Plubby MkIII

Umm. Hello. Long time no blog.

Erstwhile readers will remember this bit of drama: LT Girl – The End

Well guess who sent me an invitation to join her contacts list on LinkedIn last week? Most odd after 2 years of no contact at all and I assumed she was pissed, or possibly had run out of friends again (2 years is about right). Turns out that C got a similar invitation, so maybe she’s magnanimously decided to ‘forgive’ us for our heinous crimes.

Don’t need, don’t want, not gonna.

So I ‘ignored’ it.

As you were.

I spent last weekend up north at sis-with-the-antique-shop, as she had a spare, much-coveted ticket to the twice yearly Paul Smith Warehouse sale.

It wasn’t an auspicious start to the day, what with us all getting up at 4.30 am to get into the queue in time to ensure we got in in the first group through the doors. Said doors don’t open until 8 am, but the queue starts earlier and earlier every time. We were there at 5.30 and there were already 100 or so people ahead of us. In the dark. And the drizzle.

So you can imagine our delight when 3 lads ‘from the hood’ (so they said, chatting loudly amongst themselves) plonked themselves in front of us at about 7.30. They were talking ‘gangsta’ stylee and looking around daring anyone to challenge them.

My niece was with us. She has learning difficulties and a highly developed sense of fairness, as well as a tendency to see things in black and white, so started telling them off in no uncertain terms. They responded with vague threats of ‘shanking’ (nice) and talked loudly to each other about ‘somebody gonna leave here in a hambalance’ (sic).

Us cowardly grown-ups did our best to persuade her to pipe down a bit, until one of them glared at my sis and said ‘Yo, bitch! Nothing to see here. Turn around!’ Sis drew herself up to her full 5′ 3″ and replied ‘Don’t you fucking tell me what to do!’ (she never swears).

Other people in the vicinity were nervously looking on expecting knives to be produced at any moment.

Until the lovely head of security came up and, very politely, told them he had the whole thing on CCTV, he knew they hadn’t arrived at 5.30 as they claimed and held them back.

Niece has been told she must never, never challenge blokes like that again (though we were secretly proud of her of course …) because they’re dangerous and unpredictable. She looked distinctly unconvinced.

And I am now the proud owner of two more pairs of beautiful biker boots – dark brown and tan – which set me back the princely sum of £40 a pair (RRP £350).

Score!

Yup – procrastination is the name of the game and I am astounded at just how good I am at it. No really, I’m a champion.

I finished work on 15th April, but that sort of didn’t count as they were paying me for a further 4 weeks and I was on holiday for half of the notice period and didn’t get back to London until after The Royal Wedding (the main reason for naffing off out of the country in the first place). So, I was paid until mid May and couldn’t have signed on before then even if I’d wanted to.

Since then, I have considered registering as unemployed and got as far as the long telephone interview and setting up a preliminary interview with some bloke at the local JobCentre Plus. Which I cancelled two days later as I decided that, hell, I’ve just been paid a decent wodge of redundancy money and do I really want to a) be on their radar and b) have someone with much less experience of applying for, getting and keeping jobs than me giving me crap advice on how to write a CV and offering to apply for jobs on my behalf – all for the princely sum of £67 a week? On balance, I decided I did not.

I have now pretty much finished all the painting and decorating I plan to do around the pogpad for now – and very clean and spiffy it’s all looking now, thank you very much. I am tired of washing paint out of my hair.

I have made curtains for friends, I’ve read lots of books, seen loads of films, decluttered my wardrobe (the local charity shop staff are my bessie mates at the mo), knitted all sorts of bits and pieces and tried out loads of new recipes.

I’ve even collected some (embarrassingly effusive in a couple of cases) references so I can include a quote or two in my updated CV. I’ve begrudgingly looked at some jobsearch sites and seen absolutely nothing that appeals.

We’re now a third of the way through July, so I probably should think about getting my finger out and do something about looking for a proper job. Or even a part-time job. But tomorrow I shall finish off the bits and pieces of woodwork that need another coat of brilliant satin white; on Tuesday I am going to an extended farewell lunch for one of my former fundraising team (the only bloke that actually raised any serious money – who hasn’t been made redundant but has resigned in order to return to his home across the Pond – they are bricking it now he’s going. Shame. Ahem.); on Wednesday I have a hospital appointment (which always means a wasted afternoon in the waiting room) and Friday I am off to give my old boss a hand setting up a filing system for him and sorting out his brand new laptop.

So maybe the week after next then, ay? But my mate with the workshop and lots of exciting power tools has offered to teach me how to make some new bookshelves for my living room (from beautiful wide reclaimed floorboards) – which I really think I’d like to do.

Toldya I was good at this.

Just heard from a former colleague: “Things are ok – but I feel that we are blindly moving towards an unwanted fate that is becoming more and more apparent.”

And still the whole management team is in place. With almost nobody left to manage.

Yesterday it cost me £45 for a perfectly charming chap called Teddy to tell me that my washing machine is not responsible for tripping my circuit-breaker every time it is switched on (it blew everything mid-wash cycle two evenings ago). After some ‘interesting’ incidents involving the circuit-breaker fizzing madly and emitting white smoke before doing its job (even mild-mannered Teddy looked mildly alarmed), it appears that the wall socket has decided to try to kill me. I am now giving it a wide berth while trying to persuade an electrician to come and reassure me that my flat is not in imminent danger of burning down. The upside is that I am unlikely – yet at least – to have to persuade some grumpy blokes from Comet to carry a new washing machine up 4 flights to my attic flat. The last lot were not happy bunnies.

