Forty Hens & A Michael Buble Tribute Act

In the week that celebrates the 20th anniversary of Four Weddings and a Funeral, I find myself faced with the same dilemma so many women have on the starting line of 'The Wedding Season.'  Luckily, I only have one such invitation hanging over me like the Sword of Damocles and so I resolved to deal with it in the time honoured fashion; that I would spend an entire weekend shopping and if I hadn't secured anything to wear by Sunday evening, I'd wear a bin bag with stilettos and a flash handbag.  Little did I know how many of my words I'd be required to eat.

Preparing myself for the mammoth shopping spree in Nottingham*, I had to endure a few hours in The Bunker filing medical records with the bride to be, the Rota Witch.  Hiding in the racking, I heard the Andrex Puppy arrive and start a conversation regarding some contracted hours going spare every Friday night which she wants to tack on to some poor sod's weekly grind, i.e. mine.  She spoke thus,
"Well I know it's going to be difficult to fill because Fridays always are but we want someone who wouldn't mind adding another three hours to their working day."  Insert ominous pause here.
"Perhaps we could add it on to Raven's day after she's done eight hours as a medical secretary?"  I'm in the room remember. "I'm sure she wouldn't mind doing eleven hours every Friday."  To stop myself screaming, I was gnawing the corner of a medical record and will apologise to the patient some other time. In her head, it's all agreed and when that job's advertised and someone asks what I think, I hope they won't be offended by my polite rebuttal of "Over my rotting corpse!"

Next day, I skipped off the train and headed for the shops with a credit-card induced spring in my step, only to find the first of two major retail cathedrals boarded up; more importantly T K Maxx had vanished and the legend that was The Broadmarsh Centre looked like a war zone.  Undaunted, I followed the signs and found the new, massively improved branch of the US giant whose basement housed several thousands of frocks of every size, colour and fabric; surely one would fit?  That Saturday morning, I tried on thirty dresses and yes, one fit me perfectly.  A little black Ronnie Nicole number with gold sequins on the shoulders, an underneath layer that could squeeze the life out of a Gloucestershire Old Spot and when held up to the light it had a rip down the front.  The pink version in the same size didn't fit anywhere it touched and made me look like a condom with earrings.  Several hours and another retail cathedral later, I finally struggled onto the train home with some marmalade and new icing bag from Lakeland.

Stupidly, I decided I had enough energy left to try a different branch of T K Maxx, just in case they had a non-damaged LBD.  Yes, I know I've foresworn the wearing of black but in the absence of anything red, I had little choice and so took another ten frocks into the fitting rooms and am now a desperate bird.  It was hot, noisy and whiffy, unlike Nottingham with it's full-on Arctic air conditioning.  Beetroot with effort, I handed over the rejects to the girl on the fitting room door and was about to compliment her on her patience when she snapped,
"Yeah! I know! It's not you, it's our dresses that are wrong." I'll bugger off then shall I? **

Armed with little choice but to wear something from the back of the wardrobe, I was looking forward to the Hen Night Party so imagine my horror when everyone under 40 was wearing a dress and everyone over 40 was wearing a Monsoon top and leggings, as I was.  Mortified, my youthful enthusiasm evaporated and suddenly I took the walk of shame towards the bride's grannie and elderly aunts, merely because of my outfit.  How I wish I'd worn that bin bag now.  Undaunted, I had great hopes of the evening ahead mainly because the featured act was www.theultimatebuble.com.  I'm a big fan of tribute acts and can personally vouch for Nearly Dan, Bjorn Again and some bloke I saw in Portugal who was the spitting image of George Michael on stage.  He had his magnificent voice too but, later at the bar, he was a whole foot shorter and quite sexy.  Sorry George.

The Shires are notorious amongst the entertainment industry as a hard crowd and on this particular night, the audience wasn't having any of the usual romantic slush.  Oh dear me no. He'd driven all the way up from Devon and all I could see was a bloke who looked like Lee Mack in a tight suit.  Still, he ploughed on into the jazz classics and from the first chords of 'Save the last dance for me' we were all up on our feet and boogied the night away.  In the end, it was pure Buble, unmarred by the awful food and extortionate cost of drinks.  Two of the MedRecs team should be commended for their amazing jazz dancing routine and I'm looking forward to their comedy debut at the Edinburgh Festival this summer.  But surely the best act of the night was the elderly couple who were dancing a perfectly technical cha-cha-cha at the speed of a Tai Chi master regardless of whatever ultimatebuble was up to; genius.  Simmie was on her back in hysterics crying,
"We don't get entertainment like this in Slovenia." We don't normally get it this good in The Shires either.

