This BBC website is fantastic! I don’t remember all of them - I am surprised I don’t remember the “Protect and Survive” one, it is very scary - but some of them are great.

I am amazed at how many ‘punchlines’ I remember.

I am a bit disappointed that they didn’t have the one I remember most - and that really scared me at the time. That was the one with the little girl carrying the doll onto the escalators, and she dropped it. And it all got ripped.

To this day I am wary of escalators, and *always* stand within the yellow lines. I get disturbed when there aren’t any lines.

Had my hair done on Saturday morning - red and orange to go with the blonde this time (hopefully please a certain person who was insisting I go for red when I saw him on Wednesday).

Then, later than I planned due to a nice afternoon nap, I headed back to Smalltown, to see some friends I used to work with.

Food was good, wine was excellent. Unfortunately, B was irritating as ever. Even A, who is her best friend, was losing her rag with her. I tried, I really tried, but I can’t stand people who refuse to make a decision, ask me what I think, say they don’t want to do that, then continue to ask me what I think. I’ve. Already. Told. You. Asking me over and over again will not change it, and will just highlight the fact you are not even listening to me. So why should I waste my breath?

Yesterday, the lovely Em popped in. Just in time for my muffins to come out of the oven (mmm, banana muffins, yum), and just in time to help grate the cheese for some cheese scones (also eaten hot from the oven). He left about an hour or so, to go and cook his dad some dinner……

Work has been so-so again - I feel I am in limbo, waiting for new structures to be announced so I can actually start to apply for jobs.

Then, the finale to the day. Had received a couple of emails from X, mainly on about how cold it was. He let mentioned it would be really cold in Scotland at the weekend, but he wasn’t too bothered since he wouldn’t be there, he was off to Newcastle. I asked him what his plans were for the weekend, to stay with his brother or to stay with friends, and was his mam going to be there.

“It’s my dad’s memorial service.”

Wow, kick in the gut to me on that one. Great. So obviously I haven’t been invited.

“I don’t know what tie to wear - not black, but also Donald Duck is out of the question. What do you think?”

Well fuck me, he wants my advice on what to wear.

Jesus, is there no end to this blokes insensitivity?

But what has really annoyed me, is I know my mom and dad would have liked to have gone to pay their respects. My parents and his parents always got on well, and even stayed in touch after me and X split up. And he hasn’t bothered to tell them.

But to be honest, I am not sure if I am more angry with him for being such a fucking arsehole, or with myself for once again actually thinking he might, for once, think of someone else.

What a week!

Finally got the IT fiasco sorted - although I didn’t actually do very much, I seem to have come out of the whole thing looking pretty good. It’s stupid - I spend months working hard, ensuring my department can run efficiently and I get no credit for it, yet I spot somebody else’s mistake, and get invited to a series of meetings to discuss how we can minimise the impact, and suddenly I am the best thing since sliced bread.

Even ONB commented tonight that I am Z’s new favourite, and how noticable it is I have gone from someone who just happens to be there to someone he can ask something of.

Hey ho, it’s a bit late really, the bonuses have already been decided on - sod this “We have to wait for the results before we even know what the bonuses will be” lies they tell us, it seems everyones bonus was discussed, agreed, and signed off 2 weeks ago.

Word on the street is that it will be better than last year - when I got 10%. Hopefully the rumours are true!

Anyway, I got a text from LELI over last weekend, apologising for being ’strange’, but that his mother is ill, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. I guessed as much - well, a family member anyway. I have been pretty busy this week, but I emailed him early on in the week suggesting we go out Thursday (last night). He said he couldn’t make it, and the earliest we could probably get together was Tuesday next week.

Was late-ish at work with ONB tonight (after a meeting with Z - who buggered off as soon as he could, leaving us to sort it out - we were the last in the office), when Ivor went off in my pocket.

“I am not going out tonight as planned, so do you want to go out with me?”

“I am still in the office - do you want me to come and get you when I finish here. Dinner?”

My phone rings, and it is LELI, he is in the pub around the corner celebrating the security guard’s birthday. I agree to go pick him up from there - and when I get there I realise I have no cash at all on me. I make him buy me a diet coke, and then we leave.

He remembers a Greek restaurant he once saw on the way back from a party (he is adamant he wasn’t drunk, but I don’t believe him), and amazingly he manages to direct me to it. It is a small restaurant, in the middle of a row of shops, with nobody in it but the staff and family (two old men playing cards at the back). All the tables are set in long rows apart from a few, with balloons on several of them. There was to be a big family birthday party in there - to which it was clear we were not invited! Shame really, they had live music, and a space in front of the ’stage’ where there would obviously be some great dancing going on later.