In other news, I have been helping my old boss from the big publishing house days to sort through 48 large crates of chattels from his last few moves in an attempt to stop the newly divorced ex-wife from naffing off with the lot. She has claimed about 35 crates out of 48, assigning him a mere 6 and claiming the others are ‘mutual’. So far we have found some very expensive bits and bobs that have mysteriously found their way into ‘her’ crates, despite her own detailed inventory listing things such as ‘sundry kitchen equipment’ and ‘carton kilner jars’. Plus ca change.

Having finished painting the pogpad for the time being, I am considering actually attempting looking for real paid work, as I really can’t justify putting it off much longer. Durn.

But not today.

It’s only been 6 days since my wireless router – provided by TalkTalk and still only a few months old – gasped its last and refused point blank to connect to the local exchange. It is still under warranty. I went to a friend’s and checked on their website the long list of steps to be undertaken before they might believe me. I changed the ADSL filter and the cable, I bought a new adaptor, I had the phone line checked. I checked that the password was correct. I rebooted everything a squillion times (approx).

I emailed them to inform them of everything I had done. They ignored my list and went through all the steps again in painful detail and told me to try it all again. So I did.

Finally, I borrowed a wireless router from friend and plugged it in. It instantly connected.

I phone TalkTalk on their premium priced phone number. Yes, yes I have been through all the steps you suggest. No, I do not want you to send out an engineer who will charge me £50 to tell me what I already know. No this is not an old router – you sold it to me a few months ago. No, I will not pay £30 for another one when you can clearly see that this one is far less than a year old.

The young man in Bangalore eventually concedes that I will not, after all, have to pay for a new router and he will order me a new one. It will take about a week to get to me (why?).

His parting words: “Can you please stay on the line to answer a few questions on the quality of the services of our technical support team?”

Mmmmmmffffffffff.
(They are wise enough not to allow you to record what you really mean – you may only press numbers on the phone from 1 [poor] to 4 [excellent]. Anyone want to take a guess?)

No need to make this password protected any more as not only am I (obv) not doing blog entries in the office, it also looks like the days of the business are numbered.
I’m so, so glad I was in the first tranche to be made redundant – in fact, I’m really enjoying not working. Haven’t even registered as unemployed as I am far too busy decorating my flat, seeing friends, cooking, making long-promised bits and pieces for friends (curtains, a bean bag, hats and the like). And reading a lot. Much better than being in that toxic and depressing atmosphere.
Anyways, I heard yesterday that they have singularly failed to pick up any more govt business, having lost well over 75% of their funding. Twenty-six of us went in the first cut. A further 85 are just about to be made redundant and of those that are still working on soon-to-be-finished contracts, many are jumping ship before they’re pushed, having not been there long enough to get a redundancy package so wisely ensuring they’re first in the queue for any work with the big new (commercial) welfare-to-work providers. This will leave maybe 70 people out of an original workforce of almost 200. For now.
The most unedifying sight in all of this is the undignified scramble by various members of the management team who are whizzing about trying to keep their jobs by stabbing each other in the back, having successfully’ managed’ the people (who did all the real work) out of their jobs.
It’s the exceptionally badly paid frontline people I really feel sorry for. The management can, with one or two exceptions, go f**k themselves.
I’m well out of it.
In other news, my flat is beginning to look very fresh and clean and shiny. I, of course, am covered in paint.
Onwards and upwards!

So here I am on gardening leave.  Okay, here I am unemployed …

Ibiza was just what the doctor ordered -apart from the one day when it peed down, which fortunately (kinda) coincided with the incident of the dodgy tuna which meant that I didn’t dare leave the hotel room all day.  I will spare you the details.

Now I am back and contemplating various projects, none of which currently involve looking for work.  I have curtains to make for the lads, a living room to paint, a kitchen that needs a complete makeover and, of course, friends to see, films to watch and books to read. 

I’ll start gently with an email or two to some of my contacts.  Next week.   Maybe.

My former employer’s (!) head of IT (aka the bearded sloth) has just disabled my company gmail account.  This would be fine, except that I now won’t be able to hand over a whole load of information that they need to my erstwhile line manager and the CEO’s PA. 

Absolutely fine by me.  And anyway, they’re too late – I have already said my goodbyes to all the support group members and have had all the offers of help, introductions and personal references I need.

So, a very short visit to the office tomorrow now then …

Here I am on ‘gardening leave’ (aka jobless but still being paid for a bit).  I must say, it wasn’t too much of a hardship not having to schlepp into the office today, but I’ve still managed to spend most of the day at my laptop dismantling my erstwhile job ….

I also emailed all the members of the various groups of supporters I set up all over the country (just under a hundred people) to say thanks and bye-bye and have been swamped with lovely replies, phone calls and offers of personal references.  Which is all very nice.

I suspect, however, that my esteemed CEO will go completely apeshit when she finds out that I have beaten her to it – but it’s hardly my fault that she issued the redundancy consultation notices and promptly sodded off on holiday and hasn’t been seen since, is it?   As I’m officially gone before she’ll get back, I saw no reason at all to delay my goodbyes and I’m damned if I’m going to pretend that the business is doing as well as it ever was. (I have of course been careful not to reveal anything that could be deemed commercially confidential.)  From the shocked responses I received from a couple of her new House of Lords colleagues, it’s pretty clear that she’s been a bit economical with the truth about how well everything’s going. 

 Having now seen the figures, I just can’t see how they’re going to survive – they’re burning through reserves at speed and the senior management team are dashing about trying to justify their jobs.  Something’s got to give very soon.

I’m just glad I’m going while they can afford to pay me off!