Just realised manchester is far a .way. I’ll have to find a hotel for a night before going to mexico

Courtesy of the Italian Stallion.

I have decided to try and curb my shopping instinct.

I have way too many clothes - some of them still have the label on them, because I haven’t worn them yet.

I have way too much craft stuff - much of it I will never use.

Yet still I buy more. And more.

My resolve is not very good.

Tuesday after visiting the bank, I wandered back to the car through the local shopping mall. I saw a clothes shop - somewhere I don’t normally shop, as it is far too ’sensible’ and posh for me. However, with new job I will need to dress a lot more professionally than I do now, and they had a sale on.

I wandered through the shop, browsing the rails.

Completely bypassed the smart clothes.

Bought myself a beautiful gold and black lace bustier, with black laces up the back.

Only it doesn’t do up by the laces. It does up with a zip up the left hand side.

I don’t know if it fits - I can’t actually get it on by myself, I can’t manage to get the zip more than halfway up. And with it being so close fitting, I can’t swivel it round to do it up, then swivel it back, like I would with a bra, because it will bend all the boning out of shape.

This is one item of clothing I am going to need an awful lot of help shoe-horning myself into!

Been a very weird day today. So much to do, but very limited time. Made more limited by so many people wanting to come and speak to me.

The team went out for lunch (sadly not paid for my the company, but hey, they are tight as arseholes, I already know that). That was quite good, because they were so slow we all had ourselves a nice two hour lunch. And the food was fab - although I work with such neanderthals that eating ‘foreign muck’ was obviously a new thing on them. But given the empty plates, they obviously enjoyed it. Could have done without the “How do I know it is lamb I am eating?” comments though.

Finally I have my car sorted. I still don’t actually have a loan, but after the default was removed from my credit bureau info last night (after calling in quite a few favours at work - disgusting that I had to resort to that, knowing other customers don’t get that treatment, but extremely grateful that I could do so and get the mix up sorted so quickly), I have now not been ‘declined’ for my loan. I still haven’t been ‘accepted’, but a ‘referral’ is a much better result than last week, and now when they double check my credit bureau info they will see all ‘greens’.

I had to send them a cheque, and they had to receive it before they were due to collect it back from me. Which was today. And Tuesday, when I went to send off the paperwork, I had forgotten my cheque book (it only has one cheque left in it anyway). I managed to find my old cheque book, so sent off the paperwork yesterday and paid £4.30 to make sure it got there today before 1pm. What a swizz that is!

I had an email from them att 11 this morning confirming that they had the cheque, and were in the process of sorting out the log book to send me.

So then on to insurance - bloody hell, wish I had checked this first, £531. Not sure why it is so expensive - I know it is a convertible, but it is a hardtop, so not like people can just slice into it. And it’s only a 1.6. Hey ho, I didn’t have the luxury of time of shopping around, so had to go with my previous insurers, since they had all my no claims details already with them, saving me the faff of sorting all that out.

I cried. I knew I would cry. I had someone at my desk, and I was going through some stuff, and I had been aware that it was coming, so had been seeing people walking up and down the corridor bit, and noting that they were not stopping.

Then I saw S, who used to work for me when I first moved to this job, but he has stopped to speak to b, which was a normal, everyday occurance. So I turned back to the guy who was with me. I got so engrossed in what I was saying, that it was another couple of minutes before I became aware of the change in noise.

There must have been about 60 people ranged around the floor (and I received emails from people afterwards saying they hadn’t heard about the presentation, and had wanted to come down and see it).

My boss was great, gave a very funny talk, which was fine, and I was fine. Until he started the, “But seriously….” bit. He said such nice things about me. How I have made a difference in my job, how the company is a much better place to work for me having been there, how the fact there were so many people there was testamy to the great job I had done.

Thankfully I didn’t sob, it was just a bit of a sniffly nose, and watery eyes.

They bought me presents. I can’t believe what they bought me - and B said she had never seen so much money collected for any collection ever before. I have a nice leather briefcase, a leather document holder, a fab soap bag with small bottles I can fill up myself - excellent for when I am travelling. And, after they had bought the presents, they still collected more money, so I have £40 to spend at Amazon.

I was gobsmacked.

I am sorry to be leaving them. So many people came up to me to tell me how much they would miss me today. But my new job is a great opportunity, and I know I will love that as much (well, I hope I will anyway).

W, who works for me, has applied for my job. to be honest I was surprised when she said she was going for it - it didn’t occur to me she would want it - but once I got over the shock I am so behind it.

Part of this, I guess, is me being a bit precious about the job. As a team we came up with a plan for the coming year, with who was doing what, when we could fit it in, and where the direction of the team is going.

If someone new came along, they would have a different vision.

But also, while I think W is still a bit young, and doesn’t have the full skills yet, I know I have only been able to do such a great job this last year because of her (and B too, and now young Kneely).

However, I have found myself in a very weird position.

My boss asked me if I would help interview any candidates, and give advise as to who would be a good replacement.

