last night we were meant to be entertained by a performance by the Reduced Shakespeare Company... doing "All the Great Books... Abridged". But alas, it was not to be... we arrived at the car park, and sat to wait for our friends, only to see people being turned away... so when Dave & Ione arrived we found out the performance was cancelled-- the RSC lorry had broken down on the motorway! :( Heartbroken.
So we decided to go to the movies instead-- I thought there were a few films I'd like to see... we got to Warner Village/Vue in Newcastle, and in deciding what film to see, we all wanted to see Troy, but it was 3 hours long! And with a pregnant lady, we couldn't do that to her-- that's an awfully long time to have to sit uncomfortably! So, we could either see Harry Potter all together, or see Day After Tomorrow all together (Andy & I have seen this one) or split up and Dave & Ione go to Day After Tomorrow and Andy & I go to Van Helsing (Ione didn't want to see that one). So that's what we did, split up and see 2 different films.
And that's where the fun part of my evening ended. Ione, if you're reading this-- you made the right choice dear!!!
Van Helsing is, bar none, the worst film I have ever seen in my entire life.
It was almost like a really bad joke at first--- I kept waiting for a producer or director to wake up and pop up on the screen saying -- ha ha! That wasn't the real film-- wouldn't it have been totally cheesy if the film was like THAT?
but they never did. the film just carried on.
After about 20 minutes of it, I leant over to Andy and asked if he wanted to leave. I was fully ready to walk out of that cinema and get a refund and at least maybe salvage the evening... but nope, Andy didn't want to leave.
So we stayed, and endured. (3 other people out of the 12 in the room actually DID leave)
All I kept thinking was "Hugh, surely you could see how AWFUL this film is??" and really questioning my favourite X-Men character actor. I was soo disappointed.
The only way that film would have been mildly entertaining was if it had been done over by Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you don't know anything about them-- definitely look them up-- they're fantastic!!
I'll end on that happier note.
I have a new superhero persona.... Lobster Girl!!!
Isn't that much more exciting and interesting than just saying "yesterday I overindulged in the sun... forgot to wear sunscreen... and got sunburnt on my arms..."
Stupidly enough, it's only on my arms and a tiny triangle on my chest just below my neck. So I look well stupid.
Oh well. It was worth it-- we had a great picnic and day out in the park-- I went with Ione and the kids. The kids had a blast running around and playing and Ione and I sat on benches and had a great time chatting. Well worth red arms.
The plus side is that they will turn brown in a few days-- but until then it's tight painful skin for me!
suffice it to say that Saturday was a VERY bad day at work.
I was duty officer and Supervisory Library Assistant and we had an incident. A nasty one. Involving about 7 fifteen year old girls who are disgusting and extremely immature.
That's all I want to say. Yuk.
Okay-- so at this point if you're following, I've been given a grand tour of the grandiose Macc Library and am quite jealous, and have sat through one of the most useless and depressing trainings ever, had my nice Subway lunch, thusfar the best thing about the day....
I'm ready for Emergency First Aid!!
*not*
It's just gone 1pm... we're all sitting there in a nice semi-circle... all eleven of us... chatting quite happily... the poor lady who has organised both these trainings is clucking around like a frantic mother hen because the lady doing the training hasn't arrived yet. The training was meant to start at 1. She's phoned the emergency number twice and not gotten through, and she's not had any calls to say the lady isn't coming or is running late or is lost etc.
At 1:15, the trainer arrives... looking rather perplexed that we're all sat there in this semi-circle... then she says "The training starts at 1:30, right?"
ummmmm, no.
ooops.
So she gets her stuff ready in a hurry and begins. She sounds EXACTLY (and I mean exactly!!) like Ricky Gervais on the tv show The Office. Same sarcastic tone of voice-- same part of the country accent, same faces... everything. I find it extremely hard not to laugh once it occurs to me where I have heard the accent/voice from. Especially when she is doing the sarkey rhetorical questions like he does on the show.
She starts off telling us what kinds of injuries and conditions we're going to cover today-- listing them off and then saying "and then we'll cover injuries that are more likely to occur in your place of business..." at which point I am DYING to quip "like papercuts??"
but I was good.
Ricky Gervais-voice aside, the information was really helpful and I'm going to try and remember the things she taught us, because as she said, it's not just useful at work-- you could be anywhere when something could happen and either you're first on the scene or you're there already. And I am like the quintessential girl scout always wanting to be prepared!!
