Coolest Ever Dude

Last Saturday morning was all very confusing.  The sign outside a huge Asda store nestling in the groin of Leicester shouted out ‘Open 24 Hours’ and although my eyes were barely focussing, I’d spotted the basic untruth.  It was shut and the doors refused to slide open whatever I waved in front of them, so I checked my watch.  At 6.58 am, I was starting to panic. I’d had the genius idea of shopping for provisions after completing an early morning dash to deliver ‘Last Minute Alphonse’ onto the first train to Bristol for the annual Hi-Fi Show.  He’d been gifted with explicit instructions to ‘buy nothing or else’ and assured me he was only on a fact-finding mission.  This is akin to Bear Grylls being dropped into the Great African Rift Valley for an awayday.  He would automatically seek out something to jump off whereas Alphonse would need to be dragged away from his favourite German speakers, so blissed-out by the purity of sound that he might just ignore the almighty price tag of £60K. I was invited to attend Bristol to ensure no large cheques were handed over but I have an aversion to the place which stretches back to March 1999.

IT Project Management had been a newly chosen career for me.  I was keen enough to impress my boss with my knowledge of telecommunications and the mobile phone industry and daft enough to swot for a month in advance of the supplier meeting.  Little did I know that these excursions were an excuse for an almighty piss up.  To be precise, the supplier of the first part [BT] would be required to pay the bar bill of the customer [us] which gave our hardened IT Management carte blanche to drink themselves into oblivion, which they did at the San Carlo restaurant and the hotel bar afterwards.  

We had been booked into one of the Marriott Hotels i.e. the most expensive on offer and my reasoning for staying sober was the gorgeousness of my room, the roll-top bath on a raised plinth befitting a movie star and a bath robe you could dive into.  I also realised the meeting and corporate presentation the following morning was in the alternative Marriott, over a mile walk through the city centre.  

It was a struggle but I made it to the marble-lined pool area and downstairs gym at 7.00 am independent of the only other survivor of the previous night’s excesses,the IT Manager of the Distribution Fleet and one very dark Raven indeed.  We were made for each other then but, stupidly, neither of us would admit it and so 'the rest is history' part didn't happen.  After breakfast, the previous night's carnage was obvious.  None of the others could walk straight and most got taxis.  I lost count of the litres of mineral water drunk around the table that morning and observed that no-one paid any attention to the corporate deals on offer except me.  It was Budget Day too and on the way home, I keeled over on the back seat of a BMW 328i with Radio 4 ringing in my ears.  Luckily I wasn’t driving, particularly as I couldn’t account for the Walls Solero stains all down the front of my pale grey suit.  I daren’t look in the mirror either in case my vital life signs were absent.  These days, I avoid the Leicester branch of the San Carlo just in case it unleashes a tide of Bristol-related nostalgia.

With no life coming from inside the superstore I used the ATM, turning around to make sure there was no-one behind me to steal my pin number.  In reality, there was no-one awake within a half-mile radius of me and the only object of interest nearby was the enormous phallus of the National Space Centre rising into the sky through the dripping mist.  The last time I was there, they had a TARDIS but it’s vanished apparently.  And just as I considered heading to Tesco, I heard banging coming from behind me.  Urgent and insistent, the security guard was knocking on the window and shouting ‘oi!’ to attract my attention.  He mouthed something and believing I was deaf as well as dense, he shouted through the glass.

“Seven!  We’re open at seven.  I’m getting my keys.”  

And true to his word, I was in the warm at 7.03 precisely and outnumbered  10:1 by incredibly cheerful staff.  As the sole customer you’d think I’d do the whole 26 aisles in ten minutes then head home wouldn’t you?  There was no way I was going to pass on such exemplary customer service which out-greeted the staff of John Lewis.  I progressed slowly through each department, hauling into my trolley all the kit needed to give our jaded bathroom a ‘Death in Paradise’ vibe with watermelon coloured towels and a vibrant, retina-destroying shower curtain.  I ambled through the Home section heaping scented candles and knick-knacks onto the pile.  My hand trembled as I approached the pot pourri and later as I delicately arranged it in the bowl with the precision of an Australian bowerbird, I could hear Alphonse’s voice echoing from Christmas when I bought a pack of Frankincense-scented nuts and dried fruit from M&S. 

“You HATE poo-pourri.”  Honestly, anyone would think it contained toe-nail clippings.

“No.  What I hate are ten year old bowls of dust and crap masquerading as pot pourri.”  And plastic flowers, but that’s another story.  “But this is new stuff.”  

Besides I was having fun.  I never have time these days to stop and stare, to go swimming at dawn or to spend an hour over breakfast and I was determined to make the most of this small, meaningless task.

