Mystery to me

‘And now you do what they told ya’ Rage Against the Machine – Killing in the name of

Having recovered from the weekend (no, there were no pixies or any other willing people to do my housework for me, so I had to do it all myself, but not before I’d slept for most of the afternoon!), I now find myself in a slightly strange position. I can’t quite believe that in five days I shall be at Heathrow waiting to board the plane.

We booked the flights last August and have been, or rather I have been, counting down ever since. And suddenly, as if from nowhere, it’s less than a week to go. Suddenly there are all these things that I have to get sorted: currency, rent payments whilst we are away, packing, making sure I have enough sunblock, etc, etc. Add to that the fact that I am popping down to London tomorrow and I can’t quite believe that I am going away.

Work finally pulled themselves together to book my hotel and train tickets on Friday. £163 to get the train to London and back, all because I can’t specify exactly which time train I shall be on. I don’t even have a guaranteed seat and they are shelling out that much. I am very glad it’s out of work’s pocket and not mine. Add that to the £99 for the room plus breakfast, dinner & 1/2 bottle of wine that I’m allowed tomorrow night and it seems to be costing them all rather a lot to send a temp down to a not important meeting in Staines for the day. But who am I to argue? It would have been better had they managed to book me into a hotel near a train station, but apparently there isn’t one in Waltham Abbey, so I have to call my team manager up and disrupt his evening by getting him to come and pick me up from the station and drop me at the hotel. But if they all think this is a great idea, well, I’m keeping schtum.

The meter readers I deal with on a day-to-day basis are having great fun playing the ‘let’s guess what she looks like from her voice’ game and keep trying to get me to play as well, but I’m refusing on the grounds that I’ll probably get it horribly wrong and insult them. No-one has managed to come close to guessing what I look like though, I think it will come as a shock to some of them. Mind you, I know I’m in for a few surprises meeting this lot. It’s kind of like meeting people from the net, only weirder. At least when I meet people from here, I know something about them, this time I am completely in the dark.

Until there is a next time…

xx