Funnily enough-- the other Crewe lib. worker who was at the trainings, Stuart, has been on a FULL first aid course less than 9 months ago. During our training, she was constantly asking questions about what signs/symptoms we are going to be looking for. I was feeling chatty and kept tossing out answers, and so did Stuart-- unfortunately for him... they were wrong ones!!! eeeks. It was weird. I was trying to think of any other first aid courses I've ever had, but I can't remember any offhand. I know I've been on one at some point... because I remember learning how to do CPR. There is a pretty good website that gives animated illustrations of how to give CPR to all different ages of people... They even have instructions (no illustrations though!) on how to give CPR to your dog or cat!!! FLUFFY, CAN YOU HEAR ME??
We also learned how to open people's airways and put them into the recovery position... although the way we did it differs from that website in that we were taught to put the arm they're rolling onto -- to have it bended at the elbow, and put at right angles to their head... so that their other hand, which is supporting the head, comes to rest on their arm.
interesting stuff...
way more useful than the safer handling? you bet.
Yesterday, courtesy of Cheshire County Council, I was sent on two training courses-- held at Macclesfield Library.
Before I delve into how interesting the courses were-- I just want to have a quick whinge about how wonderful Macc library is compared to Crewe. They have air conditioning! And apparently from all the staff's reaction to my saying Crewe didn't, they think Crewe does!! Granted, Macc library is what used to be a bank. So they've got lovely high ceilings, and a beautiful classy decor. Lots of light and their staff room is fabulous. Two huge windows with a nice view, that you can open and have a nice breeze flowing through! The room itself is very big, and it's just like a lounge for them-- the kitchenette is in a separate room entirely! The only other thing I want to whinge about is their DVD collection. Crewe's DVD selection wouldn't even cover a third of what they've got-- and all the new titles too!! I don't know if they just figure that Crewe is a lost cause as far as DVDs and Playstation 2 games because they used to get pinched or what, but our collection is a shadow of theirs in both categories. The one thing that I noticed immediately that I didn't like was how their book collection is divided-- half is upstairs and half down-- which is ok but how they have decided to split it is rather weird. All of the fiction is downstairs, fair enough. But the non-fiction is divided strangely, with some up and some down-- they've done the division by category though-- with say history and biographies and gardening upstairs but crafts and computer books and other books downstairs-- it's all in dewey order, but not continuous with 001 to 500 downstairs and 501 to 949 upstairs. It would take me a while to get used to that-- to remember which categories were up and which down!
Okay-- the Safer Handling course-- the poor trainer was a last-minute substitute for the CCC internal trainer. He was called Graham and he was from the Congleton Borough Council. He came with all his presentation on a CD, but he didn't have a laptop and the only projector they provided for him was an overhead one!! Oops.
Luckily he had handouts of his whole powerpoint presentation for everyone, and so he sat down and went through his training from there. (SIDE NOTE: I met another American who works for CCC libraries! Her name is Gayle and she works at Wilmslow library as a library assistant. We had loads in common-- she and her hubby are looking to move back now as well, they're about a month behind where we are in the process, so we had a lot to talk about!)
Graham's training was all very well, talking about risk assessment and how when you work, you should always be thinking about what you are doing-- you shouldn't just pick something up without looking to see if you can work out how heavy it is, bulky it is etc.
About halfway through his training he was talking about how a healthy man shouldn't lift more than 10 kilos from the floor up onto a higher surface. If it was a woman, she shouldn't lift more than 6 or 7 kilos. At this point we all went nuts-- because obviously the library assistants lift much more than that on a regular basis! So one of the Macc LAs went down to their workroom to get an example of what they lift and also brought a scale to weigh it. She brought in the trolley with 2 skips in and a cardboard box which had books in. Graham stepped over and lifted the box off-- it was normal weight (he weighed it and it was 9something kilos). Then he lifted the first skip off (totally using his back!!) and nearly dropped it to start with because it was much heavier than he thought it would be! It wasn't even a full skip!!! He set it down and then lifted it again to get it onto the scale-- 23 kilos!!!!!