After half an hour I stopped being ‘the crazy lady’ and stepped up to ‘valued customer’ when I was overtaken by a bloke in Leicester City-themed jammies.  It was zero degrees outside and -4 in the freezer section yet this chap was wearing flip-flops.  Heading through the wine section for a second pass, I picked up some joyously cheap Sicilian white which sparkled as it went down with my fishcakes much later.  I even saved some for Alphonse who is pining for the return of Inspector Montalbano.  As the store started to fill up and customer numbers reached double figures, I took my cue and gatecrashed the checkouts, having spent triple the amount I’d normally hand over and barely any of it was real food.  It was 8.00 am.

Tip of the Beak:  At 8.00 am this morning as I walked from the Retail Cathedral to the hairdressers, I heard the unmistakable sound of a Bentley approaching along the pedestrian-only route into the City Centre.  This acuity of hearing takes practice and I’ve had lots in this lifetime.   The car was black with immaculate coachwork; it even sounded black.  It had a cream leather interior which you could just glimpse through the tinted windows and as it pulled alongside me, the driver’s window slid silently open and out came a manicured hand complete with awesome wristwatch.  The dude held a remote control device.  He pressed it once and the shutters of the classiest jewellery store in the city started to rise.  The rollers weren’t silent but I was speechless; my jaw was hanging open.  It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen and I vowed to be up early in future to experience more of the same.

Raven

The Force Awakens ...

Our old mattress was like sleeping on the surface of Mars.  In stark contrast, our new Sealy 5* experience with pocket springs is heaven although the memory foam topping hasn't quite remembered my bird-shaped curves yet.  Still, it's early days and even as I stretched out in the showroom, I knew it was 'the one'.  I let out a long yoga-type sigh as I lay staring at the ceiling and so did Alphonse as he handed over the credit card.  So why am I wide awake at 6.00 am with my force on full blast?  I'm shivering and my ankles are blue but my brain's on 'red hot' and bursting with ideas for a screenwriting course I start on the 2nd of February.  Normally, I prepare by drinking sherry and watching tele in bed although this is proving difficult.  I'm missing the old, noisy springs, the nightly 'comfy-spot-jiggle' and sleeping with my talons dangling over a floppy edge thus the necessary concentration for the task ahead has to be done in sub-zero temperatures.

On Epiphany, I trotted off to see The Winter's Tale filmed from a live performance at The Garrick Theatre in London.  Like most British school children, I've studied all of Shakespeare's greats and analysed them to death thus wringing out any enjoyment left for my future self.  Having drooled over Toby Stephens in Hamlet a few years ago, I decided I was finally Shakespeare'd out.  Joyfully, The Winter's Tale has changed all that.

I'll precis the story for you.  Leontes, Sir Kenneth Branagh, is the King of Sicilia.  Overcome with imagined jealousy, he goes bonkers in a heartbeat and by the end of Act I has banished his baby daughter to the farthest corner of the kingdom.  He is kept in check by Paulina, Dame Judi Dench, in this a torrid tale of abandonment and ruined friendship and seems only to live for his misery.  Sixteen years seems excessive in holding a grudge but I managed it once. Act II starts off in a very jolly way but the redemption of Leontes arrives when a column of white light reveals him with his back to the audience, completely alone on stage.  Sir Kenneth didn't need words to convey the ice in his heart.  He was being snowed on and it was breathtaking.  Later when Leontes sees the statue of the wife he believes to be dead and wants to kiss her lips, his only hope is Supersavers.  There wasn't a scrap of dry mascara in the house, and that was just the men.  And in the missing decades since the last Star Wars movie, how I wish the scriptwriters had taken a look at this glorious production, because in parts of The Force Awakens I thought they'd taken leave of their senses.

Tell me you've seen it.  Unless you live in an electricity-free facility hidden deep under Derbyshire, you've surely seen it?  And probably the previous six episodes? So, mid-movie, when Princess Leia and Han Solo clap eyes on each other after years apart, it's a real shock when he says this.
"You've changed your hair."  In my head their fiery relationship suggests his first words might be along these lines.
"What the flip happened to Ben, Leia??  I left him with you and his daft Uncle Luke and now he's wearing black, worshipping Vader's helmet and trying to dominate the Galaxy."  Not an uncommon reaction from any father whose son has recently joined the Goths.  And why, does their son look more like Professor Snape than the Skywalker/Solo gene mix might suggest?

