It seems I became a single woman last year. 26th June to be precise.

Nice to know.

The first celebration is arranged for next Friday (the first after payday), when all my female friends are invited out (no boys allowed). Any girl who happens to be in the area is more than welcome to come along!

Then there will be a second celebration - in part to help me get through my 70 or so bottles of wine - to which boys will be invited. Time to be decided upon.

I thought I might feel upset. What I actually feel is relief.

Tonight I celebrated with aerobics and yoga. And chocolate.

Even better is the announcement that LELI will be staying here a while longer, at least another year.

Letter received this morning -

Dear Woman,

We look forward to hearing from you in the next 14 days.

Attached was a copy of the Extract Decree of Divorce, dated 26th June. Hmmm, didn’t it cross their mind I might have been in contact sooner if they had, you know, maybe sent it to be back in June? Rather than waiting for over 6 months? Here was me thinking the arsehole ex was just not doing anything because he is just too fucking scared (always has run away from confrontation). I actually find myself having to mentally apologise to him, and I don’t like the feeling.

But for god’s sake. They have had my £200 since June last year, supposedly to cover things like this, and for whatever reason they didn’t bother to send the paperwork to me.

Also, the letter is referring to ‘the matter of finances’ not being dealt with. What does this mean? Are they just talking about this £200? Or is it more to do with something the ex said/claimed/wants?

And of course, they are not in the office, because it’s a Saturday. So I have to wait until Monday. How annoying.

This morning I rang the telephone company, and had a good old whinge. The upshot of it was that this very nice lady has arranged to have the phone delivered to my place of work, and when I then questioned the fact that this may now mean I have to wait until Monday until I get it, and that paying for it was hardly fair, she said that the contract would not start until I had received the phone, and that I am not paying for something I am incapable of using.

Well, that cheered me up. As long as I haven’t been paying for these last 2 weeks when I haven’t had the phone, then that is fine with me.

Spent the morning preparing for an interview for someone to work for me which was to be this afternoon. Yesterday I said goodbye to one of my ‘boys’ - it was quite sad really, having to escort him off the premises. We are going out for a drink tomorrow night though, and I have a lift into work arranged so I can make a night of it!

I got back from lunch to find an email from someone internal, headed ‘Direct Debit details’. This seemed a bit odd, but I often get emails which should be going to someone else.

However. Big shock.

Dear Woman,

One Very Nice Honest Bloke.

Well fuck me sideways with a fish fork! I am fuming. This is a very serious breach of my personal information - this man has been sent my banik details - it would have contained my sort code, my bank account details, the full name of the account holder (me), plus all the phone contract information.

So I have spent most of the afternoon sending emails to HR (useless, they haven’t even bothered to respond, let alone help), emails to the work related phone company have been bouncing back, our phones were out until late this afternoon so I couldn’t ring them until late, plus also emailing this very nice bloke.

Finally I got through so someone, and amazingly it was the same person this bloke has been talking to since lunch time, so she already knew what it was about.

This is a serious breach of the Data Protection Act (maybe they will regret forcing all the staff to do DPA training, when we use it back on them to enforce our rights), and somebody will be in for a serious telling off, and I suspect I will be due some compensation.

It’s funny, but I have to do the training every year, to ensure I know what it all means, and I have often thought, “Hey, I guess it happens, nobody ever deliberately breaches this sort of thing, accidents happen, etc, etc.” However, now it has actually happened I can’t believe how angry I am. My details could have gone to anybody, who could have been extremely dishonest and basically fucked up my whole financial life. While I was lucky that this didn’t happen, it was just that - pure luck.

They have 24 hours in which to respond.

The other plus point of the day was the interview. I know the person we interviewes quite well, and I personally believe she would be very good in the role. However, she was lacking some skills which my manager considered key (while they are important, they are something which can be very easily taught, whereas all the business skills and knowledge she has is something which can only come with time). We have already advertised the job externally, so we may end up interviewing somebody else, but my boss was very impressed with her, and says the other interview will just be a benchmark, and they would have to be hitting an awful lot of buttons to make us choose them over her.

The difficult thing now is that I can’t tell my friend, I will have to wait until the clsoing date for the job advert, and then until after any other interviews we may do. I will have to make the interview as soon as possible, so we can make the offer and she can then be one of my ’staff’.

And I will have gone from having all boys working for me, to having all girls. I will have to do a serious rethink of strategy, I was quite enjoying having two strapping young men doing my bidding!

I decided to bite the bullet, and change mobile phone companies.

I went for an offer through work, where the cost comes out before tax, meaning it worked out quite cheap for a comparative deal to what I have currently.

The main drawback was that the contract started on 1st January, and I could only cancel my old contract on the monthly payment date, which was 21st. They were very nice - they didn’t want to lose me as a customer - and offered to use the money I was due for an upgrade to move me onto a basic plan of 25 minutes, and 25 texts for a year, when I can reconsider the offer from work, and compare with something they would offer me to keep me as a customer.

I decided that 25 minutes and 25 texts was not going to be enough to last me from 21st December until 31st December.

Bloody good job as well.

Although the contract starts on the 1st January, they didn’t even begin to send out any phones until Thursday of last week.

I got home tonight, to find that they have tried to deliver the phone to me today.

The ‘good’ news is they will try again to deliver it - tomorrow. And the day after, if I am not here to collect it. They will do this for a couple of days, Monday-Friday.

Hmmmmm.

The key here is I got the offer through work. That ought to suggest to the company that maybe, just maybe, I am out at work Monday to Friday.

I know - I’ll get them to deliver it to work.

Oh. No. That’s not an option.

Okay, what about Saturday? Well, yes, they will deliver on Saturday, but I will have to pay for that.

I had to bloody pay for delivery, but I thought that was a cheek. It was only because (I thought) the offer was so good.

I am already deeply regretting entering into this contract, and I haven’t even got the bloody thing yet.

I will ring them tomorrow through the work’s offer number, and have a rant.

After spending all week looking for it, I finally found my driving licence under all the crap on my dressing table.

And of course, I need my licence, because I am looking to book some test drives of cars, to help me in deciding which one to have as my company car.

I am leaning heavily towards a Peugeot 206 CC (I originally thought about the 307 CC, but I am not sure I want something that big, plus it will cost me money). Not that I am likely to drive it with the roof down - not with my contact lens covered eyes sensitive to the slightest bit of dust/wind/hair that might get caught in them. But I like the shape.

Plus why should I care there’s hardly any room in the back, I never sit in there anyway (something my mother is appalled about - apparently I should be buying a nice 5 door hatchback - yeah, right!)

Anyway, the question is what to do about my licence. I have been very crap in that it still has the address of where I lived before I moved to America, which was in 2001. So, currently I believe it is actually illegal. However, I will need to show it to test drive cars. And it takes 3 weeks to get a replacement licence (although I have got my photo taken now, and the form, so it should only take the 3 weeks, and no longer). So, do I send it off and wait 3 weeks, or do I arrange the test drives, and then send it off.

Further complicated by the fact I am planning to go to Australia in February March time, and will need to licence back by then.