Liverpool vs Leicester

It's not obvious from any angle but I'm a bit of a closet art lover.  Mainly I'm enthralled by the Italian Renaissance artists who are spectacularly hung in the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery.  The back-stories fascinate me; such as Michaelangelo and his dog-skin trousers or Piero di Cosimo who borrowed models from the local morgue.  But then I love a bit of modernism too, so you can imagine my unfettered delight when Job 2.1 announced a spring outing to Liverpool.  My thoughts immediately gravitated to the former City of Culture, the Beatles, Albert Dock and a chance to checkout the Marc Chagall exhibit at Tate Liverpool.

Secured in the epicentre of England, you can stick a pin in any map and find our nest, landlocked and far away from the coast on all four points of the compass.  So after exiting the charabanc into a sixty mph south-westerly roaring off the Irish Sea, my feathers were all over the place and I sought sanctuary in the Maritime Museum to batten down my undergarments.  Frankly, it was flippin' freezing but after a warming coffee and some moist banana cake, I was revived enough to make a run for the gallery.

Now, modern art has its followers.  And I find Tate Modern in London equally soothing and savage depending on my mood; I've even seen Tracey Emin's 'My Bed.'  It's a bed, get over it. But nothing prepared me for two live macaws in a cage who apparently get swopped every two months so they don't get distressed. Or for a breeze block filled with hard core.

You didn't believe me, did you?  And Chagall?  I didn't bother parting with £11.00 in the end because his paintings seem to consist of romanticised, fuzzy goats. But if I had to chose a favourite exhibit, it's called 'Blood of a Poet' featuring a wooden box filled with 100 glass slides, each smeared with a drop of poet's blood; and specimen list.

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/antin-blood-of-a-poet-box-l02859

 Curious, I asked the guide,
"Is the blood real?"
"Yeah. All from poets."  Result! Did the artist despise poets as much as I do? I needed more intel.
"Why poets?" Why not?
"She knew a lot of them in the mid-sixties and coaxed a drop of blood out every one she met.  It's an ironic statement, a bit like getting blood out of a stone."  Isn't it just?
"Ironically, our Path Lab's like that.  They aren't happy until they've got a large phial and a whole raft of tests to perform.  They're expensive too."  But they don't check for poetic credentials and certainly don't exhibit; that would be plain wrong.  Eventually when I stumbled into a darkened room showing a film of a barking dog I knew I'd exhausted my artistic bent.  It was time to take the Ferry 'cross the Mersey.

Except the Mersey looked like Cape Horn and was too choppy for a roosting bird like me.  Having suffered grave mal de mer on the Fuerteventura-Lanzarote ferry, I decided to give it a miss and head for the shops.  What an education?  Now I'm not a total stranger to Liverpool in general.  My ex lives in Aigburth, I've spent time at the dairy on Long Lane opposite the Jacobs cracker factory and in my cabin crew days, we used to fly out of Speke. And it's on Lord Street that I experienced the most amazing response to a first-aid situation, in Boots, on a busy Saturday when a girl passed out by the No7 counter.  My gay chum, Didier, did what any first responder would do; he raised the young lady's legs to a ninety degree angle thus allowing blood to flow back into her head.  I was fussing around, patting her hand when a blunt instrument swooped out of nowhere.  The girl's mother, seeing a man holding her daughter's ankles in a compromising way, swung a handbag at Didier's head screaming "Pervert" at the top of her lungs.  Poor bloke, he was never the same again, even after his ears stopped bleeding.

And Liverpool will never be the city of the Beatles again because the Cavern Quarter looks more like Temple Bar in Dublin; so loud you can't swallow your drink. Yes, the shops are great but they're the same as in any large city, except for the Harvey Nichols pampering room.  Downstairs, there's all the fabulous brands of my dreams and they sell Tom Ford perfumes too; Frangipani's favourite.  There I was spritzing and sniffing at the Jo Malone counter when two large glasses of bubbly appeared for customers having a hand massage; a yawning gulf away from the Body Shop's squash and biscuit refreshments.  Filled with envy, I so wanted to go upstairs and get "done up" for a night out - mani and pedi, fake tanned from scalp to toe, and a full head of heated rollers in a hairnet to go back to Leicester in.