When we're reintroduced to C3PO, he has a red arm to co-ordinate with his shiny gold body.  Worse, there's an awful dialogue line thrown in at random.
"Excuse the red arm, I must get it fixed sometime."  Pardon?
This is akin to having a new wing bolted onto your Ferrari and forgetting to have it resprayed.  Nuts! And now that R2D2 has felt the force again and recovered from a massive 16 year sulk, will it pitch in to help redeem Ben Solo from the darker-than-dark side?  I can't wait.  Although I'm concerned about the engineering prowess of the new, ultra-cute BB-8 droid.  Rotating on the gritty sands of Tattooine would surely shut down his momentum drive like a cheap set of castors on a shag pile carpet.

And there's that uncomfortable moment when the two worlds of Bond and Star Wars collide in the seven minutes it takes for the weapon of mass destruction to power up until someone presses the red button.  Lets also forget the tedious speech about the New Order.  To the poor kid brandishing a light sabre on the front row at Vue, Leicester, it must have felt like seven days in his Yoda hat. Of course I loved it but I wouldn't have taken the scriptwriter's job for £20m, although the chamber of my heart totally dedicated to science fiction is beating again with renewed vigour. I had to hide my Darth Vader advent calendar behind Amble's filing cabinet before Christmas.  The eyes followed everyone, everywhere and someone complained.  But it was the eyes and real tears shed by actor Shaun Evans which prompted me to chose Endeavour as my third project.

Yes it's set in the 1960s and the production designers have done a glorious job but I don't remember our homely decor being quite that vibrant.  It was much dingier somehow and there are still parts of the Nest that when you apply a wallpaper scraper too close to the plaster, you find evidence of a darker past.  All wallpapers were tinged brown in those days because everyone smoked and pipes were cool.  It's a big surprise that our lungs aren't cured like kippers.  The core of Endeavour was to get to the bottom of why Morse remained unmarried throughout his life.  Initially, I thought it was down to Colin Dexter's excellent characterisation of him but in these enlightened times, it seems every tale must have unrequited love in the mix. And young Morse was no exception in his struggle to express burning passion for his boss's daughter, Miss Thursday.  After a traumatic bank robbery goes awry, she runs off with her suitcase leaving Oxford forever and leaving no forwarding address.  But isn't Morse a detective?  Why didn't he 'detect' her whereabouts and write to her?  Better than being miserable for decades.

Some of the messages were too subtle for me unlike the scriptwriter's nod to my favourite author.  When Inspector Thursday gave a packet of cigarettes to his peroxide-coiffeured PC, he told her to keep the pack hidden in the pocket behind her notebook.  A tip from his old Guv'nor he said, with a nod and a wink, "Inspector Vimes of Cable Street".  Brilliantly shoehorned in I thought from the pages of 'Night Watch' by Sir Terry Pratchett.  Can we have more of those please, if only to keep me on my scriptwriter's toes whatever shade of blue they are.

Tip of the Beak:  Alongside David Bowie, Alan Rickman and now Sir Terry Wogan, there was another great loss to the world of entertainment last week, Glenn Frey.  He knew a thing or two about killer lines and is credited for adding "It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford slowing down to take a look at me" to Jackson Browne's smash hit song, Take It Easy.  It wouldn't have had the same resonance had it been about a flat in Bedford, England but it did secure fame and fortune for a little known band called The Eagles, as well as for the town of Winslow, Arizona.  No wonder they put up a statue to him.

Raven

A Great British Soggy Bottom

The joy that is Bake Off has gone from our screens for another year but memories of the hospital's technical challenge day will sustain me through the coming months.  To raise money for Macmillan, we were given a choice of two Mary Berry classic recipes; a chocolate roulade or a tarte citron requiring thin, shortcrust pastry sans soggy bottom.  My pasty-making skills have been dogged by 'hot hands' and a lifelong aversion of cooking with lard, hence I opted for the roulade. To be fair to Alphonse, culinary skills in the Nest have been greatly enhanced by the digital scales he brought me; I was touched by the gift as he can't cook and also his Virgoan self even strains the sauce from baked beans.  Oh yes ... and people call me 'alien'.

I felt the need to trial the roulade and set out to find a regulation 33x23cm swiss roll tin in John Lewis.  Shouts of "How much?" and "Fifteen quid!" could be heard throughout the Retail Cathedral as I inspected the only one on offer in the cookware department.  Instead, I opted to use the battered tin I've had for a decade and scaled down the recipe according to my meagre mathematical talents.  I melted the chocolate, beat eggs with sugar, made a meringue and lobbed it into the oven quite pleased with myself until I inspected my hair in the mirror.  My new Next top was strafed with the dense chocolate sauce which even the Bosch loaded Vanish couldn't remove.

