Lesson: don't take any notice of hormone driven females!

Today has been a real emotional roller coaster once again, one minute up and the next down. The day though has ended very much on the up, and also with some rather humorous conclusions. Do not listen or pay too much attention to a hormone driven female! I will not into too much detail for the sake of my male readers, although I am sure that the majority, along with women the world over, will know exactly what I mean!

I never used to be troubled too much with mood swings at certain times of the month, but have noticed increasingly during the last couple of months that I seem to be experiencing these for the first few days, and being quite tearful to boot. I don't know what has caused this change, whether it may be related to a change in diet away from organic foods and less fruit and veg, but maybe it is time to start paying a little more attention to what I eat.

I guess I just have to learn though not to pay too much attention to myself at these times and take the rough with the smooth - most important of all, I need to laugh at myself and others and just not take everything quite so seriously. To think that I was seriously thinking of leaving my job is really quite laughable, and boy am I glad that I kept my mouth shut and didn't say things that I would regret. As it stands, the waffler was a real gentleman today and I think we are going to get along just fine. Nothing then has changed, I still like working there, and am still good at it and making progress, I just need to listen to my body a little more, or at certain times it seems, a little less.

Why is life so hard?

Today I am feeling really hacked off about work, and I suppose by writing about it on here, I hope I will be able to reach some conclusions as to why I feel this way and what should be done. Everything was going along nicely until this new guy, whom I shall call the waffler, started last week. On the surface he is great and everything that we need for the store, but for some reason he just presses my buttons like mad.

I am the sort of the person who just mucks in and gets things done - and if there is work to be done I can be relied upon to sort it out and do what needs to be done. Anyone who has read my blog will know that this is true, it does not just relate to my writing life, but to my working life in general. It is just the way that I am, to be brought up with that work ethic.

The waffler has worked for the company before, when he was around seventeen years old. He left for reasons best known to himself and came into the store one day a week or so ago asking whether we needed any staff. At the time we had just offered a full time job to someone else, but he rang a few days after he had accepted it to say that he had changed his mind as it did not pay enough. My Manager then phoned the waffler up, interviewed him, checked his references and ultimately offered him the job. It sounds awful but I almost wish now that I hadn't passed his details on, as maybe things would have stayed the way they were.

It was always going to be difficult for me being the only woman in a store full of men, but until last week we had a nice little team and everything was going along well. I had consolidated my position in the store and was making some good sales and some good progress and then along comes this guy and whoosh - everything changes. He is one of those people with a very dominant personality and is also highly competitive. It just seems like he has just waltzed in and taken over the whole store and there is no longer room for anyone else.

I am sure that he doesn't intend to come across like this, and he is no doubt completely unaware that I even feel this way, although my Manager has his suspicions as he hinted at our meal on Saturday that he has also noticed how competitive he is - sometimes too much so in fact. It is not necessarily a bad thing to be like this, but you need to know when to switch it off and where to draw the line and he does not seem to have mastered this yet. It is as if he is trying almost too hard, and part of me can't help wondering what he is trying to hide or mask. Perhaps inside he does not feel good enough and that he has to compete on this level in order to feel good about himself - I am only guessing here, but in my experience, people do not act like this for no good reason and there is always some underlying cause.

It just seems though that since he started he seems to be everybody's new best friend, and I am left to just get on with things. It seems to be the waffler this and the waffler that and the sun shines out of the waffler's backside and there is just no more room for me at all. I realise that this may sound ridiculous and seem like just sour grapes as he has stolen my position as top sales person, but there is more to it than just that. I admit that I am also competitive and like to do well, but not in this blinkered way and certainly not to the detriment of others. Praise has been heaped on me since I started with this company, and although I realise that I do still have a lot to learn, I feel that I have come an extraordinarily long way. My Manager is the first one to acknowledge that, but still I feel alienated and very alone.

On the surface I would appear to have a lot in common with this new guy, since we have both worked in sales most of our lives, are both creative (I as a writer and he as a singer/songwriter), and both have an interest in holistic health, yet in terms of personality we are just poles apart. I love to help people and do my best to give good advice and good service, don't get me wrong, but I am also quite a sensitive soul and need my own space and a certain amount of solitude, hence my regular trips to Lundy. I can cope with disruption and change quite well, in fact better than most people I know when I come to think about it, and love to get my teeth into a challenge, but I recognise when to switch it on and off.

