Humphing and a kiss to make it all better

Posted on November 14, 2011 by thepogblog

Today started badly due to an incident at the weekend involving some elderflower cordial and my laptop.  It resulted in roughly 3 out of every 4 of my keys not actually typing, turning e-mails and document writing into a physical and mental battle.

Then my train was cancelled.  If my trains went every 10 minutes that wouldn’t be a problem, but it meant 45 minutes of standing on a platform with no shelter while a very boring man felt the need to loudly tell a small group of us how terribly important he was in his office (I felt like telling him that if you had to tell people you were important, generally you weren’t.  I had used all my energy humphing about the train though).

This afternoon we had a 3 hour team teleprecence meeting.  If you’re unaware of the joys of teleprecence, it is a very cool set up in a special room that shows all attendees, life size on screens as though you are all sitting around the same table.  It is very cool…unless the three hours runs into the time you would normally have dozed off on the train home.  And your body decides it fancies a doze no matter where you are and despite the fact that you are surrounded by 80 colleagues across the world including senior management.  I expect the nail marks will fade from my arms in a few days (digging them in was the only way I could stay alert).

To round off the day, we had a team meal.  Which to be fair, although I could have done without another few hours of work talk, was good.  And the food was amazing.  Finally I left to get my last train home…

I’ve had a rule for years that if I have been out for a drink and see a homeless person I have to give them at least £1 as if I can afford a drink, I can afford that.

At the station tonight was a young bloke, begging.  I gave him a couple of pounds and he was so grateful.  As I walked away I thought about how much my dinner had cost and felt terrible.  So I went back and gave him £10.  It wouldn’t have even paid for the main course I’d had, but he looked stunned, then jumped up, informed me he could eat and go to the hostel straight away, then kissed me and rushed off.

OK, there are no selfless acts, but there is a happy homeless guy out there and it did put my day into perspective and put a smile on my face…finally :o)

(PS: before anyone disagrees on helping out homeless people directly, I know the money may have gone on drink or drugs, but he was sober, at least when I chatted to him.  And if I was wrong,  honestly, if you or I were sleeping outside tonight, we’d probably rather do so in oblivion.  I think he’s tucked up somewhere now though and that makes me happy and makes today a good day.)

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From Training Traumas to Train Traumas

Posted on November 11, 2011 by thepogblog

I’ve decided that being half asleep on public transport, although inevitable if you have a late night and an early start, it probably best avoided if at all possible.

I wasn’t going to admit to this, but what the hell…Yesterday I was particularly sleepy while waiting for the tube.  I can ony assume that it the reason that I forgot myself and, standing on the northern line platform, I farted.  Now, normally this would not have been too disastrous as there would have been lots of people to look at in a slightly disgusted way to implicate them.  Not yesterday though.  A crowded train had just left and there was just a smattering of us left on the platform.  Enough for it to be very, very obvious where the ‘parp’ had emanated from.  I didn’t move a muscle.  I stared at the advertisement opposite me and pretended it had never happened.  I just hope that nobody else noticed.  I doubt it though.  The platform was very quiet, and frankly, my bottom was not…

I’ve often had the slightly embarrassing incidents everyone does – waking up with a bit of a splutter, being aware that I’ve slept most of the way home with my mouth hanging open and the like, but there is one other that makes me cringe.

It was the time I woke up feeling very grateful to the rail company for providing such comfortable pillows.  I snuggled deeper into mine and reached up to hold on to the corner of it.  As I slowly came too I was aware that the people opposite me were giggling and started to realise that pillows in a train would be a little unlikely.  It turned out that I’d snuggled into the shoulder of the (unknown) bloke next to me.  And the pillow I was grasping?  That was the lapel of his jacket…

Hooray for the weekend!  No chance of any train or tube related episodes  :o)

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Training Traumas

Posted on November 9, 2011 by thepogblog

For the last two days I have been on a training course.  I am now officially an ‘advanced writer and editor’ (please don’t expect any improvements on the writing here.  This is mainly the stuff that falls out of my head via my fingers).