*For Blog Followers out of the UK, Nottingham is the birthplace of Robin Hood and north East of the nest; and is so expensive to park I took the train.  For US Followers, Nottingham should not be confused with Hugh Grant's Nodding Hill as it is nowhere near London.

**I finally secured the LBD from River Island. It fits. I have shoes, it will do for the big event next weekend.  I actually found it on the floor, trampled underfoot, and when I took it to the till the girl said,
"Where did you get this?  It's really nice."  I give up.

Tip of the Beak: Thanx to Rockin' Robin who mailed me about the T K Maxx poster which dominates the entrance of my nearest branch. In their newly renovated store on the outskirts of town, they've got an even weirder picture of a bloke in a hat that someone's drawn a moustache on ... or is that his real face?  I'm not sure anymore.

Raven

 

Science Fiction or Ann Summers?

Phew!  A lot's happened since my last post and this morning I've woken up to find the Year of the Horse has galloped away with a couple of weeks of my life while I've been having acupuncture on an impinged left wing; currently defying physiotherapy and pain management injections.  The latter treatment has left me little in the way of activities except bird watching, so I've been pouring over Monica Porter's book about her sexual adventures with a whole raft of 20 year old men and, at times, have been close to hysterics. She called herself 'Raven' too and I especially love her description of herself as 'irresistible' although I'd prefer the more accurate phrase; 'Up for it!'

Oh isn't it a fantasy scenario for us oldies; passing on our knowledge and power to a youthful suitor who's all turbo charged?  Guilt free and harmless?  You could put money on at Ladbroke's that your handsome young stud wouldn't dare tell his mother what he's been up to at a weekend and you certainly won't be on his Facebook page unless he's into MIL*ing in a big way.  How do I know so much?  Well I had a fling with someone half my age too but there won't be a lucrative book deal in my story.  Having been a carer for a while, I'd been out of the dating game for far too long and found myself thinking much like Ann Reid's character in Roger Mitchell's brilliant film, The Mother.  She starts to wonder if she'll ever be kissed again and on reaching out finds Daniel Craig in her garden.  And so, resigned to singularity, I reached out and found Adamski in my IT server room. Phew again? It's hard to imagine how much passion can be expended behind a rack of multi-coloured cables but we managed it without getting sacked and in an air-conditioned environment which would rival the South Pole.  Odd that I never looked flushed when I returned to my desk.

Much groping ensued but it all came to a disappointing head after the Xmas meal when I stayed at his place with its paper thin walls and wonky toilet requiring a pair of pliers to operate the flush mechanism.  Driving home in the early hours I kidded myself that all was well.  Inside, I couldn't escape the nagging gripe in my gut that this could only end one way; badly.  True to form, we progressed from quick snog to 'Been there! Done that! Next!' in 14 days.  And by breaking all the rules, I broke my own heart right down the middle at the exact moment when he flopped next to my desk and announced,
"Hey, I've met this amazing woman online. Met up in the pub last night. Love of my life. I know she is. You'd like her."  I despised her even though I never got to meet her yet for months afterwards I felt powerless, searching the mirror for every new wrinkle or a feather out of place.  Imagine my humiliation when I found out he'd done it all for a bet. Just because he could. A couple of years later he invited me to his wedding to a completely different woman.  I didn't go but he still sent me the photos. Would you have gone or sent a gift?  No, me neither.

