Crab Lunch

Quite a pleasant and enjoyable day today helped by the fact that I didn't have to travel up to Dorking but spent the whole day in Salisbury. It's so nice to get into the office early - 8.00 a.m. - and get cracking on the day's work. Susan in our Claims Dept. had two spare tickets for the Al Murray Pub Night Show at the Bournemouth International Centre for Saturday night so I snapped these up for Sara and me to go - subject to finding a child minder for that evening. I had an enjoyable lunch at The Lemon Tree with others on the IT/HR outsourcing project courtesy of the Company. I had mackerel pate, blue swimming crab (never heard of this animal before) salad and cheese and biscuits. Looking into the blue swimming crab on the Internet I discovered that it is one of the healthiest foods you can eat - rich in good minerals and omega oils with no saturated fats and is found in Far Eastern Waters - around the China Sea and Australia. I will have to look out for where else I can get it. It looks quite different from our home grown edible crab but is quite tasty if a little stronger than normal crab. Much of the table discussion was about diving and snorkelling and exotic holidays. We tried to keep off the topic of work and the Company but it is difficult with so much going on. I left the office at 5.45 p.m. and attended our lodge meeting at the Masonic Hall. The meeting went well with me acting as the Director of Ceremonies which I quite enjoyed. The supper was not quite as exotic as lunch but was a very good meal of vegetable soup, roast chicken breast, cheesecake and cheese and biscuits. Home at 10.30 p.m. to complete this blog and send out emails to those attending our house group tomorrow to let them know that we will be watching "The Pursuit of Happyness" instead of "The Green Mile" as originally intended.

Saints march on but Mariners sink

Back to Dorking again today. No appointments but plenty of work to do. Not the best of days to begin with. Worked through my lunch hour following a lengthy meeting with staff to discuss the monthly report for February. I was due to go down to Brighton this evening for a chapter meeting but had already decided that I really didn't want to go. The weather when I left the office at around 5.30 p.m. was dreadful - high winds and driving horizontal rain. It took me nearly two and a half hours to get home with traffic jams in Dorking, Guildford and Farnham. I think the coat of arms for Surrey should depict a queue of cars! As I was reaching home the Ipswich v Saints game started on BBC Solent Radio. I continued to listen to it at home over the sound of warring children! Tom followed the game on Sky Sports News TV. Saints notched up a 3-0 win over Ipswich - the third win in a row. Unfortunately both Norwich and Nottingham Forest won too which leaves Saints still three points adrift from safety in third place from the bottom but the team is certainly gaining in confidence and the standard of play was certainly better than it has been for a long time. The Ipswich fans booed and left early as their team was humiliated by Southampton. I firmly believe that if Saints can string a few more wins together they can get of the mess. If only Preston could have done us a favour tonight against Forest. Portsmouth also lost tonight which puts Regrettably it wasn't all good news as in League 2 Bournemouth beat Aldershot 2-0 and Grimsby lost at home to Brentford 0-1. This sends Grimsby down into the bottom two and a non-league future now faces them.

Increasing Pressures

It was difficult to get up this morning after such a busy weekend. I had to be in Dorking today for a TUPE presentation. After a breakfast of fresh grapefruit and kippers (not Manx ones) it was off in the car to Grateley Station to pick up Anthony off the 07.27 train from Salisbury. We had quite a clear run into Dorking with just a bit of heavy traffic around Guildford. This was quite unusual for a Monday morning - I can only think that the recession is now hitting and that fewer people are now commuting into London. We arrived in Dorking at 9.15 a.m. and I had plenty of time to deal with admin. matters before the 2-hour TUPE presentation in HR. The presentation went very well with predictable questions from the attendees. It's clear that the company is looking to offshoring more services to keep costs down and thus increase profitability. After a lunch of steak pie and yoghurt it was an afternoon of fairly routine complaint handling and other compensation claims. This evening was taken up with a Sarum Lodge GPC meeting and a rehearsal for the full meeting on Wednesday. I could also have attend the Chapter of Improvement for tomorrow's Chapter Meeting in Brighton but having decided to resign from my Brighton Chapter and join one in Salisbury instead felt it was inappropriate and an unnecessary expense in both money and time - it is so expensive now to park in Brighton. Today saw one of the worst falls on the stock market since 2003 and my own shares portfolio took an absolute bashing. Back home I checked my financial accounts following the share fall. Not good - my shares have halved in value since last summer. It is so difficult to think what to invest in at the moment. HSBC also recorded a substantial downturn in profits today and is hoping that its shareholders will help out with with a £12bn rights issue. I think it will take a long long time before we get out of this recession. The only good news is that our mortgage is being paid off quickly now and Sara and I still both have the prospects of a defined benefits (final salary) pensions in the not too distant future.