I was consciously un-clenching my buttocks whilst waiting for it to cool; not out of nervous tension you understand but I'd injured myself the previous week trying to dismount Betty during a rainstorm.  My right gluteus maximus had gone into spasm thus giving me a soggy bottom.  Still, when the chocolate confection was cool enough for its double cream filling, I thought it needed to look a little less bland so I added a molten core of blackcurrant jam from Lidl and drizzled M&S berry sauce all over the double cream before rolling it up.  It looked marvellous with lots of ooze coming out of the centre.  I'd already alerted Them Next Door and between us we demolished 1,000 calories before tea time with Alphonse bagging the jammy end.  Sensibly, they elected to go for a five mile hike before bedtime and with hindsight, we probably should have joined them.

To raise extra cash, I'd opted to make two of Delia Smith's finest bakes; a lemon curd sponge and a ginger traybake.  So, in Great British Bake Off style, I had a plan for the evening's baking activities and a Tick List, and had stupidly decided to make the roulade early and keep it in the fridge overnight.  Even Mary Berry says this is okay.  It is not! As part of the plan, I'd been to the pound shop and bought a special carrier, serviettes, a pink cake knife and a silver cake board for the tray bake, which Alphonse propped up on a damp tea towel.  Minutes later, it had sucked up all the available moisture in the kitchen and had trebled in size.  It barely fitted in the bin.  

By 9.00 pm, my Tick List was going well.  Lemon sponge - tick.  Ginger cake - tick.  Pasta for tea - erm possibly - tick.  Chocolate roulade - no tick.  It had spread very evenly over the shallow tin and cascaded over the top, coating the oven with goop.  Still, nothing that couldn't be saved with a sharp knife and a bucket of cream, unlike the lemon sponge.  After a restless night, I got up at 6.00 am for a cuppa and found Alphonse inspecting the matching lemon circles.  

"Don't touch it!"  I barked.

"I'm not touching it ... I'm trying to lift it."  By profession, Alphonse was a Metallurgist before taking a powder and joining the Civil Service, so he knows when a mixture has gone 'out of kilter'.  Granted, a huge crucible of stainless steel isn't quite on the same scale as a lemon drizzle cake but the principle is the same.  It looked unusually pale, so I gave the sponge the 'Paul Hollywood finger of shame' and conceded.

"It's like concrete."  Alphonse agreed.

"There's no sponge-effect going on there."

"But I used the standard six, six, six and three method plus the juice of a lemon."  I'd done the maths in my head so what could go wrong?  How could it go in the oven weighing just over 20 ounces and now weigh double that?  Alphonse put his razor sharp beak at the centre of the problem.

"That's not cake, it's ballast!"  He handed me a coffee and stalked off in the direction of the bathroom.

I dressed swiftly and with a heavy heart drove to Tesco in the bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic.  If you don't know, they do a lovely vanilla cheesecake and with some M&S mini meringues and a long squirt of lemon sauce, I transformed it into a showstopper.  Yes of course I confessed to the adjudicators at work but they didn't care as long as it could be sold for charity.  So I lined up my traybake, now on an old plate, and my roulade safe in its special carrier along with the others.  As I undid the clips the handle snapped off and I fumbled it.  Everyone watched in horror as my cake landed edge down in a soggy heap but remarkably, a dusting of icing sugar hid most of the carnage.  The theatre manager looked utterly smug and pointed to his efforts on the plinth.

"I got up at five this morning to make mine."  His had cherries all along the top.

"The rules say we're not supposed to add fruit to it."  Had I misread the instructions?

"Soddit! It looked a bit ordinary so who cares as long as it's tasty?" In a state of shock, I went to yoga to contemplate the infinite.  Apparently, I had won third prize out of three contestants, and the nurses told me it tasted great even without the blackcurrant sauce.

Tip of the Beak:  By the weekend, no-one had mentioned the ginger cake.  I even quizzed the Physio who was doing acupuncture on my buttock.  Did anyone buy it, eat it, or had it gone in the macerator?  No-one seemed to know and naturally I assumed its kick-ass, spicy taste was too hot to handle and I'd poisoned half the theatre staff, until one of the management stopped me by the first floor sluice.

"Could I have the recipe for your ginger cake Raven?"  Result.

"I wondered where that went ..."

"Well I bought one slice then went back for the rest to take home.  I want to make one myself ..."

I dropped my voice to a whisper as if confessing to a crime, "It's not a Mary Berry.  It's a Delia Smith!"  She raised an elegantly plucked eyebrow and reached over, patting me hard on the shoulder.  

"You need to get out more."