These days, the most excitement I can expect is the odd innuendo when flashing my knees in the lift on Thursdays and Fridays, the only days of the week I wear a skirt to work.  Mainly I'm content and staying well away from much-younger eye candy for my tattered ego's sake.  And so I was a bit startled when Alphonse  peered out from under the paper and said,
"Fancy dressing up this weekend?"  I'm a bit past bodice-ripping and my french maid's outfit went to charity years ago and although my dress sense is described by Frangipani as 'alien' I'm nowhere near as scary-looking as the mature poster lady in the T K Maxx near me.  Square silver bob, silver leather jacket; stylist on acid.  And there's no way I'm dressing up as a Carry On era nurse - what can you be thinking?  Recovering my composure, I asked what he had in mind.
"Dr Who convention.  Me Tom Baker, you Lala Ward.  National Space Centre."  It turned out that the real Lala Ward would be there and we look similar enough to be a bit creepy, so I adopted the guise of Billy Piper's Rose from the episode 'The Long Game' and dug out my red and black catsuit; with matching lippy de rigeur. What a brilliant weekend, surrounded by Daleks and Cybermen, being boiled alive in the queue for Red Dwarf autographs and again to gaze fondly at Paul McGann who then turned me into a gibbering idiot when he said "Hi."  I have photos with steam rising behind the Tardis and of Alphonse being gassed by a rocket engine igniting during tea break.  Joyfully, we rolled home like two five year olds with a crate of Thunderbirds memorabilia, a sonic screwdriver for Alphonse and a plastic model of the 8th Doctor for me.  And looking back in quiet moments, with my wing strapped to my chest, I feel genuinely sorry for Monica Porter and her toyboys; she can keep them. Who needs Ann Summers when you've got science fiction?

Tip of the Beak: I've spent the morning in The Range hunting for storage solutions, a new squirrel-proof bird feeder and a lampshade.  In the cafe upstairs, Alphonse drew my attention to the 1970s-style tannoy announcements; each repeated twice and loud enough to curdle the excellent coffee. "When my hearing finally goes" he quipped, "I'll miss all of this."

Raven

Wear Red Instead.

Yay! It's the 13th of January and I'm celebrating once more. The Twelve Days have passed, as has Epiphany and the decos are littered around the spare room waiting for me to 'Mary Poppins' them into the box.  Today also marks the end of my self-imposed embargo on blogging or writing of any kind meaning my little grey cells are rested. And like steam building up in an overfilled pressure cooker, I'm about to burst with enthusiasm. Well almost. Not writing is a cure for Writer's Block apparently although trying not to do something is psychosis-inducing in itself.  For a few days, I wandered around aimlessly readjusting the baubles on the tree to stop me going nuts. Every time I picked up a pen at work, I wanted to create rather than account and I had to force my brain to obey.  I even bought some Dr Bach Night Remedy to stop repetitive thoughts invading my sleep patterns and took a month's supply down in ten days.


On a positive note, my exile from writing meant I had more time for browsing and on Christmas Eve, I accompanied Marieceleste to the exclusive underwear emporium on Market Street. Sadly, my £10 per day budget wouldn't buy me a thong in there but we got caught up in the whirl of the place. She spent loads but after a piercing stare and the flourish of a tape measure, I was sternly informed I was wearing the wrong cup size and left empty handed. Why? Because the average pair of underwired cups on some elastic averages out at a breathtaking forty quid and I still had gifts to buy. After a whizz around Ashby Market, I dropped in on Aldi in a panic having forgotten the Panettone. Fair enough, we only have it once a year but without its soft texture and hazelnut crust, my signature dish of bread & butter pudding is pretty lacklustre. I broke my own record for a trolley dash, hoovering up some sherry, a bottle of brandy and several bottles of Prosecco to wash down our festive food. Pity none of the above alcohol could improve the mincepie-flavoured Wensleydale. Alphonse poked a noggin around his plate with a cracker to alleviate the boredom during Dr Who then turned up his beak saying,
"Can't I just have a mince pie, or cheese. Not together."  Still, the blackbirds loved it.

'Not writing' became the norm and far from developing cabin fever, I threw myself into the holidays with uncharacteristic flair, making my own bunting and brewing up six pounds of marmalade on Boxing Day instead of dragging myself to the Next sale. When I finally got to the Retail Cathedral it still had that unwashed hue reminiscent of the Souk at Hammamet and having dressed for arctic conditions when the store was superheated to ninety degrees, I made a break for the coolness of John Lewis. Except some joker had upped their heating too and, feathers off, I was down to my vest and leggin's in the appliances department. A beetroot face isn't attractive and after a mere sixty minutes I returned to the nest with fresh provisions vowing not to return until February at the earliest.