I love training courses but they do highlight my complete inability to remember faces.  I meet all these lovely people, I draw a map of where they are sitting with their names and then…then we leave the room and not only can I not remember their names, but I forget what they look like.  This was highlighted yesterday when a bloke sat opposite me at lunch time and I asked what course he was on (there were all sorts happening in the building).  Of course, he was on the same one as me.  Was sitting opposite me in fact.  He’d just put on his jacket…

It reminded me of a friend’s wedding.  I met her brand new husband for the first time at their reception and half an hour later I was introducing myself and asking who he was.  His answer of ‘the groom’ was more than a bit awkward.  Again though, he had put his jacket on…

I’m going back to calling everyone ‘sweetheart’.  It makes life a lot easier (I just must remember not to refer to managers at work that way…that was another embarrassing moment…)

One of the handouts on the training course today made me giggle a lot…you can have a look below – they are all true headlines that appeared in US publications :o)

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Lessons Learned this Week

Posted on November 6, 2011 by thepogblog
  • Launching a company is the most exciting and terrifying thing, but the lovely words of support, often from unexpected quarters, make it much more fun (by the way, it’s www.poggyw.co.uk. Just thought I’d remind you…)
  • Going to a ‘local business networking event’ can be a lot more fun than anticipated
  • Three nights out in one week is too many when you are trying to launch a company, do a full time job and get stock together for a stall at a Christmas fair…
  • …especially when you have to spend an unscheduled afternoon in hospital
  • It is not a good idea to tell the doctor at the hospital that no, you didn’t go to a doctor straight after your accident, but you did get a vet to check you over.
  • It takes an entire day off, spent in the cellar with a mum to get everything ready for a stall at a Christmas fair (but what we can’t do with cellophane is probably not worth doing)
  • People at Christmas fairs seem to think it is an entirely reasonable thing to pick up one of the lavender bags you have for sale, sniff it, put it back and NOT buy it.  Bleugh. 
  • Having a second piece of ice cream cake can do more than damage your waistline.  It can, apparently, break a tooth (that’ll teach me for being a piggy).
  • It’s possible to break a tooth in such a way that the inside of your cheek gets caught on it…
  • Tomorrow I will be able to tell you how much that second slice cost me… :o(

Also, I know some of you not on facebook might want to take a look at some of the Christmas Fair photos.  You can sneak a peek here :o)

The lovely cellar

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Shaved legs, sensible knickers and some tests…

Posted on November 3, 2011 by thepogblog

I am very proud of two things today:

1) I shaved my legs this morning

2) I wore knickers of a sensible size – not teeny tiny and not the apple catchers I accidently bought a while back that are only really appropriate if you are someones grandmother.

Why?  Because I spent half the day with no trousers on while people did weird things to my right leg.  And not in a good way. (If there is a good way)

It started with a trip to the doctor and finished with an afternoon having tests in hospital.  I wont bore you with the details but there were two real gems I thought might bring a few smiles out.

The first…as I left the doctors surgery with a letter to go to the DVT clinic the doctor looked at me and said:

  • Her: ‘You don’t think it’s fractured do you?’
  • Me: ‘Um, wouldn’t you be in a better position than me to decide that?’
  • Her: ‘I think you’d probably be able to tell….’
  • Me: ‘How?’
  • Her: ‘Well, it would hurt…

I don’t think I’ll be going back to her again.

I had my tests done (and an x-ray as the doctors were rather stunned I’d not been sent for one when I first went to the doctor last week!).  I received one negative DVT result, one positive (but not to worry, as that could be due to the trauma of the accident), nothing is fractured and most likely, I just have bruising of almost every inside bit of my leg due to bleeding that might still be happening.  Lovely. 

So having discovered that, I asked if I could go home.  No.  Apparently I had to wait to be discharged by a consultant.  And they’d lost the consultant.  So…and this was the good bit:  Could I come back on Monday when they would definitely be able to find a consultant to discharge me…

So daft, you have to smile really… :o)

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A spot of Monday networking – get me!

Posted on October 31, 2011 by thepogblog

Tonight, filled with dread, I went to a ‘local businesses networking event’.

I know, not my sort of thing at all.  It suggested being sensible, grown up and…talking in

My poorly elbow. It feels more dramatic than it looks...

coherent sentences.  The fact that I still have quite a hobble and an attractive yellowing elbow that doesn’t bend well didn’t really help with the professional image I knew I should be trying to portray.

