ONE WHOLE YEAR

Can you believe that today is our 1 year anniversary? No doubt this has been the catalyst of my recent sappiness towards Americo!

Unfortunately the focus of my love and good wishes is not with me today having had to head off for a business training course for two days. However he did call (BRIGHT AND EARLY) to say happy anniversary. Luckily for him we have two wedding anniversaries, 1 for the registry office wedding and 1 for the big white wedding we had, which is due next weekend. In reality this is the one we will ‘properly’ celebrate.

Actually, I mustn’t forget to remind Americo of what a lucky chap he is.. I married him twice!

Anyway, my recent mood of love and good will to all mankind has been blown to smithereens today. I was feeling all loved up after my early morning call but then………………… People happened. I had a slight altercation with my boss regarding his father.

Admittedly I am an Executive Assistant, with a difference. I have the glorified title of Business Manager but in reality I am more of a resistant assistant. I don’t really ‘do’ personal things and usually if these are requested they are more in the asking of a favour than instruction. Just the way I like it, I work for a pay cheque - my life is not my job and my job is most certainly not my life. Anyway, my boss and I have a certain understanding, I don’t do tea, coffee, dry cleaning or any of the other trivial things people cannot be bothered to do for themselves – I was hired for a job. I do, on occasion however assist with booking holidays, more as a sympathy gig than anything else, as he is technologically challenged.

Now, as I have done a fair amount of travelling I am quite adept at arranging flights, looking for the best deals and, in times of desperation, have a travel agent I am on friendly terms with. My boss will only use these particular skills when the details prove too complex i.e. flights for 10, hotels in foreign countries internal and connecting carriers etc.

His father however seems to believe that I am here, purely, to attend to his personal travel requirements. Calling up and expecting me to drop everything (my actual PAYING job) to cater to his needs….

A few months ago, I freely admit, I did a fairly major F.up. I was rushed, paperwork had to be collected and dropped off on timescales and who should call. You guessed it. My mind was in a million places and I accidentally booked his flight out of one London airport, returning into another. None of us realised the mistake .. until he went to catch the returning flight. To say I was popular would be an understatement, I apologised – profusely. In truth I seldom make errors of this kind, unfortunately though, they do happen.

Now logic would dictate that due to his lack of faith he would find an alternative person? So far this has not proved to be the case, if anything these calls to arrange hotels, flights blah, blah, blah have been more frequent. Often with me spending HOURS searching hotels, sending him quotes booking everything, only to then have him decide not to go ahead. I probably wouldn’t mind but I just don’t deal very well with certain things, one of them was a snide comment suggesting that “had I worked for him I would have been fired”. All very good and well, how about following up that statement by harassing someone else??

So today, amazingly he had booked his own flight into London, but then decided that he wanted to catch the earlier connection out. Ordinarily not a problem, sadly though when you purchase cheap tickets and then reschedule they are seldom as cost efficient as initially anticipated. I call, get the quote and call back advising of the, now exorbitant, price. All this via My Lord & Master. (I think we should start referring to him as something, else like MR.B, I am not really a lord & master kinda girl!!).

I then hear his father (MR.B snr?), mumbling some derogatory statement along the lines of “this isn’t going to be like that other flight she cocked up”. All civility flew out the window. I believe my words were..

“Indeed, if that is how your father feels please advise him to arrange his own flights.” To be honest that wasn’t all I said.. I am not known to be retiring with my opinions. In fact reading this sentence back it actually sounds quite friendly. To clear up. It was not, to get the right intonation add a heavy dose of sarcasm.

“oh, no, no – that isn’t what he meant at all.. it was just a joke.” Was my boss's reply

I think you shall find we will now all be laughing as tomorrow I intend to have a little discussion regarding this….

TEA.. Anyone?

Today I am having a slight rant, lets face it – it’s been a while! Our topic of the day is TEA… I realise this sounds like a fairly innocuous subject and ergo unable to cause much offence … there my friends you are wrong. The problem is - I do not DO tea. I do not drink it, I do not appreciate it and I detest having to make it. To say I am not a tea person is to trivialise my repugnance.