New Year's Eve was a whole day off work and a welcome respite from the aggro that seems to accompany the daily toil. I've taken to wearing earplugs so as not to hear my colleagues moaning.  While everyone has been standing around in corners having a bit of a whine, I've been mindful of the passing of very difficult year and had planned an early night with a good book until Them Next Door suggested we have a blow out curry.  And we could walk there and back to settle the naan bread a bit.  Anything rather than endure the torture of Jools Holland's Hootenanny although we were back in time to see Gary Barlow and his weird haircut, and I vaguely remember singing 'Rule the World' to the cat.

Happily, I made no real resolutions for the New Year except to wear red like Dame Helen Mirren because it suits me so much more than black.  The feathers stay of course but red has a whole different energy. And when my Epiphany came along on the 6th, it arrived from the pen of J R R Tolkein who wrote "Not everyone who wanders is lost." Well I've wandered far too long my friends and lost sight of who I really am, and this cannot go on.  So in 2014 and I hope you too will find yourself renewed before many more days have passed. Happy New Year.

Raven

The Eden Project

I really shouldn't be left alone with the local newspaper and a tax rebate. Granted, I could have spent it on a long-overdue touch-up on my roots but the enticing photograph of Eden's biomes covered in frost and the prospect of a few days away in Cornwall injected some much needed festive enthusiasm into me. I waved it at Alphonse who croaked,
"Not interested."  Fair enoughski.
"It'll be fun and cheap." I chirped.  I'd done the return trip calculations by car and the fuel cost was huge.
"Not for me it won't.  It involves shopping." His logic was flawless. With the Clarke's Shopping Village and the Bath Christmas Market featured heavily either side of St Austell, I'd need long arms and deep pockets so I booked myself on a three day treat and arranged for Them Next Door to ensure Alphonse had regular meals and a fresh litter tray while I was on tour.

I'm a coach tours novice and being a tad claustrophobic when I can't fly myself, I was hoping for an aisle seat so imagine my horror on discovering that window seat No.37 had trapped me next to a big bloke who left me with no wriggle-room. I couldn't have wished for a nicer chap who had only come along to help his elderly parents, but he had sleep apnoea and snored a lot every time we hit a motorway. So on the way from home to Market Harborough, Kettering, Wellingborough and Northampton, I developed a new form of yoga to practice in very confined spaces and cursed myself for not packing some TEDs anti-deep vein thrombosis stockings. At least there was no singing of Vera Lynne classics on the way.

Surveying my fellow travellers, I felt there would be at least one person I could bond with and joy, I found Sue and her husband Roy in the seats behind mine. Like teenage rebels, we took to using our cameras to snap everything that moved from meals, including this glorious bucket of soup and doorstep bread slathered with Cornish butter:

You won't get this on your Costa card because it was grown on the Eden Project estate and tasted like heaven, all for a fiver. Returning to our Torquay Hotel that evening, we were brimming over with The Eden Project's wonders before sitting down to a three course extravaganza that I've not witnessed since staying with my parents in a Weymouth B&B.  I was 15 at the time and in those days considered tinned grapefruit in a glass dish to be exotic.

Granted our digs weren't as bad as Fawlty Towers but purely out of disbelief, I videoed the Saniflow because the goddam thing kept me awake most of the first night.  I must pack ear plugs if I'm ever going to do this again.  Still, sleeping in a strange nest is always a bit difficult at first.  I don't allow technology in the upper reaches of the home nest unless it's an alarm clock so I found the intrusion of a television in my shoe-box sized accommodation to be a real nuisance in the dark. Although on the Sunday morning, enjoying my first cup of tea on the concrete bed, I watched a stupid film about a man who after drinking a lot of a very expensive wine imagined himself as a dog.  Sam Neill as a canine had me howling!  There was also the problem of the strong adhesive smell, apparently brought on by the management having just stuck down the flooring in the bathroom.  Helpfully, they'd opened the windows in the vain hope that I hadn't noticed. I had because my beak is very sensitive.  I also couldn't help noticing the two inch gap in the ill fitting door which looked like a light-sabre in the room when the lights were out. I really couldn't miss the huge, framed Vogue covers circa 1991 of the world's highest paid supermodels of the time adorning the walls to distract our vision from the eye-watering pattern on the carpets. Now I know Naomi Campbell hasn't looked like that for a decade.

