The following posts have no fixed theme or style, but I hope you enjoy reading them!

Saturday 26 September 2009

Advice #38

To strike up conversation with a randomer working in a large organisation, one of the best conversation starters is
Is your HR department as bad as everyone else's seems to be?

Even the most reserved accountant will get highly animated and fill the next twenty minutes with tales of frustration and anger - by which time you will hopefully have found something else in common (hopefully a happier subject)

Wednesday 9 September 2009

Tea News

First Class Teas has disappeared completely. Its shop closed on 23rd December last year and I went to visit them on their second-to-last trading day. It was sad to see the shop getting ready to close from lack of custom, when they are a rare shop in actually caring about tea and about drinkers of tea. After that date it functioned as a mail-order tea company that I bought from a couple of times. They had amazing tea at very good prices. There are some teas that I will miss greatly - I'm not sure how to replace the "Cambridge Summer Blend" that is a favourite amongst my friends, for example.

I visited the website just now and discovered that it has gone. Tragedy. I'm sure the Materials Possy and others who have experienced First Class Teas will join me in a little moment of contemplation at this time of sadness

Sunday 6 September 2009

My life - updated

Well, a lot has happened since the last time I mentioned anything. I think the best place to start would be at my last newsy post here.

I mentioned three things: being asked to move out of our house, having an insecure job and having a good holiday.

The landlady changed her mind so we can actually stay in our house. It's not a perfect house, not least because my room measures around 8' by 9', which is okay but I'd like more (and I'm not usually a person who says they need more of anything).

My job is still not secure, and incredibly, they have still not decided what I am going to be doing in the company. I don't think I'm going to be made redundant in the next few weeks, but dragging it out for months doesn't help morale in the place. Still, I'm less concerned about that now because we have a rolling one month contract on the house so we can basically move out very quickly if the job disappears. Everything is connected, as people always say.

The holiday story doesn't quite end there either. I mentioned that I ended up closer to two people and less close to a third. Well, that trend continued. I ended up dating one of them and seeing a lot of the second, while the third doesn't really talk to us and seems to have given up on The North, or at least our little corner of it, and is desperate to leave without saying another word to anyone. I don't like falling out with people especially when it affects a large group of people, but despite efforts to include him in social activities, it's not happening because all he wants to do is leave.

It seems like the last month has just been a progression of what has gone before. But then what do you expect? I mean, who are you to expect that my life fits into short blog-post size chunks? People like you are very infuriating when you start pushing me around and forcing your expectations on me. How dare you?!

If you must, there is one new thing. Martin's girlfriend Kelly has been living in or house for most of the year I have been living in The North, but she moved out recently. She has been a good housemate in my opinion, added a little je-ne-sais-quoi (spelling?) to the house. I have hardly lived with only blokes the whole time I have been here (despite all the anticipation that I was feeling). Let the fun begin!

Wednesday 2 September 2009

Building Suspense

I have not posted for almost two months and only three times since June, and yet people still stumble across this blog. I know because I had an e-mail telling me that somebody arrived here for the 3300th time (since records began) over the weekend. That doesn't mean that I have many readers, but surely I still have a couple. Which means that I have a duty to write something. I feel that my time is freeing up now, for the first time in a while, so don't get your hopes up too much, but there may be posts appearing here in the coming days