Category: General Musings

To be re-entered

First off, happy birthday Grandad. Sorry to hear that you haven’t been well. I got up early this morning hoping to chat with you and nana on Skype but mum texted and said you had been in hospital. Love to you all and hope you are feeling better soon in the meantime you are in my prayers everyday as always.

Woke up to another surprise this morning. I am not one for sleeping in. I wake up every morning whether weekday or weekend between 6.30 and 6.44am. That’s not a surprise just a bizarre body clock. I woke up to a silent street. Not so surprising seeing as it is the weekend. I then went back to sleep after trying to contact mum on Skype. A bit unusual for me as I never sleep in. It must have been because I am feeling a bit sick and it was so quiet this morning. Woke up again at 10am. Very eerie now because it was still silent outside. Decided to get up have a shower, have a cup of coffee. No milk. Stepped outside to cross the road to get some milk from the supermarket. Still no traffic! Very strange as it is usually full on with cars and buses. I look left and right and what do I see – police tape! Oops.

It would seem that there was a shooting last night outside the local pub where someone appears to have been killed. The forensic crime team is crawling around on all fours doing the whole “CSI” style photographing, numbering, scribbling in notepads etc. What is scarily surprising is that I don’t seem shocked. Steve asks me if I’m OK and I answer yes. What is wrong with us that someone could be shot near our home and the whole street doesn’t bat an eyelid but continues getting on with life moving around the tape. Is it that we are so desensitized to death that we no longer connect to it on a personal level? Is there so much evil that we see and hear about everyday we don’t react anymore to it? I am not too concerned about where we live as this could happen to anyone, anywhere. More concerned about the fact that everyone seems happy to continue on with their daily life as if nothing happened. Not sure what to think of it all. Bizarre.

Just a quick note to all that have been asking. The flooding has been taking place in the towns around Bristol but thankfully we have been spared. It is a very odd situation really as we have only been noticing the affect of the rain through cancelled public transport or events. The rain ceased yesterday for a glorious day of sunshine but alas, today, it started again. So in short, we are both fine if not a bit miffed by this continual rain during what is supposed to be “summer”. Meanwhile we are both using the heating, buying jackets and jumpers much to the surprise of our work colleagues!

Eventually the realisation sets in that your holiday must come to an end and you need to set forth and enter the working world. This was achieved on Monday. I joined a UK agency. They found me a job inside their own company. I won’t go into too many details about the job on the blog as it is a new service being set up within this particular style of industry (I’m handling the building of my department).
I will however comment on first impressions (from a week) of working in the British system. First and most important, 25 days of annual leave per year. Heck yes!!! Add on to this the bank holidays (we would call these public holidays).
The hours are a traditional 40 hour working week. In reality it is 45 hours (take into account the hour for lunch each day). Believe me this is a long day. We have been very spoilt in Australia working a 37.5 hour week. The day starts at 9am with an hour for lunch and finishes at 6pm. After 2 days of this I was incredibly brain dead!
The induction process and even OHS does not seem to rate highly in this company. I must say I am very proud of the systems we developed in my last job to induct our staff properly into work. On my first week working in England it was a matter of finding a pen, paper and all that you needed yourself which basically involved collecting items off the desks of people that were leaving.
I am not sure they have ever heard of ergonomics or that there are chairs out there with lumbar support! Ouch. Seriously I think we have been treated well in Australia.
Possibly it is early days here and it will improve. What ever happens I know my staff, as I recruit them, will benefit from the induction process that I am developing for them.
The people I work with are incredibly busy however are able to take a brief time out to have a bit of fun and conversation. I have been used to working in an open plan office but this is much larger with about 25 people in one room. It can get a bit noisy so thankfully I am quite capable of “tuning out”.
When I started looking for work it was an incredibly scary process. After having spent 10 years in one industry it was difficult trying to think outside of that box. However, I think this place has a great amount of potential both for myself and the industry it is in and I am excited about the new service being developed. As usual I am impatient to learn it all and understand the process so this has been a great challenge this week. We will see what week 2 holds for me. I will keep you up to date on the progress.