Over the full English breakfast serving downstairs in a dungeon of a restaurant, we swopped snaps and howled at the images. Sue, giggling like a teenager, had photographed every bit of their bedroom from the mouldy patch inside the wardrobe door and the two pound coins they discovered under the bad, to the word 'DUST' written in the dust on the top of the wardrobe.  Don't ask me how or why she was up there, it had something to do with the TV remote apparently.  And what, we discussed, could improve our stay at this peculiar hotel; a polyglot of buildings with dodgy plumbing seemingly bolted to a Torquay hillside?
"A facelift?" quipped Sue.
"Closing for a year and gutting?" ventured Roy.
"An Exocet missile?"  forever optimistic Raven.

I could rattle on about our journey home but I slept through the dull bit from Torquay to the outskirts of Bath, at least until driver Barry turned off the motorway and onto some dubious B roads, obviously some kind of demonic SatNav challenge he'd not told us about.  We went through one Somerset hill village and terrified a bloke washing his car, who jumped back as our tour bus squeaked past his wing mirror.  What seemed like a lifetime later, I finally met up with Grimy and January near Bath's famous Abbey and instead of browsing the famous Christmas Market, we headed for the pub to get away from the crowds. A word to the wise if you're going this weekend, get some bovver boots because the stalls are three-deep and you'll never get to see most of it. I ended up hiding in Lakeland and filling my basket with Dr Who novelty items to keep me entertained over the festive break; along with a DIY marmalade kit for Alphonse but don't tell him yet.

Y'know, I had a lovely time and met some great folk.  I also met some real moan-a-lots too. And days later when it came to filling in the survey sheet for Diamond Holidays I was aghast at one question. "If we could improve anything, what would it be?"  My first thought was 'you could have arranged for it to snow at The Eden Project and for Bath to have more public loos.'  My written answer was honest and truthful.
"What are you asking me for?  This is your business and you should know where there's room for improvement.  Why don't you take a tour or two yourself and stop asking stupid questions?"
There, I said it.

Tip of the Beak:  Remember I mentioned a wasps nest that has been causing us some problems?  I sort of calmed down when I realised The Eden Project have a much bigger problem with such things than we ever will. Please go soon and support their charitable work. It's fabulous.

Staff Retention. Seriously?

Granted it's not like me to snuggle down in a dark corner with a reviving beverage but I've taken a serious chunk of downtime over the last few weeks to relax and forget about the awful mess I made of my book's synopsis. The publisher was unimpressed and my mentor, having talked me down from the Nest's highest bough, told me it should have been written seriously in the first person singular and not as a romp through my bizarre life.  Why didn't anyone tell me this before?  I had copious notes and the handouts from Uni to refer to and the Internet as backup, so what could go wrong?  Everything apparently.

With hindsight, I can only put it down to losing the plot because that's exactly what's happened at the hospital from hell too. I thought the Body Shop was bad but this is the stuff of nightmares, and I'm currently avoiding any whiff of the management by diving into bed linen cupboards.  There's lots to chose from on each floor and I've hidden a bottle of Bailey's Chocolate in each, behind the TED's stockings box. Anything to avoid being asked,
"Are you alright Raven?" Spoken in a voice most people would use to apologise for kicking an Andrex Puppy so I've started to call her that.

My problem started after a torrid weekend on the Ward when our crippling staff shortage final broke the will to live of this solitary Raven. At the midway point of the week, I'd been honest with the management about my abilities to prepare notes and files for our high dependency ward on the top floor.  Blunt even
"I have never done this before and I will need help."  I fingered the raised area on my forehead which read 'MUG' backwards.
"Don't you worry your miniscule brain about this ... all will be well."
"I'm not worried but you will be by Friday if this isn't sorted out."  It wasn't, and it all kicked off on Saturday morning when the ward notes were still in tatters.  Oh, all the bits of paper were there but I had no chuffin' idea where they belonged, and with a phone to each ear and a tub of Quality Street for backup, I made an executive call alerting the management to my problem. Again. I almost cried when she said,
"I've called your line manager and she has assured me you know how to do this."  She was wrong and luckily, the cavalry arrived in the form of the incumbant who was passing by and dutifully checking Monday would not be pear shaped on arrival.  And so there was a meeting called and in the true style of an Unkindness of Ravens, I was about to be pecked to death.