Later on in the training, after he covered the part about keeping the load as close to your body as possible and bending your knees and then using your leg muscles to lift, we asked him to demonstrate that technique with a skip!! Skips are about 2x2x3ft (heightxwidthxlength) with handles on the two shorter ends-- making for a nice rectangle load. The handles are part of the lip-edge of the skip-- that runs around the very top of the skip. So basically you are lifting the weight below your hands, rather than level with your hands or above, as it would be with a cardboard box or another object.
Graham stepped up to have a go, demonstrating first with the cardboard box-- easy peasy, (mind you, he had to lean over and follow the instructions on the paper, so he did a move and leant over to keep checking-- as if he'd not done it before?) Then Gayle piped up from beside me that they know how to do that part-- it's the putting the box DOWN that they need more help with! So Graham had a go and doing the process in reverse and found he couldn't do it without letting the box just drop at the very end!! It was very funny in an extremely pull-your-hair-out frustrating kind of way.
Even funnier-- he had a go with the skip. He couldn't find any way of lifting the skip with his knees-- it's all because of the shape of the skip, and the weight. Because it's rectangle-shaped, you can't put your feet either side of it and keep it close to your body as you lift it, and because it's heavy, it's not healthy to have it that far away from your body as you lift, because you're basically still using your back as a lever to pick it up!!
So basically what I learned at that training was that we're doing it all wrong at CCC libraries, and our equipment is unsafe and we're all going to do our backs in. And there's nothing the CCC will do about it because to remedy it, they'd have to shell out enough dough to replace every last skip in the entire county-- with DOUBLE the amount of skips in a smaller more manageable size. And seeing as there is a shortage of skips in the county already, I highly doubt they'll ever remedy this.
*sigh*
(emergency aid will be covered in the next installment)
Yesterday when I got home from work, I unlocked our back door and stepped in. The cats' normal behaviour is to run around for a second and then jump on the scratching stand in formation for cuddles (they do this for me anyhow!). Well they ran around but it was frantic and they were running to hide under the kitchen table, which made me wonder what they'd done wrong that they would think they're in trouble for!
And then I saw it.
For ease of telling the story I'm going to call it a her.
She was an orange fuzzy blur-- racing from window to window trying desperately to get out of the kitchen! I'd seen her in our garden for the first time on Sunday evening just wandering around in the back garden. I had even pointed her out to Andy because she was different to our usual visitors (we get sooo many cats in our back garden it's amazing).
She must have squeezed her way under the non-padlocked side of the home-made screen that we have over the window, but because the screen is on a hinge that swings inwards, she was freaking out-- unable to pull the screen towards herself to get out!
She was literally throwing her body as hard as she could at the higher window and then raced across the counter, knocking off a heavy cinnamon candle (in a square glass jar) into the kitties' ceramic water bowl below. I could see that the candle was chipped round the edges and knew I'd have to bin it, but that seemed to be all the damage. I was more worried about the poor kitty hurting herself with all this jumping around and banging into things.
Finally she somehow squeezed back out the way she came in and for a minute I was just standing in the middle of the kitchen in stunned silence. I took stock of the situation and realized that the candle had cracked and broken the boys' water bowl and I was now watching a lovely river of water pooling across the floor. Eeek. It is the biggest pet bowl you can buy, and if you have ever met our Frankie, you'll know why. The cat is a major water fiend-- obsessed with it. We can't have a plastic container or bowl because he tips it over-- he likes his water with a bit of motion to it. We used to have this really cool water dispenser/bowl that refilled itself every time they drank from it, and I think this is where the obsession started for Frankie. He used to love how the water bubbled and flowed into the bowl from the container (upside-down) above it, so he would paddle with his foot to get rid of the water in the bowl so fresh water would bubble out! Eventually it got to the point where he was just skipping the whole process and knocking the container off so it would flow out all over the floor!! So we had to scrap that idea-- which is when I bought this massive DOG ceramic water bowl. And I'm not kidding-- it literally has DOG written all the way round the outside of it. It's Frankie's favourite thing in the world-- combined with the blue watering can.
Anyhow, after I had cleaned up the mess and binned the broken bits and pieces, I was amused to find Frankie sat near where his water bowl used to be, looking up at me as if to say "well, you've taken it away to fill it up with water, so where is it? when are you going to set it down for me?" and I had to explain to him that it was gone and not coming back. He didn't look happy.
So I told him-- "that's what happens when you throw a party when your parents aren't home-- your friends trash the place and break all your favourite stuff and then you get the blame for it!"
