Personal Secretary

I've never been very good with days and dates etc. That's probably why I was under the impression that we came on holiday on the 19th. I normally know what day it is, despite what my colleagues say, but this not having to get up on a morning or having any fixed timetable has thrown me more than normal.

David and I sat this morning trying to figure out if it was Wednesday or Thursday [it's Thursday, apparently]. I guess it's nice to be able to have those sort of arguments.

The down side of not knowing what / when sort of fell out of the sky on me this afternoon. Because we came away a week earlier than I had expected [I came home from work and Dave asked me why I hadn't started packing my suitcase...] I was more thrown than usual. It resulted in me having to ring work and explain that, although I did have leave booked, due to my stupidity, I was having to bring it forward a week and that, beg, beg, grovel, grovel, I would be on the plane in a little over six hours and thus, wouldn't be back to work for a week.

Anyway, back to the Chicken Little type realisation. There I was, gazing into a clear blue sky when the black clouds of work crossed my view. What shift am I working next week? Oh, shit!

Well after a quick phone call, to the tune of approximately E20 I discover that Ive got "Field shifts". This means that I'll be like "shit in a field"; all over the fukin place.

Table Manners

While sitting in the airport the other day, I was reading in the Daily Mail, an article about people sending their offspring to etiquette classes.

The gist off it was that the little loves were failing miserably at recruitment days because in the lunch interval, when they thought that they were not being assessed, and of course, you still are, it was discovered that a huge chunk of them lacked the basic know how of how to use a knife and fork and other such skills.

Sitting in the restaurant yesterday, if you look around at some of the Brits and their table manners, I can see why some folk would need instruction.

Normally, when it comes to being fed, I'm the first one with my feet in the trough. Some of my co-holiday-makers were not only in the trough up to their elbows but were wielding their eating irons as though they were about to take part in a knife throwing act!

I was always lead to understand that there was only one way to hold a knife and fork and, really there are not that many possibilities to doing so. Think again! I goes to show how many people either normally eat with their hands or doing things "Sidney style" just lick food straight from the plate.