Birthday Lunch in Cleethorpes

We all had a bit of a lie-in this morning and didn't get up until about 8 a.m. - late for most of us. Each member of the family had a shower in our hotel room and whilst Sara dried her hair I packed the car and also went for a short walk towards the old Grimsby-Immingham Electric Tramway terminus at Cleveland Bridge. We drove to Mum's for breakfast - toast, cereal, apple juice and coffee. The children and I went for a walk after breakfast. I took them to see my old secondary school, Havelock Grammar - now Havelock Academy; - the old "Bungalow Town", which has now been made over with smarter brick builds than the old wooden shack like structures; a visit to the Clee Crescent newsagents to get crisps and sweets for the homeward journey; to watch briefly a football game on the old La Porte's/Conoco/Millennium Sports and Social Club and then back to Mum's via Old Clee Church. We then drove to Cleethorpes seafront where we had a table booked at the Punch Bowl for 12 noon. We were very fortunate to find somewhere to park and were seated at our table on time. The food was very varied and of enormous proportions. Mum and Sara had roast beef, Mary roast pork, Tom fish and chips with mushy peas and I had minted lamb on the bone. It was all very good but a bit too much. The kids were anxious to go in the penny arcades on the front and so I gave each of them a £1 bag of 2 pence pieces. They both had quite a few wins and in Tom's case he actually had so many wins on the "roll a penny" (2p actually) that he left with 58p still in his bag. After a stop at Tesco's for some essential grocery shopping and returning Mum home, we drove back home to Winterslow. Setting off at around 2.30 p.m. we were back home by 7.30 p.m. The route I took was along the A180 to Brigg then down the A15 to Lincoln where I picked up the A46 to Leicester and then down though Coventry and the M40 back down south. We watched "A History of Christianity" presented by Cherie Booth and then Sara watched "Desperate Housewives" which she loves and which drives me mad with the most annoying pizzicato music imaginable. The programme would be marginally amusing if it wasn't for that dreadful music which is totally out of place and is used to ultimate distraction.

A Weekend in Grimsby

Awoke at around 7 a.m. and made Sara a cup of tea. We were off to Grimsby today and needed to leave sometime between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. We had a breakfast of bacon and eggs/eggy bread and didn’t actually get away until a little after 11 a.m. Mary has lost her mobile phone and despite looking in all the usual places including Sara’s car – which Sara actually cleaned out – it was nowhere to be found. I hoisted the Welsh Red Dragon flag in anticipation of St. David’s Day tomorrow and it wasn’t until I was on the road that I realised that Saints were playing Cardiff this afternoon so I felt a bit disloyal. We went up to Grimsby by way of the A34/M40 where we stopped for lunch at Warwick. We resumed my normal route but instead of taking the A46 carried on towards Birmingham using the M42 up to Nottingham and then the M1/M18/M180 to Grimsby. We arrived at our hotel at Pyewipe around 4.30 p.m. and I was absolutely delighted to see the usual thick white smoke billowing out of the Huntsman Tioxide Factory (still thought of by me as the BTP or “Titan’s” factory). Although there had been redundancies and some closure, clearly the main plant was still functioning as it had since 1942. When I had returned Mum to Grimsby after her stay at Christmas with us in Wiltshire, the smoke was not pouring out – the first time ever as far as I knew. I thought the iconic chimney (and factory) was now redundant – a sign of the changing times for Grimsby. It was like an old friend seeing it working again. We watched Final Score on the TV and were delighted to learn that Southampton beat Cardiff 1-0 – a fantastic result and the second home win in a row too – and I’ve missed both! Perhaps I’m a jinx on the team and should stay away more often. Grimsby Town, by contrast, lost 2-0 at Rochdale and are now perilously close to becoming a non-league football club for the first time since 1892! We called in at Asda’s store on Ellis Way/Holles Street where Tom had his passport photo taken for the Group Passport for his forthcoming school and bought lottery tickets which proved to be unsuccessful later that evening. We arrived at Mum’s a little before 6 p.m. We had tea and hot cross buns and later Tom and I went into Cleethorpes (St. Peter’s Avenue) to buy excellent fish and chips from the Ocean Fish Bar, parking in the car park created by the demolition of the former Wesleyan Church which, as a child, I remember well with its sharp pointed tall spire in red brick. After our fish and chips we had birthday cake and Moet champagne which Mum said her and Dad had got from their M.V. Victoria cruise. We watched some TV and left about 9.40 p.m. quite tired. We went immediately to bed where I wrote up this blog.