We rolled away from the docks after a long day filled with Polish rock music, street theatre and a delicious lunch in a real Spanish tapas bar, all buoyed up with hope and energy.  Everything there seemed bigger, brighter and inflated by enthusiasm.  Yet I had to smile at the contrast between the two great cities [nowhere have I mentioned football yet!] On the streets of Liverpool, it's a common sight to see a young woman arms filled with designer bags and in her rollers bursting with the possibilities of a great night out and no-one calls her a 'chav'.  In Leicester, velcros look plain wrong accessorising any kind of ethnic clothing and, as always, my beak went down just a little as we exited the M1 at Junction 21.

Tip of the Blog:  My neck of the woods has just been shortlisted for the next City of Culture award and
I'm filled with sense of dread concerning my council tax contributions.  Yes, we have galleries, museums and an ancient historic past dating back to Roman times.  We also have the bones of Richard III and his statue overlooking the Castle Gardens.  I've even done 'the tour' with a group of Japanese visitors and know the very spot he was supposed to have been dispatched but is this enough?  Especially as no-one from the Lord Mayor's office has had the courage to ask the '24-hour Diamond White Drinking Circle' to vacate the benches under the great king's monument.  Liverpool vs Leicester?  You won't get very good odds at Ladbroke's.

Raven

Must Try Harder ...

Twice this week I've been admonished for not sharing May's tales from my neck of the woods but between you and me, it's been a bit of a struggle. I've been waking up at 5.00 am most mornings, cursing the little tweetie birds in the bottom hedge for making so much noise, before falling back into the pillows for an extra couple of hours of restless roosting.  Always an early riser, I'm finding the relentless late shifts at Job 2.1 as a right pain in the tail feathers and I'm seriously looking for a change before I expire.  So finding myself on a day shift for a change yesterday, I didn't expect a visit from the visible* management who asked,
"Why haven't you applied for the Oncology job?"
"I don't want to."  I can't deal with the emotional drain but I'm damned if I'm going to tell anyone that.
"Why not?"
"Honestly, it's not my kind of thing." 
"Why not?"  Here we go again.  Deep breath Ravens.
"The fact that I fail to meet the three main criteria for the role might explain my reluctance to apply for it."  Coupled with the fact that five of the current applicants have been there for 20 years, are keen to move up the fireman's pole and are nowhere near as cunning as I am clinches it for me.  There's even a tray of cupcakes bet on the outcome.  Yet her next statement made me bang my beak on the desk.
"You could learn."
"Not by tomorrow night I couldn't!"
"Well, I think you should show willing if you want a career here.  You really must try harder."  I heard the click of her heels all the way back to the stairwell where the carpet starts again.
"Indeed I must."  But the thought of wasting valuable sunshine hours applying for a job I don't want and am unqualified to do fills me with dread.  So I went back to the mountain of filing left by my apparent job-share partner MoBo who's so Raven, she keeps a pen stuck through her bun.

And I've developed an unhealthy fascination with some of the photos we get back from theatre.  Yesterday I picked up an A4 sized graphic image created by an endoscope and wafted it in Nurse Volvo's direction.
"Wassat?"  We've developed a guessing game akin to Anatomy for Dummies.
"Who's the consultant?"  I divulged his name.
"Orthopaedics then."  She nodded.
"Can you see the bone?"  Yep ... it's a patella.
"Gristle in fluid. Got to be a knee arthroscopy."
"Y'know if you worked a bit harder, you could retrain as a nurse?"
"Thanks but no."  Secretly, I'm working really hard on early retirement to the Caribbean Island where they film Death in Paradise with Ben Miller in a suit.  And after seeing Alex Kingston on Dr Who the other week, I want whatever she's been drinking.