This guy in comparison is a total people pleaser. Since he started here last Thursday, he has offered to collect stock from another store after work, even though he does not drive, and has also personally delivered goods to several customers in his own time. He also has this incredibly annoying and as I see it false habit of calling customers 'buddy'. To me that just sounds trite and patronising and I would hate it if someone who was serving me in a store of any kind called me by that name. Worst of all though, on several occasions when I have been talking to customers about certain things, he has butted right in with what he wanted to say, over ridden what I was telling the customer (because of course he has more experience and knows best) and ended up taking the sale!

This is not an isolated incident but something I noticed about him almost straight away. I hate it though because one has to be continually looking over one's shoulder in case he is there, and as a result it feels like I can no longer relax and just be myself. It is just such an effort to continually watch someone like this and I get exhausted just watching someone him. I was though really upset today when he pinched one of my customers when I was showing them the features of different products - I really think this is incredibly bad manners and not good for the team or the store. I mean it is one thing wanting to help customers and all of this, but you do not do this at the expense of others.

I realised that I had to say something as there is no way I can allow this kind of thing to continue. If I don't start after all as I mean to go on, then things will only fester and get worse - I have been down that road before in other jobs and know this from bitter experience. I took him to one side then and explained that although I did not want to big thing of it, I did not find it acceptable for him to do that and I would be grateful if he could make sure it did not happen again. He looked very chagrined and apologetic and said that he genuinely had not realised I was talking to the customer. I somehow though found this hard to believe, as if the customers own husband noticed and commented to me about it, then he as the salesperson must have blind as well as rude!

I have to concede though that he did give me a sale later on that day, just as he was going to lunch, but this is really not the point. It just should not happen and is just not acceptable.

I worked my backside off for that company during the busiest time of the year, struggling against the odds to get the sales in and the money in the tills with really very little training at all. I stood my ground though and dealt with it all and did damned good job, to the detriment I hasten to add of my own business and personal life. I am damned then if I am going to let some smart Alec know it all just waltz in and take over.

It has left me though I confess close to tears at one point, and wondering whether it is just time to leave. The reason I am so upset is partly to do with the fact that it took me so long to find this job, I was looking for something suitable that would fit in around my book for almost a year, so now I have found it and have started to settle in so well, I do not want to go through the rigmarole of starting again somewhere else. Yet if I am to be brutally honest, I have to concede that I have been feeling unsure and under the weather for a while, ever since we went to back after Christmas in fact.

Some of it is just a seasonal thing, some of it is the conflict between the need to work outside the home and earn money and the need to dedicate time to my writing business. I knew it was never going to be easy, but did not expect it to be this hard. The ironic thing is that I gave up my job at 2 1/2 years ago as it did not give me sufficient time to finish my book, and now 2 1/2 years later on I find myself in the same situation all over again and still working 4 days a week. At least at my old job I worked one late night each week, which would have given me an in effect 2 days a week to do my book stuff, plus the weekends. I can't help wondering sometimes if I made the right decision to go, and yet I know there is no going back. The misery I feel now is nothing compared to the misery of working in that place, and no amount of extra money or time for book activities would adequately compensate for the misery of that place. I doubt if they would have me back anyway after the letter I wrote telling them what I thought!

I really feel though that it is time to re-evaluate what I want from this job and what my motivations are. I will give it until I am back from Lundy to think things over and make a decision as to whether or not I wish to continue in this role working four days a week. I made the decision to do this a few weeks ago, much against my better judgment, and while I do need the money, some things are just more important. One good thing about this new guy might be the fact that he is so good at bringing in the money that we start to get our bonus on a more regular basis, which may go some way towards offsetting the lost wages if I do decide to go back to 3 days.

It occurs to me though as I write this that maybe this is what he is highlighting for me and what it is really all about - the fact that I made the wrong choice in doing this. It just feels like there is no balance in my life - I am continually having to work for others and do not have time for myself - time to go to the gym, time for my book, time to just be and enjoy life. Another thing that annoys me is the fact that they have changed my day off without letting me know and I now have to cancel a hairdressing appointment which I may not not be able to re-book. It is just all seems to much effort and so much hard slog for too little reward. At the end of the day though, I have to do what fills me with joy and at the moment work does not. I just wish that life didn't have to be so hard!

Happy Christmas to all!