Happily, there was free alcohol and canapés (I’ve not seen fizzy wine served with a sliced grape before – I thought it was champagne and strawberries.  Maybe that’s one effect of the recession).  I positioned myself next to the table of both so I could surreptitiously help myself and ended up involved in a conversation with a lady wearing red sequinned horns.  I say I was involved.  I mainly got to listen.  Not about her business.  No.  About the pet rats her children had owned 10 years ago.  Realising there was a possibility I was the sane one here I felt my confidence grow.  And I had a GREAT evening.

An amazing gentleman called Christopher Lloyd gave a presentation on his newest wall book ‘What on Earth? Wall book of Natural History’.  I think it was 40 million years he covered in about 20 minutes with the aid of a bottle of water, a cork, silk flower and some coal.  He is a genius.  I learned more about evolution tonight that I did the whole way through school.

Then we got to network.  I swapped cards with a photographers, a baby sleep expert, a yoga teacher, couriers, insurance bods, a  restaurant owner, a baker and a very lovely nutritionalist.  I didn’t tell her about my magical mystical shorts.  I wonder if she’d be more effective that they are…(I think I know the answer to that.  Please don’t send answers on a postcard).

So there you have it.  I was going to say I was a sensible thing for an entire evening.  But I wasn’t – I was a little bit sensible for an hour or so.  It did make me realise though that there are other people out there who are trying to follow their pipe dream, but are having fun too.  You don’t always have to be sensible.  And that is something that makes me smile (and rather grateful too!)

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Unexpected Loveliness

Posted on October 30, 2011 by thepogblog

We may have got to the end of British Summer time, but try telling that to my garden….  It’s still managing to make me smile :o)

A passion flower. At the end of October...

Sometimes, the most lovely things appear in the places you don't expect at the times you don't expect. (This is slap bang in the middle of my patio and has been in flower for months).

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Presenting poggyW! (A special preview for blog friendly bods)

Posted on October 28, 2011 by thepogblog

Have you got a pipe dream?  Something you would love to make happen?

 I have.

My dream involves making lovely things and one day being able to make it my full time job.  (And I love making Pogimals but I figured there are only so many sock animals people need in their lives…)

So while I was off work with the evil gallstones, I did some planning.

Since then I have:

    • Talked to all sorts of people to get some ideas
    • Spent hours on my sewing machine
    • Come up with a plan
    • Decided the plan needed refining
    • Refined some more and some more and some more… (I really didn’t like that bit)
    • Helped convert my parents cellar into a workshop (You can see it from start to finish here)
    • Set up the company, poggyW (named by my mum) at Companies House (yes, I’m a company director!)
    • Had a slightly embarrassing meeting at the bank (numbers are definitely not my strong point)
    • Had a company logo created
    • Got a website designer on the case
    • (Finally) got the website complete
    • Set up a poggyW Face Book page (please go and ‘like’ it so I look popular :o) 
    • Set up a poggyW Twitter page (I’d love you to follow me if you are that way inclined for the same reason as above!)

And now…well now, my website is live!!!  I’ll be telling the world next week, but I thought as lovely blog readers, you might like a bit of a preview, so TA DA…:

www.poggyw.co.uk

And here are some of the goods:

The full list (which I have loads more ideas to add to, but not enough time at the moment) is:

  • Lavender filled sleepy bunting
  • Babygrows
  • Sleeveless bodysuits
  • Bibs
  • Muslin squares
  • Pogimal toys (well I couldn’t leave them out now, could I?!)

The idea is you can buy a ‘ready made basket’ or you can mix and match, with a basket or without…

 When I tell the world next week it would be great if you could help, just by encouraging others to like the Face book page, join Twitter or have a look at the site (and maybe even spend some money!) 

Everyone has a friend, a sister, a daughter, or a colleague who is having a little person.  Or knows a little person they need to get a Christmas present for. I’ve tried hard to create some unique stuff that’s good quality and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg…and is useful too.  What more could you want? 

(Well, what I want is to make this dream a reality…one day!)