Seven of us crammed into a tiny meeting room; all hormonal and one of us seething with fury. Me.  Shall I go around the room? And you know it's going to be bad when the management start off with a little speech about supporting staff and taking staff retention very seriously.  Hah!  The initial question came from the Rota Witch.
"Why didn't you say you needed help earlier."
"I did, last Wednesday, and again on Friday but when I got around to the management office, the Andrex Puppy was already involved with another crisis. So I went back to the Ward and got on with it."  My fault of course and for that I accept responsibility.  And I should have dissolved into floods of tears which is the usual way folks get noticed around here.

"But you didn't get on with it and I've got KPIs to fulfill.  Why wasn't it done?"
"Because both phones were ringing all Friday night and all Saturday morning. Hard to work with a phone in each hand."  This went straight over her head.
"If you didn't do your job, how am I going to explain it?" Lie, like everyone else in this room would.

In grudge-match meetings like this, there's always one who's only there to save her own arse feathers and bang on cue up chirps Stephanotis.
"I did thirty sets of notes on my shift last week. What's your problem?"  Her 'problem' is she's leaving in three weeks so her responsibility levels have waned to a point of non-existence. I pecked back.
"And how many phone calls did you take, appointments did you make and patients did you relate to?"
"None."
"Well unless you've got something constructive to contribute, shut your beak." Stupidly, I hoped Malone would spring to my aid but I couldn't have been more misguided.
"You didn't tell me you couldn't do this either. Remember I came back on Friday afternoon and you said it was all under control." The knife went straight into my back at the third intercostal space thus ending a beautiful friendship. You see, she know and I had told her but she'd just landed a plumb job which she will be bored with in a couple of months and was determined that none of the poo was going to land in her direction.

This appeared to be the downturn in the proceedings because the management contingent suddenly woke up to the veracity of my complaints.  In the threatening silence that followed, the silent minority decided to chip in a few words of encouragement.  Determined to be supportive and thoroughly nice, LouLou had come armed with the Ward Administration Bible which she had written a couple of years ago.
"You say you didn't know how to prep notes but it's all in the book Raven."  She'd brought handouts.
"Oh, that book. The one I've never had time to read since I walked through the door you mean?"  I would've been there all night reading the manual trying to find the right bits of paper to insert in the appropriate slot, absolutely guaranteeing chaos on the following Monday morning.
"All the necessary information is written there when you need it, yes."  Luckily, she's not bright enough to realise how daft she sounded or how close she came to having the file parked up her rectal sphincter muscle.

I got out of there alive on the understanding I would be rota'd back on Ward 2 for further training because, according to the management,
"It might give you more confidence."  The Andrex Puppy was speaking again. "And we're very short staffed."
"I've been behind the controls of a Boeing 737!"  I wanted to shout at them. "Do I look like I'm lacking in the confidence department?" It was an hour before the hormones subsided in the linen cupboard and I'd had a chance to assess the damage.  Not to my career because I patently don't have one. Or to my sense of humour which is priceless. Honestly, I felt fine until Malone caught up with me on the stairs.
"Sorry about that Raven but I wasn't going to do anything to scupper my new job, was I?"
"No. But you've lost a friend forever.  Oh, and here's your knife back."

Tip of the Beak: Please watch the Dr Who mini-episode on BBC iPlayer.  I nearly fainted with happiness at the sight of Paul McGann in his frock coat and will be transfixed to the tele for The Day of the Doctor on Saturday night.  It's like being a little kid again but I won't be hiding behind the sofa.  I only do that after encounters with our management.

Raven

 

What Deadline?

I thought I'd got away with it. Sitting here at the PC, I'd been staring at a blank screen and frittering away the morning on www.shoeaholic.com instead of engaging myself with the job at hand. Writing a synopsis; the bane of a novelist's life.  I hate them because it means engaging in the thought process of trying to work out what my novel's actually about.  Every ten minutes or so, I've employed many of the best known distraction techniques known to writers world wide. Just this morning, I've baked a carrot cake and washed the food mixer and all the attachments, by hand, while Alphonse was reading the sports pages.