I find it really odd in an age where technology allows us to see inside the human body yet we're still using the same audio typing machines I trained on in college to send letters on paper from one consultant to another.  I suppose it stops information going astray or worse, being hacked, but the process is still time consuming and increasingly complicated.  I've been specialising in Orthopaedic clinics lately; a far cry from the 1970s when I learned the QWERTY keyboard on an Imperial manual typewriter and I've got the claws to prove it.  I had my first taste of medical work in the 1980s when I was skint [yes, again] and temped in the local NHS typing pool.  There were four of us hammering away on electronic machines in a draughty office where a steam-driven IBM word processor sat unused in the corner.  It was the ultimate domain of the office management, a portly woman who also held an invisible job.  We were all equally baffled by her ability to have meetings yet achieve little or nothing. One morning she sidled up to me saying,
"You've been working really hard lately and the consultants are very pleased with your output."
"Really?  Thanks."  Wait for it.
"So I've decided to give you one of my tapes.  It's really urgent so you can use the word processor." The initial excitement was tinged with dread as I hauled myself over to the chair and waited for the lights to dim as I switched it on.  Oh, the tape started well enough. 
"Blah, blah, letter to so-and-so a couple of times, then next please on a separate sheet ...
Two pounds of potatoes
Green Beans
Cornflakes - Kellogg's
Apples
A large bottle of Tizer
Spangles ..."  Spangles?
The dozy woman had recorded her shopping list and expected me to type it up, and when I expressed my displeasure at this utterly menial task she snapped,
"You really must try harder if you ever want a permanent job in my department."  I didn't, so moved swiftly on to typing tenders for Norwegian oil rigs and fell in love with an Italian engineer.  Sadly, I should have tried harder with that one too.

Tip of the Blog:  I've been searching through my school reports hoping to bury the myth that I don't work hard enough, so imagine my disappointment when most of the end-of-term missives read "Raven Must Try Harder."  Yet when I arrived at GCE year, I trumped them all and got a Grade 1 in English Language.  Not English Lit though; I didn't care what Brutus was thinking when he stabbed Julius Caesar in the back.  With hindsight, perhaps I would have tried harder and paid attention during the performance at Stratford, had I known the young actor playing Cassius was called Patrick Stewart.

Tip Two:  *I know we also have invisible management but I've never met them.  They have offices with names on the door but I'm damned if I can work out exactly what role they fulfill.  Must try harder to investigate, then I'll let you know.

Raven

House!

What a week or two of medical madness and jolly japes.  It's been so bad that I stumbled into Theatres yesterday and begged a passing anaesthetist for a quick drag of nitrous oxide.  To his credit, he declined saying there were much better and freely available cures for working-in-a-mad-house than 'laughing gas.'  NHS time-served and customer service hardened, he also suggested a  new approach to my role on the Wards; basically give less of a damn.  Like the wonderful TV doctor, Gregory House, as performed by Mr Hugh Laurie, I am becoming more irascible by the day.  The bits I liked the best were when Cuddy ordered him downstairs to work his magic with less demanding cases, and so it has been with me and a certain student nurse I've called Hesperus.  She sidled up to me on Monday morning saying,
"I've got this thing and it really hurts."  One of those days.
"Where is this thing?"
"Between my cheeks."
"That's your nasal region."
"No, my bum."  Latin is so wasted on the young.  And they're so easily wound up.
"Oh.  Little thing is it?  Feels like a golf ball when you walk kind of thing?"  She brightened visibly at my vast medical knowledge and then the darkness crept back.
"Will I have to have a colonoscopy?"
"For hemorrhoids?  Unlikely but if Theatres are game and you've got the cash, we could do one anyway."  Her face was a picture until I explained there are creams available and where to get them.  Except not from Pharmacy unless you want it broadcast on hospital radio.
"Are they serious?"
"Only if you tango without applying ointment first."  Overhearing our conversation, Nurse Indira tried to cheer us up with tales of her nursing training in India at a Catholic institution run by Sisters of Mercy. Our jaws dropped when she told us,
"We weren't allowed to go out with boys or get married until our training was finished."  Hesperus's remained agog.
"What did you do about ...?  Well, you know?"
"This was a strict nursing academy, not a knocking shop" came the rebuke from Indira. "And we had to pray every day before each shift started."
"Why?"
"To stop impure thoughts."  Well I think that's what she said before muttering something about being confined to the house if they so much as smiled at a boy.  Herperus hissed in a loud stage whisper,
"I wouldn't get through the first week let alone four years!!"
I have to stop worrying about her, I really do.