:o)

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A slightly broken Pog

Posted on October 25, 2011 by thepogblog

Today did not turn out quite as I planned.  Actually, today didn’t turn out anywhere close to what I’d planned.  I got up early, did a few hours work and when it was light enough I went out on the bike.  I was planning so much in my head that I couldn’t have been going my usual speed and suddenly realised if I didn’t get a wriggle on I’d be late getting Charlie Cat to the vets.  I stepped up my pace and at mile 13 I rounded a bend…and came face to face with an enormous lorry.  This particular road is wide enough to pass a car on the bike, just. Lorries don’t use it because it’s too narrow.  Except today, –  the wider road had been closed and traffic had been diverted.  I screamed, slammed on my breaks and as I came off the bike and slid towards the wheels of the lorry, I had a bit of a panic that things might be about to go very, very wrong…

Thankfully, his stopping skills were better than mine and I finished up about 6 foot from some rather huge tyres.  Very lovely people stopped, put my bike back together, made me stay still until I stopped shaking (despite my protests that I had too much to do to be lying in the middle of a country road causing a traffic jam) and one lady even held my hand (which worried me as I figured things must look very bad if I was requiring that sort of treatment).

A recovered Charlie!

I didn’t feel great by the time I got home but I figured if my leg swelled much more I wouldn’t be able to drive and I had to get Charlie checked.  So I showered, packed him up and rushed to our appointment. Charlie was given a clean bill of health – 3 weeks after losing part of his lip, fur and nose, 2 weeks of antibiotics, 1 week of painkillers, about £140 and much gnashing of teeth on my part in case he did have a tumour, it’s been decided that possibly my first thought was right…and he has been drinking out of a neighbours toilet who uses some heavy duty cleaning stuff.  Hooray…sort of!

‘While I’m here…’ and I asked the vet to check my arm (I couldn’t quite see the end of my elbow and it looked like there may be some road in there).  She was very lovely and also checked my impressively swelling leg and offered to clean them both for me.  I declined her kind offer though – I thought that might be more than a little cheeky.  And a bit odd as he was going to use the same antiseptic that Charlie had recently been cleaned with!

Anyway, I’ve ripped my cycling trousers, taken the elbow out of my jacket and the two tops underneath it and dented my helmet.  But as long as I don’t try to walk too much or move my right arm too enthusiastically all is good.  

I’ve taken this as a sign to slow down a little.  People who were also expecting a more exciting blog tonight…that will happen next week instead.  At least it will happen though…those wheels were huge!  Gulp…

:o)

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Magical Mystical shorts – the middle

Posted on October 23, 2011 by thepogblog

OK, so the claim of the magical mystical shorts is that, if you wear them for 30 minutes, 3 times a week while exercising, in two weeks you’ll drop two dress sizes.

I have worn my shorts 4 times in the last weeks – two 15 mile bike rides and two 10 mile bike rides. I’ve cycled fast too (mainly because I seem to be so busy at the moment, I don’t have time to take it easy.

And so it was with huge excitement that I got my tape measure out and discovered that…let me just double check…it would seem that I have actually GAINED ½ inch on my hips (all other measurements remained the same unless I cheated and sucked my tummy in). How the hell? Even using the argument of the rather pious Evening standard reporter who reviewed these exact shorts last week (‘Id rather forgo that…second helping’ – that approach is too late for some of us, love), I should have lost something. Her view was clever marketing + lots of sweating + stupid people = loss off fluid and therefore body mass. She did concede that short term you’d see results. And that was ok, I thought. I could just wear the shorts every time I exercised and I’d stay permanently 2 dress sizes smaller and everything would be rosy at Pog Towers.

But no. Apparently the magical mystical shorts don’t work for me. I told mum. When she stopped her snorting with laughter she pointed out exactly what had already dawned on me. ‘Have you been eating more because you had the shorts?’ she asked.

Oh arse. I had treated myself to some croissants earlier in the week. And I had eaten all of my weeks chocolate stash in two days (and then replaced it so I could ignore what I had done). And I may have snaffled an extra biscuit or two. But I thought that the shorts would compensate. It would seem not. So now I’m not back at square one. I’m at square minus one…

This week I’ll make more of an effort, honest. As Sister 1 pointed out tonight ‘No, it’s not your shoes that make you look fat,’ (I had just made that claim) ‘it’s the chocolate.’ And she has a point… :o)

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