And I thought I was doing a brilliant job of avoiding his x-ray vision until was standing at my side with a bacon sandwich, his not mine, and spoke these immortal words;
"Okay. So when's the deadline?"
"What deadline?" In denial as usual Raven?
"The one you're obviously avoiding ..."
"There is no deadline.  You are wrong for once." He's a Virgo. He is only misguided but never wrong. Unexpectedly for a Sunday morning, Alphonse seemed to want to point out some serious home truths.
"The water filter has been changed. The camera is on charge even though it won't be needed until Halloween. Both sock drawers are in pristine order.  My ties are sorted into colours ... even though I don't wear one. I can see my face in the cooker hood and someone ..." How he loves those dramatic pauses and yet I was determined to remain defiant in the face of a full MI5 interrogation session.
"Someone has taught the cat to select his preferred flavour pouch from the box."  He was on to me and my diversionary tactics; all those irritating little tasks I only do in the face of a deadline. Finally, I caved in and mumbled,
"First of November."
"Not a chance." He was almost gleeful in his assessment of my situation
"Why not?"
"You've started making jam."
"Why's that stopping me writing?"
 "Because you could nip over to Lidl and buy it like you have done for the past ten years."

Excuse the rather fragmented nature of this blog post, I've just had to wander into the kitchen for a sandwich and a warming cuppa.  Since I was in the vicinity, I've washed up too and chopped the veg for dinner, and considered how many kilos of assorted sweets we'll need for the Trick-or-Treat bucket.  I could go to the enormous Tesco, the one with the wide screen televisions and enormous 'reductions' section; it's only 14 miles from here which should kill about three hours or I could do the smart thing and buy 10 bags of charity sweets from the box on Reception and save some time.  Although Amber, one of the medical secretaries, had got there before me on Friday night and was routing through the box with a sugar-deprived glint in her eye.
"What are you still doing here?" The first answer that came to mind was 'minding my own business' but I like her and her daughter who taught me everything I needed to know about my job. The interesting stuff you understand, not the mind-numbing filing.
"I'm here 'til eight.  Such is life." I watched in horror as she used her teeth to gain entry to a bag of quasi Galaxy Minstrels with an extra crisp candy coat that sounded like maracas when shaken.
"Know that.  I mean why are you here every night doing this horrible job when you have better things to do with your life?"  I opened my beak but no smart answer emerged.  I felt like a guppy on a fishmonger's slab.
"You've got me there ..."
"Well do something about it or you'll end up like the rest of us saddos.  Chocolate?"
"No thanks.  Not unless you've got an ice pick to remove the hard-as-granite shell."
"Wimp." Amber's laser vision eyes had started to return to their usual green as she sucked hard on the sugar.
"Expensive choppers."
"Great excuse.  Just don't find a reason to stay here after your sell-by date."  I checked out the chocolates later and they were good to the end of this century.

Tip of the Blog:  There's been shouting on the ward this week. By me at someone who has been wasting my time.  I should tell you all about it but there’s a whole box set of Porridge to watch before bedtime.

Raven

Everyone's A Winner

I've been somewhat diverted from writing of late because of a chocolate cake.  Poor excuse I know but you could almost taste the pheromones of competitiveness coursing around the hospital last week as our own version of the "Great British Bake Off" technical challenge took place on Ward 1.  Imagine the scene; seventeen bakers of all ages and dress size took on the Mary Berry 'chocolate sponge cake challenge' all in aid of the Macmillan Nurses charity; it was carnage.  We'd all been given the recipe at least a fortnight in advance so the playing field was level[ish], but mostly to give ourselves the opportunity to prepare and cheat where necessary; and believe me the mental preparation was vital.  Some people are natural-born winners like MedSec Barty who won a petrol mower recently.  It's irrelevant that she hasn't got a lawn, she says, and has resolved to save up for a bigger nest, with grass.  What matters is that she's a winner.  And so I got stuck in baking the cake with a winner's frame of mind.

"Preparation, preparation, preparation."  Chant this and all will be well, I told myself.  At the first attempt I made half the recipe in case it flopped in the middle, and was delighted instead with a fluffy and light chocolate gateaux fit for the Paul Hollywood Poke.  Have you noticed how he gets a finger and stabs it right in the centre of everything?  I always expect the poor buns to pop under his extreme inspection technique and prayed there would be none of this aggressiveness with our cakes.  And so the night before the judging I was armed with a schedule timed down to the last second and ingredients prepped and ready, I set to work after a long shift.