Tonight was stitching club-- it went well, though not many were there-- but it's a busy time, and it's been a gorgeous day. The evening was warm and lovely-- I bet people were just out in their gardens enjoying life!
I was able to get the secret present's regular stitching finished and now just need to do all the back stitching and then find out the details for the rest of it. But I was really pleased with what I've done so far. It looks really pretty, even if I do say so myself!
After I finish that, I'll be working on Mia's birth sampler.
This is going to be a busy week though-- so might not have much time to work on the backstitching.
This morning I got to go with my friend Ione and her lovely daughter Bethany to Ione's ultrasound scan on the twins! I've never been to one, so it was very exciting! We arrived with plenty of time, and the day was really warm already, so we waited outside where there was fresh cooler air. (Some of these very heavily pregnant women were inside drinking coffee!!!!)
We finally got to go in-- and it was amazing... I just wish the technician could have taken a bit more time and gone more slowly over the babies-- so I could see them more clearly. For one, I am *dying* to know what the sexes of the babies are!! And there was no way I could have seen on my own today-- she went really fast over the babies bodies, but I could definitely see little fingers here and a face there and the spine and when we saw the heart beating in one of the twins-- it took my breath away. What amazing technology-- being able to "see" inside a woman's womb and see how the babies are developing and growing. Ione was really glad and got great news all around-- the babies are a good size and growing well, she hasn't got any extra proteins, and her BP is normal!! All three down to the fact that she has been making a really conscious effort to put everything else second priority to these babies health! Fab news.
Those efforts are really paying off.
One of the highlights of having been up Newcastle way is having talked to good old Mr. Ford at Crewe Library-- he is the local expert on all things Newcastle. He was in on friday and I got to tell him that we would be up there on Saturday for the wedding, and asked his advice on what to see/where to go etc, where to eat etc. He asked where we were staying, so of course I had to ring Andy to find out! Morpeth-- that was the name of the area. Turns out it isn't even in Newcastle!! I was gutted.
It's about 16 miles north of the city. So we drove up there-- took us about 3.5 hours to get to the Angel of the North and about another 45 minutes to get up to Morpeth (because we had to go through all of Newcastle).
The B&B was brilliant-- Newminster Cottage. Just across a bridge from the town centre (it's a cute market town). The river was beautiful-- clean and well kept, with lots of ducks (with babies!!!) and seagulls.
Back to Mr. Ford-- at one point some months ago, we got into a conversation about Newcastle and what he missed about living up there (he's lived in Crewe about 20/30 years now). One of the things he missed dearly is Stottie Cakes. Now because I'm a learned girl, I knew what he meant-- a large bap (for any Americans, a dinner-plate-sized hamburger bun-- fluffy and soft). I asked him what they eat on Stotties and he told me a number of things, and one of them was Pease Pudding!!! So of course I had to ask what it was made of and how they make it. If you want to know the history of it and how to make it-- just go to this website-- very interesting!!
So when we were walking round Morpeth this morning with Andy's folks, we went into the Market Hall where they had a Farmer's market going on. We bought some Pease Pudding (so did Andy's folks-- they used to eat it when they lived up in Durham-- which is just south of Newcastle city). I kept my eyes open for anywhere selling Stotties, but didn't see anywhere-- being a Sunday, no bakeries or anything were open.
So after we dropped Andy's parents off at the train station, we drove out to the seaside so I could dip my toes in the North Sea!! We had a really nice time-- the weather was beautiful on the coast at that moment, sunshine and clear blue skies. It was warm but not too hot. I probably would have gone swimming if I had a suit on, the water felt really nice. Andy pointed out that by the time I'd gotten out where the water would have been deep enough to actually swim, it would have been loads colder-- the shallow water being warmed quicker by the sunshine. Clever lad.
The sand was very different than any other I'd been on. Most beaches I've been to in the UK have been rocky-- apart from Portmaddog and Oxwich Bay. The sand on this beach was soft and fine, but it had black bits in as well. Like coal or slate or something. I don't know how to explain it. But it was easy to walk on, didn't make the sand any rougher or anything.
After we got back into the car, we headed back to the motorway and I asked Andy to keep an eye out for any main grocery stores which would probably sell Stotties.
He said he knew of a Safeways from when he did some work for K3 a few months ago. So we went there and I bought some medium Stotties (only a lunch-sized plate!) and some "mini-Stotties" which were bap-sized. We had the pease pudding (tried it both hot and cold!) on the mini-Stotties for our tea tonight.