What a delight it was to wake up this morning next to my beloved and realise that today, and in fact for the next two days, I do not have to go to work. I honestly do not know how I have found the energy to keep going these past few weeks. By the time I finished work yesterday around 4.45 pm I had worked for seven days in a row and was just about fit to drop. Normally I would have gone to the Christmas Eve service at our local church, and part of me wanted to, as both of us have been pulling away from the church in recent months, but somehow sleep just seemed so much more appealing. My body was crying out for it, and it got it in abundance, because I woke up refreshed and relaxed and ready to cook a scrumptious feast.

We did not exchange gifts this year, as to be honest there is not much that either of us really wanted. In my case as well I have been busy serving everyone else so that they can buy their own Christmas gifts and my partner just needed a good long rest. I suspect that is the reason actually why I have been working so hard, so that he could have the house to himself and the time off that he needs. My time will come when I visit Lundy in February no doubt.

I had been hoping that I may be able to extend the trip from 7 to 11 nights, but that is not to be. Prior commitments prevent me from extending the trip after 15th February when I am scheduled to return, and other bookings prevent me from going earlier.

I have 2 weeks to look forward to in the summer anyway - I have booked to go back to the island I love on my birthday, June 21st, which also happens of course to be the summer solstice and the longest day of the year. Now that we have passed the shortest day of the year and the days are slowly beginning to lengthen, I do feel a lot better. That to me is what this time of year is really much more about than celebrating the birth of Christ - welcoming back the light from the long, dark days of winter and that is what the Bible in all probability means when it says that he was born during one of the darkest times in the land, or words to that effect. It is talking much more in a spiritual sense.

The oven then shall be lit shortly to start preparing our Christmas lunch. Being both vegetarian and wheat free does present a unique set of challenges at this time of year, but I managed to find something suitable. We have a butternut squash and leek roast from Tesco with salsa sauce, which I shall cook with roast potatoes, carrots, roasted red onion, cauliflower cheese and wheat free sage and onion stuffing mix with lashings of roast onion gravy. We will save the Christmas pudding (wheat free as well of course) with custard for later on this afternoon with a glass of Baileys while we sit down to watch Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Happy Christmas then to all who read this and make sure it's a good one for you too!

I have been on local radio!

Later on today, in about an hour in fact, I am going out to lunch with the rest of the team from the newsletter that I edit. The Chairman and his wife are keen gardeners, and so I bought them a gardeners radio set for Christmas. This morning I was wrapping it up when I realised it did not have batteries, so I grabbed some from somewhere in the house and switched the radio on to see if they worked. BBC Southern Counties came on the air, and it reminded me to listen to it in the car on my way to the gym.

As I left the house and drove past the National Trust centre, they said that they would like people who had done the Alpha course to ring in with their experiences, so my ears immediately pricked up, since I have written a whole chapter on my less than happy experiences of it in my book. There is also an article entitled Alpha and Probably Omega (the same as the chapter heading) on my website. Anyway, when I got to the Sports Centre car park and rang them up they put me on the air.

It was obviously divine providence since the batteries on my mobile phone gave out as soon as I put the phone down. I didn't have time to say much, as I was only live for about 2 minutes, but I did the important bit - mentioning the book, and so that is what matters!

God Delusion to be banned in Turkey?

I see from the Independent that Richard Dawkins' Turkish publisher Kuzey Publications is being hauled over the coals by religious fundamentalists. It seems that they are being threatened with legal action by prosecutors who claim that their publication of Dawkins' best selling work The God Delusion insults believers. I don't know they are so upset about myself, as the Turkish translation has apparently only sold 6000 copies since publication.

Erol Karaaslan, the founder Kuzey Publications could though face between six months and twelve months in jail if found guilty. Prosecutors are still debating over to press charges.

It is not the first time that Dawkins' has come against such problems in Turkey, since it seems that Islamic fundamentalists also tried to ban his earlier work The Selfish Gene.

I don't understand the furore personally or even why it was deemed necessary to publish in this territory in the first place - the book discusses Christianity more than other religions, and Turkey is a predominantly Muslim country. It also then puzzles me as to exactly who has been offended. Having read the book myself, I don't recall it even mentioning Islam.

Neither is Dawkins the first author to face controversy. The article states that Nobel prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk and Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink were just two several dozens writers to be charged last year under a controversial law that makes it a crime to insult Turkishness, whatever that means. Pamuk was acquitted, but Dink – who was murdered earlier this year by a teenage ultra-nationalist - was found guilty.

What though does it mean to be Turkish, or for that matter, any other nationality? Does one have to be born in that country or have parents who were, or is it sufficient to have lived there for a certain number of years. If so, then how many? Is a child of Jamaican parents who emigrated to Britain in the 1950's any less British that I am - of course not, for in their hearts they still think of themselves as British, and that is what counts.