She is right of course and, contrary to all rumours, I won't be entering Bake Off Series 7.  Paying close attention to the emotional final episode last week, it was plain to see that Ian had lost weight since the first episode which is quite a feat considering all that fat, sugar and cream he must have consumed. Personally, I couldn't stand the stress or the clothing bills because my Next top has just followed the carrier and cake board into the bin.  Lucky I didn't buy the swiss roll tin then?

Raven

A Grand Old Opera

I've started to see the time I spend working in a hospital as if I'm inhabiting a grand Opera.  Not a soap opera as we're not allowed to use soap, only skin-peeling hand sanitiser which blisters my skin with overuse, but a huge and riotous comedy piece of theatrical nonsense with a list of characters complex enough to make Messrs Verdi and Strauss envious to the core.  We even have music in some quarters but it's only in the background and mainly provided by Saga FM.  Here are some of the current bodies on stage:

Prince Theodore:  a consultant surgeon who is seen by many as The Massive Ego in the ENT department.  I've been there for four years and have never seen this chap in the flesh, with or without his theatre gown.  I suspect he is a tenor, and could command a sizeable audience while able to puff out his chest and declare his power in a grand duet with the heroine of the piece.  And yet, a storm in the sea of life has sent his secretary away on a sabbatical for three months.  Needing a replacement pretty damn quick for the missing assistant, he has nabbed the one person in the hospital least suitable for the role.

Princess Valkyrie:  The ultimate Fat Lady.  Ubiquitous in nature with a foot in every department, she admits she's a great secretary although one who has never learned to type.  After two weeks of correcting her work and explaining the wrongness of slipping into block capitals in the middle of a letter, I gave up.  Without consultation of any kind, she has been given a desk in our office and granted three months' work to get Prince Theo's stuff in order.  This means one of us has to give up our desk i.e. me.  Apparently, there was a meeting while I was on leave which I would have attended, but they chose to move the time so I couldn't go.  So, I have been banished to the frozen wastes of an old desk in Sterile Services.

The Management:  You are familiar with these characters already in the form of the Andrex Puppy and the Fruit Bat, and with Matronella appearing triumphant in the background accompanied by a chorus of nurses, they make up The Three Little Maids.  By email, the Andrex Puppy asked me last week if I would consider applying for the full time post as advertised around all the bulletin boards and agencies in the area.  I was undecided for a day until a moment of clarity arrived in the nick of time.  We had a visit from The Management later that day, backed up by the Fat Engineer, who asked questions about our office and how many of us serviced the twenty four consultants.  There's no need for a magician or a psychic in this opera as it rapidly transpired they wanted our room returned to a bedroom, along with the rest of the first floor, before the sun set.

Raven with Attitude:  Me, I guess.  And I can't join in with the soprano songs because I'm at least a mezzo soprano if not lower.  At school, every hymn we sang in assembly was a struggle in the wrong key and 'Hark the Herald Angels' is a non-starter at Christmas.  Only last Saturday, I was croaking along to the Last Night of the Proms and when the vast collective voices in the Albert Hall hit the high note in Jerusalem, I reached for the throat spray.  No high arias for me, thank you.

At the end of the first act, I am at the corner of the stage, singing for my supper.  A tear-jerking number, I declare myself sans d'argent et pauvre and decline to apply for the job I've done easily for the past few years.  Clutching at my heart, I know that Princess Valkyrie has been given the nod and the promise of a whopping payrise, and even if I did the best interview in the history of job hunting, she would still be given the starring role.  I am cast out into the cold after being reassured I still have a valuable role to play.

The Fool:  If not me, this has to be the Director of Operations.  Not surgical in nature, he's more financial and is in charge of playing chess with the personalities.  Manipulative in nature, he sings in the baritone range with great expression as he stalks around the place, hiding in plain sight alluding to the bloody dagger secreted up his sleeve.  He is a man of dark deeds.

The IT Guy:  He only appears briefly when Princess Valkyrie asks for her equipment to be mended.  He hums, head down and fluffs his lines and then disappears, leaving her in distress.  From the wings, he sings a haunting melody as there is another job to partly finish.  When the stage lights dim to darkness, I like to think he's a male stripper in his spare time and wears a monkey thong.

Skulking at the back with some members of The Chorus of Disapproval, I attended a briefing just to let us know how we are doing and what's coming up next.  Act II mainly follows Act I, but what do I know  When The Fool and Matronella had completed a mercifully short duet, there was a lull in the performance requiring audience participation.  'Any questions' they trilled.  The elderly matriarch standing next to me had to get another verse off her chest.
"The government is enforcing payment of the national living wage from April next year.  Will we be getting it?"  The Fool answered truthfully.
"In the great scheme of things, it's an insignificant amount of money and yes, definitely, you will."
Thus the chorus responded at full volume.  "If it's so insignificant ... can we have it now?"
'No." Replied The Fool.