Although worrying seems to part of Job 2.1.   So to lighten the load a little, me and my partner in healthcare crime Raven Jasmintha, decided to have a bingo night out at the local Mecca.  You'd have thought we'd asked for volunteers for varicose vein surgery because everyone said "Yes" initially, then support evaporated the second it was discovered there's an entrance fee.  At one point, we were surrounded by a gaggle of excuses,
"Can't we go on a free night?"  No, because we all work the same late shifts and there's be no staff.
"I can't get back in time after my dancing class" piped up Stephanotis. She can but she doesn't want to.
"I'm against gambling."  Another valid reason from Kuckleberry but considering she'd just come back from Las Vegas having lost her shirt, I think it's understandable.
So Jasmintha and me ... well we went anyway and had a riot, although I'm really sad I didn't get to shout "House!".  Well, not in the right place anyway.

Tip of the Blog:  Short and sweet this time. I've almost finished the donkey work of pulling my e-book together and yet, like the summit of Mount Everest; the higher you climb the further away it gets.  Keep you posted.

Raven

Thwarted

Thwarted by recent winds and a general lack of enthusiasm for gardening, I've been staring at our patch of scrub with the forelorn hope it would magically transform itself into a Chelsea Flower Show winner.  The shabby remains of my tomato tent has flapped like Buddhist prayer flags these past months leaving only the zip holding it all together.  And the buffeting we took the other night shook the car so badly, the service clock reset itself from 12,500 to zero, which the receptionist at the garage assured me couldn’t happen.  It did and a service will follow next week just in case a bit's dropped off.

Post garage, I hauled myself back to Job 2.1 with depleted enthusiasm, arriving in the naïve hope that a quiet afternoon would follow, until the phone rang.  The harassed caller confessed to being a local florist  and asked,

“Is there a Mrs Hollybush-Wicklow on your ward?”

“That’s confidential information. Sorry.”

“Is she in your hospital or not?”

“Either way I still can’t give you the information you require.”  Yet she ploughed on regardless.

“But I’ve got these flowers going off and I want to deliver them to the right address.  Would you like the postcode?”

“Not really because we share a postcode with the surrounding mansions and it could be any of those dwellings that require delivery of your flowers.”

 “So is she there or not?"

“Love to help but you could beg me for a week and I still can’t give you confidential information.”

 “How am I going to deliver them then?”  And why was she making this my problem? I muted the handset for a moment while I thought the process through.

“You’ll have to go back to the person who ordered them and ask for more details.”  She gave this enormous sigh indicating thwarted-ness.

“You’ve wasted a lot of my time.  I should report you."  She was starting to get right up my beak.

“If you insist but then we are all bound by NHS governance and confidentiality rules.  Thank you for calling.”  Five minutes later, the phone rang again.

“Hi Raven, it’s Reception. Have you got a Mrs Hollybush-Wicklow on your ward?”

One thing bothering me is that I’ve been thwarted in my attempts to 'work less and earn more.'  My talents as a medical secretary are in real demand and I genuinely enjoy a day’s audio-typing and helping patients get their impingements dealt with.  And fundamentally I’m not bored.  I mentioned this in passing to management and, for some unfathomable reason, I’ve been unable to return to the serenity of the MedSecs office with no hope of rescue in sight.  Not only am I working late hours again but I’m worse off.  Seem familiar?