The food was fantastic - I would definitely go there again (my friends tomorrow may not agree, there was a lot of garlic, even for me). Unfortunately LELI wasn’t feeling too well, getting one of his ‘headaches’ all day, which was obviously getting worse during the meal. I am not sure a Greek coffee would have helped him though.

Tomorrow I get my hair done, then I am off to Smalltown for a night out with the girls!

8 oz self raising flour
3 oz caster sugar
2 egg whites
7 fl oz milk
2 tablespoons oil
3 oz blueberries (I used more than this, I used the whole packet, not sure how many that was)

Mix flour and sugar together.

Lightly whisk egg whites, then stir into dry mixture.

Add everything else, and mix.

Pour into a lightly greased muffin tray - 12 muffins - don’t use paper cases, I made that mistake once, they stick to the paper.

Bake for 20 minutes in a 200^o oven.

Cool on your new cooling racks.

Yesterday was another busy day at work, following on from Friday’s balls up.

Well, the balls up didn’t happen on Friday - it actually happened almost a month ago, where some switch to a data feed which comes to us got switched to 0. And it then didn’t get checked. And then the file we get sent, it appears, doesn’t get checked either. And the file comes to us and automatically gets input into the system - without any checks.

I noticed on Friday that whereas we normally action 2,000 people a day, this had rocketed to 13,000 on Wednesday, and then 17,000 on Thursday. Most of which are actioned based on data from this file. Which got uploaded on Wednesday.

I spotted there was a problem around Friday lunch time, then spent all afternoon trying to find what the problem actually was, and then being called to ’summit’ meetings to discuss if it was going to cause a major impact over the weekend, and worth the risk of a panic upload on a Friday night. Z, being the tosser he is, is telling me I have to insist the IT guys in Scotland can’t go home on Friday until the problem is sorted. I laughed. He looked me in the eye, “I am deadly serious. You tell these guys they can’t go home until it is sorted.” “I can’t do that, these are the guys who will help us put it right, we don’t even know if it is their fault, many times we have to rely on the goodwill of these guys to put right balls up we make, I am not going to piss them off.” “You tell them they are not going home until it is fixed.”

Arsehole.

I told them no such thing.

The result of the summit meeting was we decided to wait until the beginning of this week. I went down to tell Z, to find he had gone home!

Yesterday, I arrived to find an email basically announcing that (because it didn’t effect the other part of the company - the one’s who had actually done the balls up) they weren’t going to do anything about it until middle of March. I immediately sent a stroppy email off, saying this was unacceptable, and that ideally it would have to be sorted by the end of the day. I copied in Z, expecting him to get on his high horse because it wasn’t sorted Friday night.

I was pleasantly surprised. He complimented me on getting it sorted so quickly - so I was right about Friday - he is just so mouthy, shouting the odds at people in an attempt to get his own way, when he really does realise that in the real world things won’t get done that quickly.

However, my way means that next time we have a problem, I can ring these guys up, and ask them nicely and they will go out of their way to help me.

Today I have been in a meeting - all day! Thankfully it was offsite, so I managed to get away from the fiasco. I also hope I managed to impress E, the guy I sent my CV to weeks back, and am waiting for the structure to be announced so I can apply for a job under him.

Tonight I have baked blueberry muffins.

Keegan has gone. The house seems awfully quiet without her.

Still, not for long, when there will be two bundles of joy to follow me around the house.

Parents are as annoying as ever, but nothing new there.

My mom is remarkable sometimes. She had a very rough year last year, first with the breast cancer, then with her sister dying.

But this afternoon, her, me and my sister are sat in her bedroom, with her swimming costumes out and her fake boob, laughing about how we can fix it in so it won’t come out while she is swimming.

And when it’s fixed, we are taking her back to the health farm that she loves so much!

Six months ago she was adamant she would never wear a swimming costume, and that she would never come to the health farm with me and my sister. Now she is adamant she will go, she won’t let it stop her.

Bit of a nightmare day at work - which in the end turned into a blessing.

Just before lunch my mobile rang, it was J, a girl I used to work with in Smalltown. “What’s your work number,” she says, sounding pretty upset, “I am at home and don’t have it here, I have something to tell you.” I start to reel off the number, and then say I will ring her back.

“Hello, what’s up?” I ask.

“I’ve got some bad news. There’s no easy way to tell you this. S killed himself on Tuesday.”

I pause. My mind is blank, I have no idea who she is talking about. “S….?”

“Yes, S Mac.”

“Oh god.”