It seems The Management are about to completely rewrite the third act with a smaller chorus and some duff songs and in the medical secretaries department, I'm gearing up for the Fat Lady to start singing.

Tip of the Beak:  Act III opens at dawn on a Saturday morning.  I have to escort patients up to their bedrooms at 6.30am but the time on the script says 6.45am.  In computers, this is called an 'interface'.  We are very bad at interfacing.  On the whole, The Chorus of Disapproval are lovely girls but lacking initiative in the main.  All ten sets of patients were early but none had been admitted and the stage area was getting bad tempered and crowded.  The Administrator was fluttering around checking the automatic doors worked.  Open, close, open close. Yes indeed.  Frustrated, I asked her a question.
"Why cannot you get your 4rse in gear and put these guests on the computer?"
"They are early."
"So what happened to efficiency?"
She trilled back at me.  "It is only six forty four."
"Count Alexei and his interpreter have to go upstairs NOW."
"They are still early.  They cannot go upstairs."  Ignoring the score, she inspected her new nail job for an entire 60 seconds.  I filled my lungs and let rip.
"Yes they can ... Yes they can ... Yes they CCCAAANNN!!!
Now where did I put that tin helmet with the cow horns?

Raven

The Summer of 2015

It has to be faced.  The summer of 2015 is racing away like Guy Martin on his favourite motorbike.  Rapidly disappearing into the distance are this season's weddings, barbecue invitations are winding down, my tomatoes are massed in clumps of green gobstoppers which will never ripen, and I picked this week to put my talons up in the garden, just as our neighbours have started on a massive DIY project.  By the noise and dust, I think they may be moving into the attic; theirs or ours, I'm not sure.  And against all the reasons of common decency, they were still at it at 2.30 am on Monday morning.  I was woken by a pounding noise on their front door, created by a bloke in socks and boxers who shouted some very influential words.
"It's half past two in the morning and if you don't stop hammering, I'm coming back with an axe."  Unsure of how the axe would add silence to my world, I pulled a pillow over my head to muffle any further shouting and within minutes, the air was still and all noise had evaporated, leaving The Nest in blissful peace once more.  How long this will last is uncertain.

It has been an uncertain few weeks at work too, mainly as we are gearing up for a massive inspection which requires 100% effort on everyone's part.  No-one is immune.  All sellotape and animal pictures have been removed.  I've been to meetings to tell me about other compulsory meetings, read at least a thousand irrelevant emails, completed my on-line training in my own time and concentrated very hard on staying employed.  We've also hired new staff, mainly to replace those lost souls who didn't pass muster.  I'm genuinely unsure how this testing was done but thankfully, no-one approached my desk with a latex glove and a mean look in their eye.  Down in the medical records bunker, the ratio of staff is nine women to one man.  And that man - Bob - is the frankly-bloody-irritating-post-graduate-son-of-a-consultant who is as lazy as a sloth.  He is leaving and is training his own replacement, which can only end in tears.

The new kid "A" had applied on line for a job in Theatres, genuinely wanting to spend his summer of 2015 hauling around bins full of toxic waste and portering beds.  He hoped, he said, it would give him some moral fibre and help in his transition to life as a medical student.  Except his mandatory checks hadn't come through in time and no-one had found the balls to tell him this nugget of information.  On his first day, he was shoved through the doors of medical records to start on the mountains of filing; surely the lad's equivalent of being fed to a pride of lions.  His first words were classic.
"Why am I here?"  I shrugged.  "A" consulted an A4 sheet of instructions.
"I'm looking for Donna ... erm."  His voice trailed off as he looked around at the blank faces of nine women, all old enough to be his granny.  "I'm on Candid Camera aren't I?" he whined.
"We don't allow cameras in here but I wish I'd got mine." Helga piped up from the desk at the back wall. "Your face is a picture of pain."
In the nick of time, "A" was rescued by Bob.  He gave him a manly handshake and introduced him to us Grannies.  After a brief tour of the hospital and its facilities, he started him first on basic filing thus.
"This goes here, that goes there, the pile never goes down.  That's it for the next six weeks."
"What has this got to do with my job in Theatres?" Sensing "A" was on the verge of tears, Bob made him a soothing cup of tea and told him to 'think of the money'.  Something I'm doing as I start the hunt for a new job too.

I love the medical secretary stuff.  No, really, I do.  But now my younger, slimmer, more ambitious colleague has quit to 'go private', the muppets in charge have decided to fill the gap left in our workload with a clinical Psychiatrist.  Nothing too taxing there, but this one specialises in abuse cases and I'm uncertain again about my future.  Surely, I should be allowed to choose to work on distressing cases, shouldn't I?  Apparently not.

