Sara's first full day as a pensioner! A very early start today for me - woke at 5.00 a.m. although didn't actually get up until 5.45 a.m. - it is so lovely to lie in bed thinking about getting up before you actually do it! I made tea for myself and slid out of the house so as not to wake anyone and arrived at Grateley Station in good time for the 06.57 train to London. It was drizzling verging on the heavy side so I sat in my car and read my daily readings whilst waiting for the train. It was good to see Klynn arrive on the platform and we shared the journey together all the way to Waterloo. We discussed a number of topics and he lent me a book given to him by Debbie Mac about fresh expressions within a rural ministry. He also mentioned a course called Pioneer which seeks to train people for ministry which we are both going to look into further. He also kindly bought me a coffee too. We parted at Waterloo Underground Station - he to join the Bakerloo Line to Marylebone and me the Waterloo and City Line ("the Drain") to Bank from where I was going to walk up to our offices near Guildhall. I had meetings in our London office until 12.30 p.m. and then I set off back for Waterloo popping into Stop the Traffik to deliver some papers to Bex and have a latte and mozzarella, tomato, avocado and black pepper wholegrain roll in The Hub - quite yummy. I arrived back at Waterloo Station in time to catch the 13.50 train back to Grateley where it was raining. After stopping off for diesel at Kentboro I arrived home at around 3.30 p.m. The phone didn't stop ringing then and I dealt with quite a number of issues but I was very frustrated by my company laptop refusing to connect to the system. It simply has not worked properly since I went from dial-up to wireless. Seeing as I intend to work from home on Friday and Monday I need to get it sorted. I spent nearly an hour on the phone - first to our IT people in the UK and then in India. I found it so difficult to explain to the Indian help desk what the problem was and at one point they asked me to switch off the computer and then to read out the version of the software as displayed on the desktop!!! I had to point out to them that once you switch the laptop off you get a blank black screen!! I will be the first to admit that I am not a very technical person - I leave that sort of thing to the Klynns and Steves of this world but I had spotted that if you don't "power up" (that's technical jargon for "switch on" apparently) your laptop, nothing ever appears on the screen. Later I had a long conversation with my bank advising me of a number of different financial products which would be good for me and my family. At least that call originated in Coventry and not India! I congratulated the voice on the other end, who did, i have to say sound a little Indian, that he was ringing me from Coventry and not Calcutta! Actually, although these calls can be annoying and long this one was quite useful in helping us with financial planning now that Sara has retired. Tonight Saints played Salisbury and I suggested to Tom that we should go but Tom wanted to go down the golf driving range at Grateley with me and his friend James H. As Saints lost 5-4 it was probably a good choice. Unfortunately Tom was rather enthusiastic in his golf tonight and managed to break my favourite club - a 24 degree rescue wood. He thumped it down on the tee as he drove and the club head flew further onto the range than the ball! Fortunately Roger was still there and said that he could easily fix it and that if I called in and saw him tomorrow evening he'd have it as good as new and I would never know it had been broken. The rain came down quite heavily as we swung our clubs under the driving range shelter. After our golf practice we called in at the Plough in Grateley for a fruit juice! Tonight I received a lovely e-mail from Ruth at STT and it is good to know that my offer to help them is so appreciated. Tomorrow I have a meeting with our new HR director which is likely to be quite challenging.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Indian Summer's Day
Sara's first full day as a pensioner! A very early start today for me - woke at 5.00 a.m. although didn't actually get up until 5.45 a.m. - it is so lovely to lie in bed thinking about getting up before you actually do it! I made tea for myself and slid out of the house so as not to wake anyone and arrived at Grateley Station in good time for the 06.57 train to London. It was drizzling verging on the heavy side so I sat in my car and read my daily readings whilst waiting for the train. It was good to see Klynn arrive on the platform and we shared the journey together all the way to Waterloo. We discussed a number of topics and he lent me a book given to him by Debbie Mac about fresh expressions within a rural ministry. He also mentioned a course called Pioneer which seeks to train people for ministry which we are both going to look into further. He also kindly bought me a coffee too. We parted at Waterloo Underground Station - he to join the Bakerloo Line to Marylebone and me the Waterloo and City Line ("the Drain") to Bank from where I was going to walk up to our offices near Guildhall. I had meetings in our London office until 12.30 p.m. and then I set off back for Waterloo popping into Stop the Traffik to deliver some papers to Bex and have a latte and mozzarella, tomato, avocado and black pepper wholegrain roll in The Hub - quite yummy. I arrived back at Waterloo Station in time to catch the 13.50 train back to Grateley where it was raining. After stopping off for diesel at Kentboro I arrived home at around 3.30 p.m. The phone didn't stop ringing then and I dealt with quite a number of issues but I was very frustrated by my company laptop refusing to connect to the system. It simply has not worked properly since I went from dial-up to wireless. Seeing as I intend to work from home on Friday and Monday I need to get it sorted. I spent nearly an hour on the phone - first to our IT people in the UK and then in India. I found it so difficult to explain to the Indian help desk what the problem was and at one point they asked me to switch off the computer and then to read out the version of the software as displayed on the desktop!!! I had to point out to them that once you switch the laptop off you get a blank black screen!! I will be the first to admit that I am not a very technical person - I leave that sort of thing to the Klynns and Steves of this world but I had spotted that if you don't "power up" (that's technical jargon for "switch on" apparently) your laptop, nothing ever appears on the screen. Later I had a long conversation with my bank advising me of a number of different financial products which would be good for me and my family. At least that call originated in Coventry and not India! I congratulated the voice on the other end, who did, i have to say sound a little Indian, that he was ringing me from Coventry and not Calcutta! Actually, although these calls can be annoying and long this one was quite useful in helping us with financial planning now that Sara has retired. Tonight Saints played Salisbury and I suggested to Tom that we should go but Tom wanted to go down the golf driving range at Grateley with me and his friend James H. As Saints lost 5-4 it was probably a good choice. Unfortunately Tom was rather enthusiastic in his golf tonight and managed to break my favourite club - a 24 degree rescue wood. He thumped it down on the tee as he drove and the club head flew further onto the range than the ball! Fortunately Roger was still there and said that he could easily fix it and that if I called in and saw him tomorrow evening he'd have it as good as new and I would never know it had been broken. The rain came down quite heavily as we swung our clubs under the driving range shelter. After our golf practice we called in at the Plough in Grateley for a fruit juice! Tonight I received a lovely e-mail from Ruth at STT and it is good to know that my offer to help them is so appreciated. Tomorrow I have a meeting with our new HR director which is likely to be quite challenging.
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