This guy started work at the same company 2 weeks before I started. He was a bit odd - we often had discussions about Edinburgh, where he constantly repeated that it was more expensive to live there than London, and I would refute it, saying no way could X have bought a 3 bedroomed house in London as he has done in Edinburgh. He would just be back to the same argument a week later, as if I hadn’t said anything.

He didn’t really fit in at the office - not that I did really - but he seemed to take to me. He always wanted to come to lunch with me, but would then often sit and look at the tv screen, not listening to anything I said, and having nothing to say himself.

He once invited me out on a Saturday night out with him and his girlfriend, but I managed to be ‘busy’ that night, and never got around to rescheduling.

I emailed him a couple of times after I left, and he rang me a couple of times. The last time I spoke to him he told me he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He had been off work for a long time, and then went back part time about 6 months ago. J had told me he was obviously not well, seemed to be not fully ‘there’ when he was in the office.

The last time he rang me was about 6 months ago. I could see it was him ringing. I ignored the phone, let it go through to voice mail.

I know - at least the sensible part of me knows - that it would have made no difference. There were much bigger influences on his decision than me. However, I can’t help wonder “What if I had answered that call?” “What if I had sent him the odd text now and then?” “What if I had emailed him to see how he was doing?”

So many “What if..”s

Now I will never know.

1. To empty the cat litter tray
2. To take the rubbish out on a wet Thursday morning.
3. To clear up the cat sick.
4. To sort out the new hose I have put on the shower (why is it still leaking? Why?)
5. To drive occasionally, so I can drink when I go out (or save on the £15 taxi fare home).
6. To kill the creepy crawly spiders.
7. To mow the lawn.
8. To iron me a shirt in the morning when I get up late.
9. To warm my feet up on.
10. To go and buy me chocolate when I am feeling SO FUCKING HORMONAL!!

Spent a very boring morning going through my emails, made worse by one I was expecting to have received on Monday morning, which would have led to frantic work not being there.

Chased that up, to be told that even though my requirements weren’t especially specific (I’d have used the word “vague”, but I think that is not the way things are termed in this gone mad world), they still couldn’t find anything which fit them. So could they just send me what they had, and could I make do with that? I had no choice.

However, it’s still not good enough, so people are going to have to actually do some work in creating what I need, which I know is not what they want to hear. Hey ho, it’s got to be done.

Then spent half this afternoon sorting out a problem on somebody elses project, just because I know they are busy, and this is almost as important as my project. I did get a patronising, “Oh Anni, well done, you’ve managed to solve one of the defects!” “Pretty good going, don’t you think? Especially as it’s not even my project…” and it was a dumb problem to start with, caused by you, who thinks that to get something at 50% you have to put in a factor of 1, and not 0.5……….

Was nice to see LELI, who is already getting snowed under with his studying, so I think we might not be getting out to play quite so much in the near future. He was even in a good mood, and managed to reply to a work related email I sent him - which I knew was stupid as I sent it but knew it had to be sent, and had to go to him - with some humour! Not bad for a maths geek!

Creepy A is still creeping me out. It’s getting worse - I am not even sure if he is doing anything different, or if it is just my reaction to him. Actually, I am sure it is worse, but only because I am now working on a project with him, which gives him even more excuses to hang around my desk than he previously had.

Keegan has been getting a little bolder, particularly after the weekend, and has been exploring the garden. Not going very far - and certainly hasn’t ventured out there alone, if she thinks I am not watching she comes hairing back in.

This morning I had to go to Tescos to get some essentials. When I came back, I opened the back door because she was asking for it to be opened. She was sniffing at the edge of the grass as I went upstairs to take my shoes off.

Suddenly there was an almighty clatter. Followed by an unearthly howl.

I rush downstairs, to find my little kitten all fluffed out, tail like a foxes brush, sideways on to the door.

At the door is the black and white boy from next door, not even the least bit ruffled by Keegan’s show of agression, all he wants to do is play. I stand there, and talk to Keegan.

“Look, he just want to play, look he’s friendly.”

“Yeeee-ooooowwwww-llllllllllllllllllllll”

So I shut the back door, as Keegan runs off up the stairs - half way, still all puffed up to show me how brave she was. I stroked her, to calm her a little and back she came downstairs.

Next door’s boy is still sat at the back door, and with the door shut, Keegan swaggers up to it, growling, showing just how hard she is.

She get’s bored, and heads off upstairs to bed.

Five minutes later I look out the back door, and there is black and white boy, crouched in the grass, as if to pounce.

And along comes fluffy black cat, my new best friend. Black and white pounces, fluffy just looks at him disdainfully.

Then roles are reversed, and fluffy half chases black and white.

It was so cute. just wish Keegan had played nicely.

Can’t wait to get the new kittens. It’s going to be fun!