Tip of the Beak:  A brilliant antidote to life is comedy, and this week's film of choice is The Man from UNCLE.  Ignore the reviews, just go and see it and have some fun like the old days, it'll do you good.  I remember UNCLE et al the first time around, especially with my teenage hormones leaping into the red zone at the sight of David McCallum's white nylon polo and flat fronted trousers, topped by his blond bob, all in total contrast to Robert Vaughan and those double-breasted blazers with brass buttons.  Sadly, I didn't quite get the same hormone rush on Monday afternoon.  Instead, the small-minded bloke in front of us complained to the management that we were making too much noise and had dared to talk through the adverts.  He needs to get out more, even if it is into an uncertain world.

Raven

Sweaty Betty

The breaking news that I've bought a bike has meant several things; I've had to clear out the shed, buy some lycra cycling pants, a bell and a crash helmet, and have the piss gently taken by Grimy who's been a seasoned biker since his youth.  So far, Alphonse has said nothing.  Anyway, it all started when Them Next Door had been out on the tandem and passed by a 'For Sale - £25' notice attached to a vintage Raleigh shopper bike.  I'd been moaning about getting fit for ages and this seemed like the bargain of the century to Ian, who is a whizz with a set of spanners. Texts were exchanged and I nipped round in the car.  It was all going so well until we tried to fold the bike up small enough to get it into the boot of my 106 and, shame faced, had to ask for help from the 90 year old vendor.  It was the hottest day of the year so far, so it's no surprise I've called my new wheels (Sweaty) Betty.

Some people are natural bikers, mainly because their parents buy a small trike, then a bigger machine to get the kids to school, and then in adulthood there's a natural progression to a proper bike for fitness.  This didn't happen in my case owing to my big brother's casual approach to cornering and generally falling off, and our Mum's desire to have at least one chick mature to old age.  So I caught the bus to school and the day I turned 17, I applied for a driving licence.  Thus, the need for decent headgear drove me out of the Nest to one of the city's premier bike shops at the edge of Leicester's student quarter.

Unhappily, all thoughts of safety disappeared as I walked past a 'once-worn' clothing emporium called Revival.  I saw all the colours and bags and shoes and was in there like a shot, rooting around the rails for something magenta to go with my new shoes.  It's like a drug, this place, and utterly addictive.  An hour later, I'd found a perfect skirt and the right coloured top which turned out to be too big so will be recycled to a charity shop.  But I was now running late for work who would be calling soon to find out if I'd gone missing, so I legged it to the cycle shop burning off lots of calories.

Don't know if you've seen the VW advert with the parachute salesman?  Where the chap decides to buy the cheaper parachute because it comes with a free clock radio?  The chap in the bike shop took one look at me and after listening to my queries regarding safety, showed me the basic helmet saying,
"It only comes in grey."
"Oh good.  It matches my work uniform."  Ignoring my sarcasm, he assisted me in the fitting.
"And it has a light at the back."
"I won't be pedalling at night."  I won't be pedalling much in the day either but still, safety first.
"The next one up is very popular with the ladies."  Immediately, I could see why even if he couldn't.  It was white with silver flashes and fit properly which the grey one didn't.  I popped it on my head and smiled, except that he hadn't finished passing on his expertise.
"It doesn't fit like that."  He proceeded to tip it forward onto my forehead and then patted it down hard so it rested above my eyebrows.  "Much better," he quipped "you've got to protect your head not your vanity."  Brilliant.  I wondered which one Betty would prefer and settled for the white one of course, and handed over my credit card.  I daren't look on the internet to see how much I could have saved online because I thought of the VW advert again.  As Ian said as he wrestled to get Betty's handlebars on straight, "Don't buy cheap headgear because you only get one skull!"

Tip of the Beak:  And it only takes one relatively small change to completely ruin a shopping experience.  One of my favourite time-wasting venues is Wilko.  It has so much stuff I'll never need but where else do you get bargain cleaning products?  Certainly not the Pound Shops.  Oh no, it has to be the proper stuff and as I needed a refill of sunflower seeds for our new squirrel-proof bird feeder, I had to pop into the branch in town.  Wilko!  What have you done? They've reconfigured the queuing system to resemble the check-in area at JFK ... one long endless queue and if you've only got one bag of nuts, you still have to wait behind the vast legions of pensioners in front who are buying for the whole street with no option to nip sideways to the 'cash only' tills.  Please Wilko, put it back as it was and restore the ambiance and joy to shopping.  I won't come back until you do.