I was mulling over my bank balance yesterday morning when the toaster turned up its toes in spectacular style and fused all the downstairs appliances minutes before I was due to leave for a funeral. The eternal dilemma – should I be embarrassingly late or defrost the entire contents of the freezer.  Common sense won and so I found myself legging it into church just before the coffin arrived.

On the way home, I browsed the toaster collection in John Lewis and however flushed with cash I’m feeling, there was no way we’re parting with seventy quid.  So I hopped down to Argos and bought what I thought was a bargain.  It came in an enormous box so I had no doubt it would deal with a chunky slice of Gregg’s finest.  When I got the toaster out, there was no need to plug it in because I couldn’t get so much as a pop tart in the slot. I'd bought a Toaster designed for a Wendy House.  Back it went and I exchanged it for a more expensive and bigger box.  Was the toaster any bigger?  No.  And this went on until was on first name terms with their customer service advisor “Wendy" [at Belgrave Gate store in Leicester who is excellent by the way] and happy to give me a full refund because I've been thwarted.  I decided that since the gas bill will be horrific anyway, I’m grilling my bread the old fashioned way.

According to television’s, Paul Hollywood, really good bread should be eaten fresh from the oven and ‘au naturel’ with butter but I may starve long before that happens.  You see Alphonse has come over all 'Pilsbury Dough Boy' and brought flour, yeast and a set of Salter digital scales with a 25 year guarantee, and I’m guessing it’ll be a full quarter century before I get an edible loaf out of him.  Odd though, when I came to putting my 50 year old mechanical scales in the bin, I couldn’t help but shed some emotive tears at their parting.  The internal spring had gone, any accuracy was dubious but they came from my Mum’s kitchen.  She made dubious cakes and solid buns and so I learned to cook in school for self-preservation mainly but everything on the table was filled to the brim with love.  And in the week of her birthday, I've never missed her more.

Tip of the Blog:  Stanforth, our petrol-headed neighbour, has been nurturing a D-Reg Ford Fiesta into life.  His plan is to create a masterpiece from the wreckage and sell it on to some other mug instead of consigning it to the scrap yard.  Sadly on Saturday, when he turned the ignition key for the first time in six months, we were all left in no doubt that he's trying to convert a bag of spanners into a car.  "Bad petrol." he said looking thwarted.  "Bad petrol."

Raven

The Unwinnable War

It's in. Prometheus; our new computer system and I love it.  However, legions on non-geek individuals at Job 2.1 absolutely have resolved to hate it for eternity and there, at the interface where humans meet SAP, is the problem. From the bitter experience of a £60M refit of a Manchester Dairy, I found that when established tradition meets new technology, holes open up in an organisation like a pair of fishnet tights.  Take Sister Ironsides for example who barked at me last week,
"Why haven't you printed off a patient census for tonight?"
"We don't need it."
"We do.  Or how can we see which patients are still here."  At one click of a mouse, I illuminated the screen.
"There they are. All tucked up for the night."
"But you have to print it out."  Wait for it. "It's your job."
"What?  Wasting paper?" Unphased by my reply, she went back on the offensive.
"Well, you didn't print one last night and someone wasn't discharged.  That was your fault."
"It was my day off."  Legend wills it to be my fault because she'd told everyone on four floors of my mistake before I arrived that morning.
And so began The UnwinnableWar between 21st century technology and those who want to carry on doing exactly what they've been failing to achieve in previous decades.  Take one consultant's secretary who'd flatly refused to do her training modules on the new system until she returned from holiday on the go-live day. Imagine her face when she discovered her man's patients hadn't been given time slots and fighting back the crocodile tears, she demanded the assistance of a Super User to administer personal tuition.  After about an hour, she was in real tears and told the SU in the surly manner of a Gatwick baggage handler,
"Don't you dare treat me like a child!"  Sadly, the secretary had underestimated the strength of the SU's character which had been honed on the playing fields of Everton.
"Well stop acting like one."  One nil to the geeks.