This also brings to mind an episode from my favourite science fiction series Babylon Five entitled Infection. It is I believe an episode from series two. It basically revolves around a machine on an uninhabited planet that seems hell bent on destroying everything in its path. When they ask what the machine actually wants it transpires that it was put in place to protect its former inhabitants, the Icarans from raiders by destroying anything that was not pure Icaran. The predictable result was of course the destruction of the entire race. Muslims and for that matter any other fundamentalist regime, should take note for if they do not pull up their own socks and start to behave in a more sensible manner by not being threatened by anything that does not agree with their own faith, they will ultimately share the same fate.

The word atheist is generally recognised in most societies as meaning one who does not believe in God. There is nothing wrong in this, as it is like anything else just one of many widely held beliefs. Being an atheist does not make one less moral or less of anything in fact, in fact when you look at the statistics the opposite is true. The more secular societies are nine times out of ten more tolerant and understanding of each other.

The word atheist has it seems only recently crept into the Turkish language, where it is regarded as a kind of insult. The Independent cites a survey of religious attitudes conducted in Turkey in 2006, which found that less than 2 percent of corespondents claimed not to believe in God. More recently polls showed that just 25 percent of Turks accept evolutionary theory.

On the one hand, while I am the first to espouse religious freedom, and in no way agree with the ridiculousness of this case, one has to ask why the book was published in this territory in the first place, when there seems to be such limited demand. Surely they must have known the controversy it would cause. The cynic or perhaps spiritual aspect of myself, wonders if this was the whole idea, since the only way to really shed light on these situations for them to be open to the light of public scrutiny so that they can be discussed by the world media and these regimes will realise and understand that their views are simply not those of a civilised society.

The treatment of women in Islamic countries has also been in the news in recent days. Firstly of course the ridiculous case in Sudan where a female teacher has been jailed for allowing the children in her case to name an innocent teddy bear as Mohamed. The British Government are I understand intervening to get her released, but in the meantime, some have called for a suspension of aid to that country. They are cutting off their noses then to spite their face.

The other case is that of a young recently married woman in Saudi Arabia, whose husband thankfully is standing by her. It seems that in Saudi Arabia with its extreme laws of sexual segregation, the only way that men and women can form any kind of relationship is for men to stand in the streets with their mobile phone numbers either on display as women walk past with their male chaperone's, or to literally throw them car windows. Somehow then prior to her marriage, this woman then formed a phone relationship with such a man.

After she was married he threatened to tell her husband unless she agreed to meet him, and so foolishly it seems she did. They were driving together when another car swung in front of them, hijacked their own car and drove them to an isolated place, where both her and her male companion were gang raped repeatedly by up to seven attackers. She tried to keep it from her husband and family, but the rapists (who had filmed the attack on their mobile phones) started to boast about what had happened and so the truth came out. Astonishingly the woman was sentenced to 90 lashes and then when she and fer family complained this was increased to 200 lashes and 6 months in jail. The rapists in the meantime were sentenced to between 2 and 11 years apiece.

The world can no longer sit back and allow this kind of thing to happen, we have to send a strong signal to these countries that this behaviour is not acceptable.

A day that is forever etched in my mind

November 30th is a day that will forever be etched in my mind, for today is the 8th anniversary of my mothers death. Her name was Constance Amy Austin and she was born on December 19th 1920 in the east end of London to the sound of bow bells - a true cockney and therefore a dying breed.

My mother was a truly unique woman - who faced much adversity in her not quite 79 years. She was the daughter of a greengrocer, and the youngest of nine surviving children. In those days childhood diseases could still be fatal as inoculations had not yet been discovered. During the war my mother worked in an munitions factory and later as a bus conductress when the dust began to affect her health. Officially at just 4 feet 11 1/2 inches she was half an inch too short, but they took her anyway, as it was wartime and they needed all the help they could get. When the war was over she started a career in ladies tailoring that she was very good at - placing the garments on to the dummies to check that they fitted correctly.

As the youngest of nine and the last to leave home, when her own mother became ill during the Great Smog it fell to her to look after her, which she did for several years until my grandmothers death. She then went to live with her sister in Essex and this is how she met my father, for he also lived in Barking with his son from his first wife (she had left him holding the baby). You could say that one day their eyes met on a crowded train. He offered her his seat, she took one look at his Frank Sinatra blue eyes and was smitten. Six months later they were married. Two years later my brother arrived, followed six years later by my sister, and then in 1965 I was born. The rest as they say is history.