The longest job of any cake is greasing and lining the two cake tins and before you ask, yes I'd been out and bought new ones because my usual 20 year old Tala models with little or no Teflon left on them were not of the regulation size.  Job done, I mixed the cocoa power with boiling water into paste, lobbed it into the already prepared dry ingredients and turned on the mixer.  "Beat until light and creamy" it clearly states but after I'd added the eggs I sensed this wasn't quite the result Mary Berry had intended because it looked like slurry from one of the local farms.  On the plus side, it smelled like heaven.  So, into the oven and pacing like a new father in the maternity ward, I waited for the beast to start rising away from the bottom of the cake tin.  Except it didn't.  Twenty five minutes later both halves looked like large digestive biscuits.  And weeping tears of frustration I tried to get one out of the tin an hour later, it broke in half like the Great African Rift Valley and oozed all over the table.  There's only so much that chocolate cream icing will cover

Undefeated, I went back to Tesco at 11.00 pm and bought another stock of eggs and butter, and set the alarm.  Sleep?  I was so wired from the fumes of Green & Black's finest organic 70% that I'm sure I slept with my eyes open.  At 6.00 am, I was standing in the kitchen before my first mug of tea thinking,
"What the flock am I doing here?"  Winning.  That's what. So I started again, and this time made a delightfully even confection, jammed it up with Asda apricot conserve and made bacon sarnies for Alphonse while it cooled down.  Oh, we don't get treated to these every day as he's on statins but I felt really guilty of neglect somehow.  After all, the dreaded cakes had cost almost as much as the weekly shop if you take the petrol into account and I was in it for the glory.

I'd timed it to perfection for 8.30 am and the journey to work.  I'd even allowed for the school traffic and had battened down the cake with cling film to a silver wedding cake board.  Sadly, I hadn't allowed for the speed humps by the church and, braking just a little too sharply, I sensed the top half of the sponge slide effortlessly away from the jam and land in two pieces.  Make up your own swear words here, I did.  Life teaches us that Plan A is of no use if you haven't got a Plan B.  So I ran into the canteen, grabbed a palette knife and hoofed the two halves back together, jiggled with the topping and covered the whole lot in icing sugar because I'd brought it with me just in case.  Gorgeous it looked.  Good as new.  When I got upstairs and presented myself, why then did the chief judge look me in the eye and say,
"Have you been eating icing sugar again Raven?"
"What?"
"Your face is covered.  And you look like you've been rolling in ... well it's brown and sticky, so I'm guessing it's chocolate."
It's true.  As I placed my now priceless cake in a row with sixteen others and next to the one with the company logo stencilled in edible glitter, I looked like I'd been snorting cocaine after rolling in dog poo.

Anyway, some time passed while the judging team got stuck in and I have to admire their dedication.  Apparently, the four senior citizens resting in the corner later were volunteers from the Macmillan charity and deserve medals of their own for excess cake consumption.  When the results came out, I'd won a certificate and joint First Prize with one of the nurses, and Sandra had bagged the certificate for a plate of excellent scones. When I got home that night clutching my bottle of fizz and a wearing a huge grin, I asked Alphonse if he's like some cake with his pack up?
"Can I have fruit instead of cake?"
"No."
"Crisps then?  I've gone right off the smell of cake." Fair enough. I was feeling a bit bilious myself but my pride was at stake.
"Still NO!"  On closer inspection though, the cake I'd bought for charity had started to sweat and not in a ladylike manner so I softened my resolve.
"I'll buy you lunch tomorrow then.  Sushi maybe ... noodles.  Anything but cake."
I was too happy to care honestly, as I'd finally broken the jinx of a lifetime and won something, and I've been high for the last week although that may be the remains of the sugar rush.

Tip of the Blog:  On the day we'd raised over £700 for the Macmillan Nurses Coffee Morning, the one person who hadn't worked out the 'Bake Off' vibe was a visitor who stood at my desk asking a whole loads of irrelevant questions.  I'm guessing he was bored and wanted to escape his relative's room for some human/raven contact.  Eventually, he quipped,
"It's alright, you ladies can get back to your computer games now." He turned away unaware that he had awoken my inner Robert de Niro from Taxi Driver.
"Sorry. You talking to me???"  I'd had a particularly testy consultant standing over me for ten minutes previously and I was in no mood.
"Oh, I know what you girls are like the minute the boss's head's turned.  It's all Facebook and internet shopping."  We all froze as one and turned in his direction like The Stepford Nurses.
"Facebook? At Work? Are You NUTS??"  Still high on the Green & Blacks, Saab reached for a syringe and I had to be forcibly restrained from administering the Vulcan Death Grip.  Pass the Green & Blacks someone.

Raven