More Farewells

Off to my Dorking office today for the first time for nearly two weeks. The traffic was incredibly light this morning and my journey up to Dorking took just 1 hour and 15 minutes. The morning started with general administration including dealing with all the expenses claims from my trips over the last two weeks. This was followed by a teleconference on the Manx bank problem with our Communications Unit in London. Today also saw the last day of my temporary assistant, Nasir's, employment with us. He is moving on into private practice in London and at his presentation said a few nice words about me and the work and teaching I had given him over the last 14 months. I really wish him well. He's a great chap, a hard worker and deserves to do well in his future legal career. He will be sadly missed especially by out International Divison on the Isle of Man. A group of us joined him for his last fish and chips lunch in the office restaurant. The afternoon was taken up with the handover of files to my permanent assistant and meetings with our HR Department. It was also a sad farewell to Mary and Marketa in the HR Department who are both redundant and on the way home I learned of yet another HR redundancy. Every day seems to bring fresh news of people leaving us. My colleague from our Debt Recovery Department, Anthony, had a lift home with me and I dropped him off at Andover railway station to catch the train into Salisbury. We had interesting discussions on the state of the economy and the company. We also discussed the Margaret Thatcher documentary on TV the night before. Tonight was the fourth night of the Alpha course when the topic was The Bible and how we read and study it. We started with an excellent meal - I had the fish pie - sang a couple of songs and then watched a brilliant presentation by Nicky Gumbel. We then had a bible reading from Mark and discussion after coffee. Arriving home I sat down to write this blog whilst at the same time watching the wonderful film Calendar Girls which has that rare quality of humour and sadness which works really well. I wonder whether we can still persuade Sara, Maxime and some of the other church ladies to do a similar calendar for the church funds?

A Birthday and a trip to Bournemouth

Another day, another dollar and another trip. This time down to Bournemouth for a meeting with solicitors acting for one of our long-term sick employees. The meeting simply explored the possibility of settlement and we did not come away with any definite deals - just more action plans with work to be done. I was accompanied by our HR Consultant and the employee's line manager. Returning to Salisbury, I had more issues to deal with especially concerning the IOM problem. Another threatening letter of complaint had been received by our Chief Executive leading to concerns about whether matters were in hand. Frantic phone calls and e-mails were passing between the UK and the IOM. Rose and I were quite calm about matters and provided as much information as possible. We have a telephone conference arranged tomorrow with all parties. Today marked my mother's 80th birthday and so I hoisted the Norfolk flag in her honour. I arranged for a bouquet of flowers to be delivered and spoke to her on the phone at around 5 p.m. She had had a wonderful day - friends had taken her out to lunch at the Punch Bowl on Cleethorpes seafront where she had had gammon and pink champagne. Her friends had also organised a birthday cake too. She will be going out to bingo with them again this evening. When I got home this evening I was really feeling down after all the Manx problems and slipped upstairs to lie down for half an hour or so. We had our house group this evening and spent a couple of hours talking about the decline in church numbers and looking at why St. Paul's in Salisbury is so successful. Klynn stayed behind for his usual dram or two of Irish whiskey. It's off to Dorking tomorrow for another full packed day.