Raven

The Toilet Vanishes

After a week away from work, I landed back at my desk a whole 15 minutes late for the start of the shift.  Beak down, I'd shuffled out of the house and into the car hoping a cunning excuse would pop into my mind to explain my tardiness.  Nope, nothing happened in my hay-fever stricken brain.  Simply, I had been refused an extra week's leave and didn't want to be wrenched away from tending to my mange-tout and tomato plants.  Tuning in to the general atmosphere, the hospital felt like another country.  Everyone was talking in hushed tones, cupboards were being cleared out and down at the end of our corridor, the engineers were fitting a combination lock to a door which hadn't been opened for years "for an inspection tomorrow, " they told me.  I had no idea who would want to inspect the old Daycare Christmas tree but it was keeping the three of them occupied.

My PC was on go-slow too.  I stared at the list of 150 irrelevant emails and spotted a couple of nuggets amongst the detritus.  The first was an edict from the Andrex Puppy saying I must complete my Health & Safety training module on line before tomorrow's inspection.  These are orders and anyone failing to comply will be spoken to, thus explaining why every available PC in the place was occupied by a pale, perspiring colleague who didn't have any of the answers.  I finished my module in under the 30 minute record and ploughed on with the second priority task of ordering my new uniform, the deadline having passed while I was on holiday.

Our stores department had sample uniforms to try and when I asked for a set to fit my Raven's shape, they declined.  My old uniform is a UK size 12, with a bit of give in the middle for a jacket potato or bag of chips if the mood takes me so I thought it would be a good idea to order the same again.  The chunky lad who runs stores gave me a stern look.
"I wouldn't do that if I was you."
"I'm the same size as the day I started here."  He had the decency not to look me up and down before answering.
"Maybe ... but the new uniforms aren't."
"So can I try a size fourteen then?"
"No.  We haven't got any of them.  Will size six do?"
"Don't be silly ... my arm's bigger than a size six."  I had seen the minuscule jacket modelled by another Ward Clerk, and she'd needed oxygen after her breathing became restricted trying to get it off.  I had started to feel nostalgic for the days when a Marks & Spencer size 12 standard garment could be picked up and bought, without trying it on, secure in the knowledge that it would fit perfectly.  Although I exclude bras due to their tendency to have built-in jiggle room.  Chunky was searching his cupboard for something suitable for me to try and waved a bag in my direction.
"Have you seen the dress?"  Yes I had and wouldn't be having one owing to its overall density of fabric and when worn, I felt I could bend light around my body.  I'm sure it had been engineered to give an air of reliability and solidness, but on my frame it also shouted 'butch'.

After another hour wasted as I searched out the appropriate sizes to try from other departments, I returned to the office where I'd started, only to find a keycode lock on the door and no sign of an engineer to give me the code.  I couldn't ring them because my phone was behind a locked door so trouped up to their office only to be met with a wall of silence.  I felt an explanation would help.
"I need to get my lunch and my handbag and get to the Ward before I'm late."  My bleating had no effect whatsoever.
"Should have thought about that before you left the office unsecured."
"I did think about it but had to order my uniform."  With the speed of a melting glacier, he wrote our code on a piece of paper and handed it to me.
"You can't tell anyone else this number."
"Not even the other four secretaries who work there when I'm not in?"
"No.  They'll have to come and get it too."
"And the twenty or so consultants who nip in throughout the week ... can they have the code?"
"No.  That wouldn't be secure, would it?"  I was going to be a very long seven days for me, I could feel it in my water.

The whole palaver of running around after other people meant I had no time to enjoy my sweaty sandwiches or tasty slab of banana loaf as I didn't know the keycode to open the staff fridge either.  And when I finally arrived on the Ward for part two of my shift, I was overtaken by the necessity for a comfort stop and headed for the usual door marked 'Ladies".  Except there was nothing in the room that had once been our primping area; they'd taken the basin, the bins, and the gits had even removed the toilet leaving a hole in the floor.  I've used Italian ski toilets before but they were just a hole carved in the ice over a gully, allowing skiers to do the necessary whilst on the piste.  This was something else.  The departing Ward Clerk patted me on the back and pointed me towards the locker room.
"You'll have to use the nurses' toilets from now on."
"Great but in three years I've never been given the keycode or a locker in there so what do I do?"
"I can't tell you because of the inspection tomorrow."  I could tell she was enjoying this except I wasn't going to be fobbed so easily.
"I'll have to go downstairs then ... which will make you late again and you'll get another telling off."  You know, it's surprising what unlocks doors in the face of abject stupidity.

Tip of the Beak:  I slept really well that night, despite the extreme humidity, because I was secure in the knowledge that I'd been secured out of my own job.  I'll be carrying a portaloo from now on.

Raven