Unfortunately, on occasion, I have to lower my standards and put the kettle on. I must admit that there are times when I don’t mind (that much). For instance, if I am feeling particularly enchanted with my husband I may offer, or when we have guests for dinner. Then there are the other times… The office times…

I suppose I should back up a little and explain how this revulsion came about.

It all started one bright African morning when I was a little girl of about 5. Our family tradition was that the housekeeper would bring in the tea tray at 6 and the family would all pile into my parents bed for their ‘cuppa’ before we had to get ready for the day. I remember that for some reason I was alone with Mom and Dad - I think Tanya and Julian were at boarding school. Anyway, Mom poured the tea and, in my youthful excitement of the morning, I took a huge gulp. Oh the HORROR! Yuck, yuck, YUCK. The milk was sour and the tea was disgusting. The rest, as they say, is history - I have never drunk tea again and over time it has become at mild phobia.

Back to the office; my aversion to tea is so ubiquitous the mere mention of having this as part of my job description has seen me racing for the door. On occasion however I have been known to be charitable at work. When I meet clients, I manage to dredge up some empathy and produce a cup of tea. I do not however make tea for just anyone, either you are a paying Member of the Wealth Club or you are just another pleb who can get their own damn tea!

Last year due to a rift in the company partnership the business was downsized. It was decided that in order to ‘stream line’ the cash flow redundancies would be made, with one of the casualties being our receptionist. With our new ‘slim line’ staffing arrangements the idea is for everyone to all pull together in ensuring when a Member is due there is someone available for a meet and greet. Unfortunately some pull together more than others and, for the most part, mine is a fairly regular face in reception.

This morning I had barely sat down when the door bell rang, thankfully one of my colleagues jumped to attention and I made to prepare myself for the day ahead. About two seconds later one of the advisors (hmmmm) came and said to me;

“So.. what happens when there is someone in reception, do YOU just go and make tea?” (seriously??)

He should have known better especially since I do not make my dislike of mornings a secret. The first sign should have been it is 9 o’clock, followed swiftly by the realisation that there was no can of coke in sight. However he ignored all the signals and barged on…

With raised I brows I regarded him, eventually answering his request with as much civility as I could muster;

“Do I look like the tea lady?”

It was cold, it was brutal but is he likely to pose such a stupid question to me again?

THANKFULLY IT IS OVER..

Right, I am back! This week has continued in the same vein it began - me ‘making friends’ with various people on a daily basis. Obviously my problems all started on Sunday, with the whole in-law v table issue, only to find that that incident was merely the tip of my irritation iceberg….

On Monday evening I managed to fight my way to a seat on the very full, very stuffy tube (underground train). I had just pulled out my trashy novel when I looked up to find a very pregnant lady standing in front of me. I tried to persuade my conscience to ignore this information but the little cherub sitting on my shoulder had other intentions.

I looked up at the lady, smiled, and said “excuse me, would you like a seat”. She in return looked at me with a bemused expression on her face and said.. “Why?”

I barely managed to hold the words that were desperate to spill forth – aren’t you pregnant????? and mumbled something abstract. Would you believe this has happened to me about 3 times? I am sorry ladies but no longer shall I be going through this embarrassment. Unless I see someone with a sign saying BABY ON BOARD, I shall be ignoring all other indicators, clearly my radar is on the blink!

As you have probably realised the last week or so I have been somewhat distracted. I recently took on a new project, our quarterly Newsletter which is due imminently, hence my neglect of Americo & Me. It has been a really wonderful challenge and I have enjoyed it immensely. As the project has been handed to me in its entirety I arrange what subjects/articles are going to be included, layout, formatting, spelling, grammar etc, etc, etc.

Sounds like a piece of cake? I then received the articles. It took all my creative skill to re-write them in line with our brand ethos, have I mentioned that I work in a Wealth Management Firm? No? Now do you fully appreciate the commitment? You can only get so excited about a pension.