Mum had been ill for a while when we received the call from the hospital to say that she had been taken in - she was very overweight and had various other health problems to do with her heart and her breathing. Less than a week later though she died - her time was up.

I remember going to see her the night before - I was working for a fitted kitchen company at the time and did not get home until 6pm, so it was a bit of dash to get there and back, since visiting was only until 8pm. All we managed then was about 15 minutes with her. Still I am grateful for the time that we had. I took one look at her sunken, hollow eyes and listened to her laboured breathing and somehow knew that this would be her last night and I would not see her alive again. Just as I left then I leaned towards her and whispered in her ear 'I love you Mum, and thank you for everything'. She gave my hand a gentle squeeze and said 'I know darling, and I love you too'. Then we had to leave.

We were waiting all night it seems for the phone call to come and it finally did at around 6.30am. The hospital told us to get there as quickly as possible, and so we dashed there as quickly as we could, stopping just for a quick cup of tea and to get dressed. On the way there, driving past the slip road to the A3, the sun was just coming up and as we rounded the bend in the road and saw the sunrise we both knew that she had gone.

Sure enough when we arrived the hospital told us the news. My sister, who lived nearer than we did, had been with her at the end, which we had missed by around 10 minutes - like I said at the precise moment that the sun had risen. We then had to wait for our brother and his then wife, and my sister's boyfriend to arrive.

Then we had the business of registering the death, arranging the funeral and visiting the family solicitor about the will. The funeral was I recall on December 9th, just over a week later. The day before, my partner picked me up from work early so that we could go to see her in the chapel of rest. It was raining as we walked up the hill and we sat in the chapel for what seemed like an age listening to the rain as it pattered against the skylight saying a silent goodbye. It was a very poignant moment and a beautiful way to say goodbye. The funeral the following day was no less beautiful in its own way, and many tears were shed by not only myself, but also my neice and two nephews, who at the time were just young teenagers. They loved their grandmother very much as she was the only one they had - thier Mum's Mum died when they were very young, before the youngest was born at all.

After that my life changed completely, since the money that Dad had left to Mum when he died, found its way to my siblings and I, split three ways. It was this that enabled me to give up work and eventually start to write my book. I like to think that I have not let them down, and if they are looking down on me now, they would both be very proud.

Idiot drivers - grrr!

I have had the absolute morning from hell, all because some idiot drove too fast and crashed his car into a roundabout, and although I am okay now, I was not a happy bunny.

I asked for today off from work since some time ago, as the college where I do occasional work for as an exam invigilator asked me to inviligate, presumably for some retakes or something. I had to be there at 8am to help get the room ready for the exam to start at 9am. I left then at 7am this morning to get through the traffic.

Everything was fine until I got halfway down the A3. The traffic was absolutely horrendous and back to back. It took me half an hour to move about 2 miles to the next junction! It then came on the radio that the A3 was shut northbound past that point due to an accident. Luckily I know this area well since we used to live not that far away. I came off the A3 then at the next side turning and tried to get through the back doubles to the next junction. That by itself took around 15 minutes since everyone else had the same idea.

When I did get back to the slip road than leads past the A3 imagine my surprise to find that the road was clear and the traffic flowing freely. Why had the radio said the road was shut?

I finally got to the college by 8.30 only to find there was nowhere to park - the road I usually go in was full to the brim and everywhere else was yellow lines or permits only. After driving around for 20 minutes and ending up somewhere near the Common I turned round and went to Tescos. I had been planning to go there after work anyway.

Walking round I found that the rice milk we buy was on offer - 2 for £2. The shelf though was empty so I asked someone. I don't know was the reply, this isn't my section, go to customer services. They had a queue 10 minute long and when I finally got to the front they said it wasn't even on their system!

Back to milk aisle then I went and found someone who did work in that section. Yes, they were out of stock, and if I wanted them to give me a voucher for money off next week, by which time the offer is finished, you guessed - go to customer services!

I then got to the checkout and found that I had spent 50 pence short of the £50 to get 5p a litre off petrol. Normally I would grab some sweets or something, but they had moved them to the other side of the store, and there was a queue behind me ... I went upstairs then to Starbucks and asked them for the strongest cup of caffeinated tea they had!

What a morning then. I have lost over £30 in wages because of this and am not happy. All because some stupid ***** got drunk and crashed his car into the roundabout!