arrived on Monday, bright and early and ready to get stuck in.  Well he would have been had there been any IT equipment for him to use.

In his old department he had use of a company laptop, for information security purposes this laptop was encrypted so that only he could access the information contained on it, standard company policy.  Now as we are one big organisation, with one IT department that's effectively paid for from the same big pot of money you'd assume the most sensible, cost effective option would be for him to bring this IT equipment with him across the road to his new office?  To clarify, it is only across the road, not a different city, not even the other side of the city, just a few hundred yards.  To be fair this was what had been agreed also.  So last week a man from IT came over and disconnected the desk top computer at the desk he was to occupy and put in the docking equipment compatible with the old laptop.

In the meantime someone else from IT (the same IT department) decided that for some reason known only to them, he was not allowed to bring this laptop with him and would have to leave it behind for whoever later replaces him in that department.  They will instead supply him with new equipment which he will have to wait for while its being encrypted to him.  Because this new equipment is different, someone from IT will then have to come and take out the docking station they have just put in for the laptop he was told by IT he couldn't bring with him. and replace it with a new one compatible with the new equipment.  On top of this the old laptop will have to be rebuilt and encrypted for the new person that takes over his old job.

In the meantime he is sitting at a desk without a functioning pc because it was disconnected to set up a docking station he was never going to be able to use, and to add insult to injury the desktop is still sitting there waiting to be collected, but we aren't allowed to reconnect it.  The wait goes on.......

A waste of time and money maybe?  Hey what do I know!!

Does it really have to be this hard, does it????

C xx

How many women does it take to get a taxi?

A male friend yesterday posted his own version of the popular how many does it take joke.  This one was at the expense of me and a few of my friends, one of whom he's married to so he may regret it fairly soon. It went like this......

How many women does it take to notice a taxi driver in a cab? 

Answer: 4 inside and two outside! 

Except we didn't!!!

He also commented:  "BUT what I ask myself is? 6 grown women all very intellectual etc and not one of u didn't notice there was no driver? PMSL . What does that say for women ?"

So what had happened that amused Mark so much? 

I was out with a group of friends on Saturday night. We'd had a meal at a local Indian Restaurant and had stayed there having a few drinks till they hoovered around us as a hint for us to leave about 1am.  This is nothing unusual, we do it pretty much every time we go there. It's one of the main reasons we keep going back!  The food is lovely, they put up with our rowdiness and let us stay there all night drinking! In fact we usually drink them out of something!  

So about 1am there were just the diehard ones of us left, as always, and we asked them to call a taxi, G and I called for our lift and we got ready to leave.  We wandered out the front, and there parked at the side of the road was a black cab with his 'Taxi' light on.  We said our goodbyes, gave everyone hugs and the four ladies hopped into the back of the cab.  They told the driver where they wanted to go and sat back waiting for him to pull off.  When he didn't they started to give him directions, and got a bit irate when he ignored them!  J told him he was rude and in the end T tapped on the glass to get his attention. Meanwhile G and I were standing outside waiting oblivious to the fact that anything was wrong. 

The first clue we had was hearing shrieks of laughter, so loud we heard it through the closed taxi door!  We rushed over to see what was going on as the door opened and the 4 of them sat there unable to move they were laughing that hard, the drivers seat of the taxi was completely empty.  It turns out that the driver they were abusing for ignoring them wasn't actually there at all!  Not one of us had noticed as they climbed into the cab, and they hadn't even noticed as they had given the invisible driver his instructions.  But at least he wasn't being rude after all!

At just the right moment a taxi with a real driver pulled up and they sheepishly got out and transferred into this one.  This driver understood their instructions and pulled off immediately.  Moments later the invisible driver came out of the restaurant next door, got into his cab and drove off.  I do wonder if he had been watching these 4 crazy women through the window and decided he just couldn't face them, or whether he was oblivious to it all. but would have been disappointed to miss the fare had he known.  I guess we'll never know!

But imagine his reaction if he'd come out a few minutes earlier and found 4 hysterical women in the back of his driverless cab..........