However, no good deed goes unpunished and this was no exception. The downside to my above elation is that for the last two days I have had to work with The Australian. A more uncouth man you could not hope to come across, an in depth description can be found here. Due to the fact that my Mac skills are non existent (having never worked on one) I had to surrender to his superior knowledge and skill. Luckily most of the work was completed on day one, sadly on day two our ‘Man’ waltzed into work with a slight headache from a little too much over indulgence the night before.

Foolishly he then proceed to bait me with various changes I needed made to the Newsletter that, by the way, will be sent to our very high profile Members. Needless to say it was an imprudent battle to pick. ‘Handle with Care’ was a saying coined for me.

bad, Bad, BAD

The sooner this week is behind me the better things will be for everyone! Usually I manage to keep my frustration levels to a minimum but let’s face it the week started badly and so it progressed. “The Windy” one continued to wind me up with increasing liabilities of a confrontation. The storm hit on Thursday morning.

I am not a morning person, I know this, you know this - everyone knows this. But the truth of the matter is that my no talking before 10 am policy (preferably 12 pm) was strictly enforced when the windy one joined the company. I can only just handle annoyances on a good day, but major irritations every morning of the week are just too much for me! Now you can imagine my dismay when we had an office reshuffle a few months back and who should be placed in front of me? You guessed it!

I realise that my black mood was brought on by a relatively minor thing but I claim woman’s prerogative! I got into the office and the window was open with cold air gusting down my collar, I asked, very politely if we could please close it as I was freezing. Sadly ‘he’ is the keeper as it is only on his side that you can open/close it, anyway the response was a very resounding “NO! – I am hot, go put on a jacket”. Now the other girl on our set of desks had also asked, however she took it one step further and closed the window when he was away. There started a day of continued pettiness with one opening and the other closing. Eventually I requested again that surely he could not still be ‘boiling’ and could we please close the window. Again, NO.

By this stage my PMS was clocking in big time and begging for blood. I very gallantly restrained myself from crossing completely to the dark side which I can assure you would have been vulgar, violent and altogether very satisfactory! The problem with me is that once I am on this trip it takes very little for me to go from Zero to Hero (as it were). So I did the only thing a girl can do.

I requested he be moved from my sphere due to major personality differences namely that I am made of goodness and light and he is generally a pain the ****! (I like to believe this about myself .. but really even I know that is somewhat of a stretch!) Regardless, my manager, having witnessed him picking his nose the day before, was quite sympathetic to my cause. And so it is that peace shall once again descend on my world albeit in a few weeks time. However as there is some light at the end of the proverbial tunnel I can hang in there! Aren’t I brave?

Anyhow it is Friday and I will be leaving this week behind me with glee.

THIS AND THAT

We have, at last come to the dregs of our deep freezer, having consumed many, many K.G’s of meat over the past 8 months. At the moment our frozen treasure trove holds exactly.. one packet of ice and a roast pork! I think this is the first time our ‘cupboard’ has been so bare but we are trying not to do a major shop until our return from South Africa. How we are going to achieve this I am not quite sure. As it is I have had to be very creative with my cooking – much to Americo’s satisfaction! On Monday night I made improvised cottage pie with bacon, mushrooms, peppers, beans and mince. Americo loved it so much he almost single handedly at the entire thing.

This week I have not been feeling very well and therefore a little bit grumpy. I hate being sick, it frustrates me that my brain works through a foggy haze making the simplest task feel like a huge chore. I am sure everyone feels the same but that doesn’t make what I am feeling any bloody better!!!!

As I have mentioned we are off to South Africa in two weeks for my cousin’s wedding and a wonderful 10 days in the sun. I am sure all the ladies will understand when I say “I simply have NOTHING to wear” and so, Americo, taking pity on his woe begotten wife, gave me a budget to spend on a dress. I am glad to say that I have now blown all my cash on a beautiful outfit with shoes (only going over my allowance by £25)!! This is a considerable achievement as both dress and shoes are beautiful and I will get great enjoyment from wearing them often.

Unfortunately that is all for today as my brain is going into neutral and the mist is slowly descending making all communication nigh on impossible.