One of my earliest childhood memories is sitting on Mum's knee watching Emergency Ward 10 in black and white, on a foot-square tele.  All that starched cotton and heavy breathing put me right off any ideas of being a nurse and to this day, I rejoice in my choices.  And imagine my horror in confronting the Careers Woman in my teens at a special advisory session.  She wore a Crimplene frock which must have itched [I remember Dad using the stuff to clean knitting machines] but so did my school blazer. I was interrogated thus,
"How about nursing?"
"What about it?"
"We're short of nurses and you'd be good at it."  How did she know? I had top grades in all three sciences and wanted to be an astronaut.  Forget maths though, I'm rubbish without a spreadsheet.
"No.  I don't want to clean up after people thank you.  I'd rather be doctor."  She shook her head but the perm didn't move.
"Doctor?"  She had an answer for everything. "You'd have to go away from home for a long time.  Your parents wouldn't like that, would they?"
"You didn't give that old guff to my cousin."
"But he's a boy and academic."  What does that make me then?  "Now how about a nice secretarial course?  We're short of secretaries and you'd be good at it."
And so began my Unwinnable War between the brains I possess and what other people will let me do with them.  And this week, I hiding my knowledge of the SAP system behind a veil of ignorance.

Tip of the Blog:  With thanks to Stargate SG-1 for the title of today's post. I'd heard a god-like person admonish another with the promise of death because they "failed to win the unwinnable war".  Welcome to my world.

Raven

Lost Property ...

Mugs, the pottery type, are always a contentious issue in a public place.  Everyone has their own favourite design; a gift on Mothers' Day or an 'Old Git' mug with a gurning face guaranteed to make the user even more depressed with advancing years.  Some mugs are trendy or coveted by collectors like my Tardis mug with a lid, right now filled with a home-made latte and several sugars. So imagine my horror yesterday when I trotted up to W2 and was handed back my own personal mug which had gone missing.  My treasured Jurassic Park crockery featuring the legend "Something Has Survived" was now chipped and faded by the dishwasher.  The Sister of Darkness stared at me, barking
"We've looked after it for you?"
"Yeah ... on the Staffordshire Potteries Care Pathway I see."
"Anyway.  What do you want?"  Her parents had wasted a lot of money on charm school.
"I've come to return the W1 keys but don't know where they belong overnight." A security issue you understand.
"Well that's a nurses' job. [Do me a favour.] Now I've got to get up, unlock the cupboard, unlock another key press and put them away.  You should know better Raven ... leave it to a nurse next time."
"Rather than help someone who's busier than I am. I think I get the picture."  It wouldn't have been so bad but I'd stayed late to finish discharging paying patients.  Next time, I will leave it for a nurse although I'll get an ear-bashing for that too.

I made good my escape to the car park and spent the next ten minutes trying to find it in the dark.  I was almost at the point of sending up a distress flare when I spied an old Naval chum, Destroyer, sitting in his Nissan Quashcow.  I knew he'd been struggling with his new hip, fitted as an emergency at the local Infirmary but I was amazed to see him at Job2.1.
"Long story Raven." Muttering while gathering his mobile, iPad, Blackberry, laptop and portable breadmaker into his bag; knowing I wouldn't get a word in edgeways I let him ramble.  "My femur's a size 5 apparently but the surgeon hammered a size 6 into the bone and broke it.  Now I've got to recover from one operation before I can come here and have it done again." 
"At least it'll be a different surgeon." I try to console my chums.

"Yeah ... and I won't have to submit another insurance claim for my bank cards."
"Sorry?"
"You bet I was flippin' sorry.  I woke up from an 8 hour operation to find someone had disappeared with my wallet and cash.  I went to buy the nurses some chocolate and all I'd got in my pocket was an Asda receipt."
"Did you try lost property?" I ventured.
"No wallet but they'd got a size 5 hip joint someone had left behind."  I left him loading some glossy reading matter into the bag, and bade him farewell.