The consistency of the pease pudding reminded me of hummous-- kind of a grainy texture to it. The flavour was basically a very very mild pea taste (mind you it's made with yellow peas not green) and a buttery ham. Pretty nice-- not what I expected at all. I didn't expect to like it. I wouldn't have it often, but it was nice for a one-off light tea. We both definitely liked the Stotties though-- they are much softer and fluffier than regular baps or bread.
This weekend we took a trip up to Newcastle upon Tyne. Andy's cousin Neil (the only unmarried Helsby left in our family) finally married his longtime girlfriend Susie.
The wedding was a civil ceremony. Prior to this, I had never been to one. It was really different. First of all, there was just something hugely missing (i.e. God!! but they don't believe in God, so He would still have been missing even if mentioned in the ceremony!) and secondly, the ceremony only lasted about 15 minutes!!
It was really nice, and very quick! They seemed happy-- Neil especially. Susie I think was maybe a bit stressed, but she loosened up later on.
I had a wonderful time entertaining the lovely little girl who sat in front of us during the ceremony (and also before-- Susie was a wee bit late!). Her name was Grace, and she was so cute. At one point she dropped one of her sandals (which had velcro straps-- both a good idea and a bad one, a good one because they would be easy to put on and teach her how to put her own shoes on, but a bad one in that I'm sure it didn't take her long at all to learn how to take them off!!) anyhow-- she dropped her sandal and I picked it up. She then spent the next half hour or so handing me her shoes one at a time around the side and top of her chair, and then asking for them back. Then I got an introduction to her dollie ("See?") and her teddy bear "See? Teddy!") and her pink bear purse ("See? Bag!"). She had wonderful Shirley Temple curls which she had obviously inherited from her Mummy. I'll try and upload the pic Andy took when he gets the pics on the PC.
The wedding "breakfast" was really nice-- though nothing like any breakfast I've ever had! We had a normal delicious chicken dinner with veg, started by a really nice fresh summer fruit plate (would have loved to share that with Basil!!) and followed by a really nice apple flan dessert. (p.s. what's up with Gwenyth Paltrow naming her daughter Apple????)
The speeches were pretty interesting, especially the Father of the Bride's one-- he told a long joke/story about being in the RAF service for his 2 years' national service and about "chuff" numbers-- which is individual to each soldier-- it's the result of dividing the number of days you've served by the number of days you have left to serve. i.e. if you have only been there 1 day, and you have 730 (or 731 with a leap year!) your chuff number would be 0.0013698630136986301
and if you had served 365 days, then your chuff number would be 1, and if you were on your last day, your chuff number would be 730 divided by 0, which is infinity-- so you were infinitely chuffed!
The absolutely heartbreaking fact about this joke/story is that I laughed my buns off at the punchline, and when I retold it to my mother on the phone today (and taking into consideration that a joke is never as funny as when you hear it the first time when you are trying to retell it to someone else!) she didn't get it.
Not at all.
And for a good minute and a half I didn't know why.
And then it hit me.
She doesn't know what chuffed means.
Ah!
So even after explaining what chuffed means, it wasn't funny to her.
:(
So either I'm really English now, or just really horrible at re-telling a joke!
(to be continued)
Just in case you were ever curious when you see the above picture... it's a shamrock.
for more info and a really interesting history on Shamrocks, go to this website
on the other hand... the picture just below....
is a four-leaf clover... surrounded by Shamrocks.... and for another really interesting website about four leaf clovers (again with history!) go to this website
we get really interesting queries at work.... and this one came from the staff!!!
there are many things about England I will miss.
the wonderful accents
the wonderful people
the beautiful countryside
my church family at WHBC
The Sewing Club/Craft Club gang (specially Abi & Becks)
pukka fish and chips
the fab vocab (-- I'm going to be teased so much when I get back and have to learn how to speak all over again!)