As W’s boss, it is my place to ensure she is as prepared as she can be for any career move or progression she wants to make.

As I am leaving, and don’t give too much of a toss, I gave her all the questions we were going to ask at interview, then sat down with her the day before, to help her come up with the answers for each of the questions!!!

To be fair, my boss did come up with some other questions to ask along the way, so it wasn’t totally scripted.

And also, her application for the job was absolutely outstanding, and I had no input into that at all.

I already knew she interviewed well, and last week she got the chance to show her skills to my boss. And she did me proud!

Today we interviewed the only other internal candidate. He was okay, but nowhere near as good.

In keeping with the ethics I have shown, I have just rung W (who is away all week on an external course) to tell her how it went!

She will have to go in front of the big boss - the one who has no idea what we do, nor cares, nor thinks it is that important until he is in meetings with his executive buddies, when he takes all the credit for work we have done when he realises the others think it’s good. This will happen after I have gone, so I can’t help her with that unfortunately.

Oh - and the course she is on is to prepare her for the exam I sat back in November, and passed with flying colours. It is so funny, because she is so competitive about it, keeps going on about how she wants to get a higher score than me, and gets annoyed when I say that it would be good, and don’t get all worked up about it. Bless.

With so much possible credit needing to be obtained, I decided to do a quick check of y credit rating.

And the stupid fuckwits that I work for, after the stupid mess which I was told was cleared up almost 3 years ago, when I made a payment including fees which I knew I was entitled to claim back, but working for them I decided to be prudent, they have been reporting that debt as still in default, and not settled.

I am fuming. I can’t get a loan to buy a car, nor can I get a new mortgage.

I went into the branch yesterday, to see if I could explain it to them face to face. It is quite clearly a mistake, as there sits a default credit card (default amount £104, outstanding amount £52) and there underneath it sits another credit card from the same bank, with a credit limit for £7,200, in perfect order. If the other card was a problem, then I wouldn’t have another card with them.

I then dug a little further into the debt, as 3 years ago I just paid it, wanting it cleared, especially as I worked for them as it is a sackable offence.

It seems there was a payment late back in 2002. I got charged 28p interest, and a £20 charge. Then another 28p interest the following month, with a £20 fee. And so it goes on, until a balance of £104.54 is reached - £100 of which was made up of fees!

I have lodged a claim to have the fees refunded, which will put the debt below £5, and thus should not have even been reported.

However, it is going to take some time to clear this, and I need to get a loan to buy my car in less than two weeks, and also get a new mortgage, otherwise I will resort to standard bank mortgage rate, which is just stupid.

I am going to ring the service desk again tomorrow, and ask that the whole thing be removed from my credit file, and try and get it done immediately. Then I will also have to get it removed from the internal systems, because I am an automatic decline for a loan, without even resorting to a credit search.

If this isn’t done by Tuesday, I am already drafting an email to the CEO of cards, and will basically point out that it would not look good for such customer service to be given to a member of staff….

Well, renegotiated the job, and handed in my notice on Christmas Eve. I then went on holiday for 2 weeks.

Holiday was okay - but my family are the kind of holiday makes I avoid like the plague when I go on my own - from the ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffer restaurants, to the standing right in everyone’s way while waiting for the seat row to be called on the plane. I was also extremely ill New Year’s Eve with a bug we all took it in turns to have (and since I’ve been back it seems it’s been common back home too), which meant I missed my mom’s birthday day out at Magic Kingdom - I was gutted.

I also spent loads of money - so much for promising myself not to spend too much, and saying how I didn’t need any new clothes…

Back at work today, for 2 and a bit weeks before I leave. It was weird, lots of emails from people asking me where I was going, and people coming to see me. Of course, the biggest question on everyone’s lips is “When and where is the leaving do?”. I say why limit it to just one?

So much to do now though. I need to sort out a car, since the one I have now is a company car, and the place I am going gives a car allowance and I have to sort out my own car. I rang the work company, and they have given me a very good price to buy my current car (according to Parkers it’s less than one in extremely poor condition would fetch, and it only has 7,000 miles on the clock - for now anyway!) However, I will need to sort out a loan to pay for it, since I don’t have that much money sitting around….. And then of course there is insurance to pay for.

I will also need to sort out a mortgage, since I am currently on the staff mortgage rate.

And I also have to sort out the references - for some reason the new company doesn’t contact who I put, I have to get them and send them on. Which is fine for my current company, but my previous one I have no idea who works there any more that I can contact to get HR details.

Then there is the kitties I need to sort out with Mosh, since if I am going to be travelling during the week it’s not fair to leave them cooped up. I am hoping in the short term that my neighbour will be kind enough to look after them, since Krazy K today told me she was pregnant (had to pick me up off the floor at that little announcement!). This means she can come feed, but sorting out a litter tray is out of the question.

ONB sent me a really nice email today -

What’s the agency number?

You should try and stay working with people as despite being a complete geek you’re good at it!