Bringing your own magazines into Job2.1 is better for your overall recovery.  Also a Kindle to stimulate the brain.  Access to the web to check out your post-operative chances and catch up on Facebook add to the overall feeling of wellbeing.  But imagine our horror on finding a suspect "Countryside la Vie" magazine tucked under the mattress of a recent patellectomy patient - a knee job to you and me - which requires a whole seven to 14 days without bending said knee making blokes a bit 'Jake the Peg' if you get my drift.  Anyway, some real thought had been put into this because we discovered a porn magazine sellotaped inside it's dull, upper class outer shell.  On inspection of the porn, we found quality naughtiness of a refined nature aimed at the more mature gentleman.  Oh dear me ... he must have spent several days of his recovery time high on Tramadol and as stiff as an orthopaedic crutch.

Tip of the Blog:  At this point, I feel it should be pointed out that my characters are fictional and stories based loosely on fact as it happens. And should you see any similarity between Raven's doings and someone you know in real life, then you have a bigger creative imagination than mine and are now doubt a highly paid writer already. 

Raven

That Look!

When 'The Cat' first arrived, we believed we'd bought a delightful feline companion with clean habits and a happy disposition, until the fateful night he amused our friends by squatting under the dining table begging for Dim Sum prawns.  Previously that day, he'd been haunting birds in next door's garden and had topped up his nutritional, well-balanced diet with Peshwari naan.  After letting out a long stream of noxious gas, he got the biggest prawns and the widest berth. It was then that Alphonse formulated That Look! which loosely translated mean "You Can Really Pick 'em!"  Sadly, he had good cause to use the Raven stare again this week when I came home from Job 2.1 with the glum tidings that "due to an administrative error" we bank-staff had not been paid.

Really, it's not the financial situation that made Alphonse settle me down in front of Corrie with a large whisky but the way we were advised of our misfortune; by global email. The only word missing from the missive was "Tough!"  Anyway, it has to be said that I could have visited any of the nearby ATMs and checked but it shouldn't be necessary.  And when I finally got to my desk, Old Ironsides herself couldn't resist a dig when she quipped,
"What's your problem?  You've only got to wait a week...I've got no overtime." Coming from someone who's in a two-Mercedes relationship and off skiing this weekend, I find that a bit of a bitch but decided to keep my beak shut.  So when I continued with my normal duties, I found others in the hospital who couldn't resist rubbing salt into my festering wound.
"What are you doing here Raven?" remarked Botulism.
"My job ... what's it look like?"  Spoken more along the lines of 'What the flock's it got to do with you?'
"In your shoes, most of us wouldn't have bothered to turn up."
"Lucky me I'm old enough to make my own choices."  I'd started to seethe and, about to spontaneously combust, I escaped upstairs to Bedroom 101; my name for a virtually unused set of womens' facilities where a girl can sit and ponder the state of the universe with or without Prof Brian Cox.

Blocking my path was the management [they get everywhere, don't they?] with a deeply concerned frown stretching from temple to temple.
"Are you okay Raven?"  Enough's enough!
"YES"
"Are you sure?  We can help you out with come petty cash ..."  Too late, the cap came off the volcano.

Now don't panic, he still lives and there was no pecking out of eyes like in Hitchcock's The Birds.  Actually, I'm quite proud of myself because anyone else would have got a banging lecture on Torts and his responsibility as an employer but that would've been wasted.  Instead it all came down to one word, quietly spoken. Trust.

Tip of the Blog:  The other night there was a crash from the bathroom and a royal amount of cursing from Alphonse. When he finally descended, he mumbled something along the lines of
"We'd better go to B&Q."
"What? Now?"

"No but in the morning or I'll lose something valuable if I go to the loo in the dark."  On closer inspection, he'd snapped the toilet seat lid in half, exposing a blade-like piece of plastic quite capable of causing an orchidopexy.  Next day, I found a detailed diagram of our requirements and a twenty quid note on top of my handbag, and he'd skipped to work before I could summon my own version of "That Look!" 

Raven