Chester
Bath
pubs
chips with gray-veh
cupstealuv
the history that is all around-- how you're never more than a mile away from something that has been there for hundreds of years
Wales
my friend Lori
my friend Ione
my friends Liz and Liz called Bert and all their babies!
my friend Crazy Lady and Jane
eating with my fork in my left hand and my knife in my right, with the fork facing down! (i am still going to practice this while in the states, much to my mother's dismay i'm sure!)
speaking with a lilt (because I bet I'll lose that soon after I'm back talking to Americans all the time)
narrow country lanes with stone churches/walls/hedges
seeing british people sitting on portable chairs having a cup of tea at laybys
our pond & fishes
to be continued (and amended i'm sure!)..........
as the time grows closer (still no set date or anything!) and the more serious things are setting in stone with moving, the more my mind keeps pondering...
a year ago, i'd have been packing up my bags with little to no guilt or second thoughts, with loads to look forward to and nothing but hope in my mind.
but now.
well things have changed alot since June 2004. For one thing, I've made a really solid friend that still lives fairly close by! In my life, I have made several really solid friends, but unfortunately most of them end up moving within a year of me meeting them. This time I guess it had to be me to move. Anyhow, Ione is fab. She's taught me so much about myself, and about life, and about families and about cooking! I still haven't mastered the bread-making thing yet. Attempt number 2 went better than number 1, it was very edible, but wasn't right. I think it's something to do with the yeast or something about my technique. Anyhow-- Ione has taught me to really appreciate good homemade food, and the way that nothing tastes quite like something you made and have pride in. She's also expanded my reading scope-- challenged me to read books I probably never would have picked up, merely because I'd never heard of them or never thought they'd appeal to me. She's taught me to loosen up and enjoy life-- that having all your ducks in a row doesn't always matter, that sometimes you can just relax and go with the way things flow and it's ok.
She has a parenting talent that I admire-- both she and her hubby Dave are good parents. They are very honest with their kids and respect their kids, but still treat them like kids-- the kids play and romp and have fun, and have learned that reading is great fun and they have been really encouraged to develop their imaginations. I think most of that is due to the fact that they don't have a TV. So in the evenings after dinner, they sometimes play games, or do a puzzle, or go down to the allotment and garden together, or read or sit and do things while listening to a talking book or music. They appreciate one another's company. The funny thing is that she'll probably read this next week when she comes home from holiday and they've probably nearly killed one another from spending an entire week in a cottage if it rained!! I'm no fool-- I know no family is perfect, and that all families have their faults as well as differences, and even their good and bad days. I'm just saying there are things that I admire about how she is raising her children (and Dave is too) things I hope I remember to do if ever a parent myself.
(cont'd)
the other day Andy and I were talking about things we have to do to this house to get it ready for sale, and we were talking that night about things that we'd like in our future house in america.
basically Andy just wants a nice office-- with a nice big desk and lots of room to spread out his computer paraphernalia (bet you didn't know there are 2 r's in that word-- I sure didn't, but good old Websters helped me out!). Me? I want a huge lounge/family room/living room (don't care what you call it) with lots of huge comfy overstuffed furniture (possibly leather?) and a nice home entertainment system worthy of my dvd collection. I also would like a nice big kitchen with room to move and loads of countertop space. (My mother would insert a comment here to say that there wouldn't be loads of space for long-- it's one of my best tricks, filling up countertop space with junk!) The other things on my wish list are 2 or more spare bedrooms for company (and one I can nick for my cross stitch stash!!) and a screened-in porch (where the future jacuzzi will go) and a 2 car garage so we don't have to scrape the windshields every day in winter. Last item on the wish list is a utility room where we can designate space for the kitties' litterbox, where they can use it in peace and privacy, and we won't have to worry about being grossed out at the dinnertable!
dream... dream dream dream....
I'm back at work now, started today. And it didn't take me long at all to remember why I dread it so much. First thing that I find out-- I'm duty officer. Fabulous. Make the poor girl who hasn't been at work for the last 3 weeks and is just now getting back and re-acclimated the duty officer especially when there is no flippin' supervisory library assistant so she has to do BOTH jobs. Wonderful. Very kind and thoughtful of them. Absolutely.
ugh.
yet another reason why I am very hopeful that I will get the post at Congleton. Not only would it be more consolidated hours, leaving me more time to get things done at the house, but they would be in Congleton-- at a library I can walk to, and not have to get up at 6am 3 times a week for. No more 35 minute drives through insane traffic following a horses van following a lorry following a tractor down bendy country roads where mad people overtake you on blind bends and nearly end up in head-on collisions. No more John, no more David. Hallelujah.
roll on June 4! (closing date for applications) and fingers crossed I get an interview!