We were all g’d up this Saturday to catch the train to Cardiff, Wales. However the weather has been rather overcast and on occassion rainy. Into the 5th day of it now and I wish it would just crack it and pour down. So due to the forecasted weather conditions we suited up in thermals, wet weather jackets and walked into town to do another walking tour. By the time we got into the city we were very hot and the sun had come out. Wouldn’t you know it! So after having stripped off we fuelled up and set out. It think we probably did about 10 kilometres of walking. One of the areas that is really cool is the old Bristol Castle in Castle Park right next door to the shopping mall we frequent. Built in 1640 by the Normans it was later destroyed through an Act of Parliment. However you can see the remains of a keep that have been partially excavated. There is also a couple of old churches still standing. Again, I forgot to take photos of the church but Steve did capture the ominous looking weather rolling in. It never rained once while we were out!

Went into the city again today to sort a few business items out when we came across this old church. It was built in the 12th century and had been through a bombing blitz during the war. It has never been rebuilt since. The fasinating thing about it however is the leaning tower. Apparantly this is how it turned out after it had been built. It has never been straight. I think the builder might of had a few too many!

Just in the nick of time we found some shared house accommodation in east Bristol. Sharing with 4 others we have a nice big room at the front of the house that is furnished with a bed, wardrobe and couch. We then share the kitchen, lounge, bathroom etc. Pretty big place and thankfully we are on the ground floor so no stairs to climb, hooray! We are very thankful for finding somewhere that is quite close to the city, has great transport (bus and train) outside the house and seems to be a nice, quiet household. Thats what we like. The hubby has been sick with a cold the last week so we have been taking it easy. Went to see Pirates of the Carribean the other night. Was surprised that it was actually on par with Australia, cost wise I am referring to. The other great thing about the new place is that we have broadband included in the monthly rent along with water, gas and council taxes. They seem to love their taxes over here. Taxed for everything but the services seem to be very limited. For example the rubbish collection. Each house has a small wheelie bin which obviously is not big enough for the average home as there are always bags and bags of extra rubbish lying next to the bins. Apparantly the rubbish collectors don’t pick these up though if they are not in the wheelie bin. Go figure. Recycling seems to be a new thing over here and the councils are trying to push it big time. However, if you provide people with the correct tools i.e. proper sized collection buckets then you might be more successful! It would seem they could do something about packaging first and foremost in order to decrease the amount of waste they take off in the first place. We got a delicious Turkish meal the other day however it came in a styrofoam container, wrapped in butchers paper then placed in a plastic bag! What the…?

Well all. We are finally here. Actually we have been here for the last 3 days. Weather was great Friday, getting a bit colder by Saturday and now just plain cold and wet. Must say at this stage however we are fine with it. Ask us again in a months time.
So far we have walked around the centre of Bristol trying to get a feel for this place. So far, love it. Although we have only seen the city centre so far it has been friendly, good sized city without too much traffic, the cool trappings of living in a city with the benefits of the countryside close to the edges.
Went to a church service today at the stunning St Mary of Redcliffe. Incredible building and we were priviledged to attend the service on Whitsunday when they have a whole heap of pomp and ceremony. The Lord Mayor and council members all attend in their finery due to something or other that happened way back when ever. (You can tell that I clearly remember the reasoning behind it all 🙂 Anyway it was interesting to watch. Will post photos when I get around to downloading the camera. Have been a bit slack lately I think that is due to the fact that we have limited space here at the hostel. OK, so I’m making excuses!

While lately we have been busy moving here, there and everywhere, the old internet availability has been a bit sketchy. So to get up up to speed this has been our movements so far:
Saturday returned the rental car to Avignon after a high speed dash to get Kerryn (our mate from Australia) to the correct railway station. She was not away that there were 2 stations in Avignon and had chosen to get dropped off at the wrong one. With 20 minutes to get to the correct station it was breakneck speed and a few red lights to get there. We have recently discovered that apparently there are a number of red light cameras at many French lights. Darn!! Not sure if we could be expecting a number of tickets.
Next it was the train to Lille where our mate Axel picked us up thankfully in his dad’s car as the amount of luggage would have been an issue in his one. We had an incredible time in Lille with Axel taking us out to a fabulous dinner on Saturday night then an incredibly memorable day in Brugge (Belgium). Even though it rained later in the day it didn’t deter from the fact that the city is beautiful and the chocolate incredible. Thanks to Axel and his family for letting us stay and being such incredible hosts.
Monday morning was breakfast with the Vienne family and then we were off to the station to catch the Eurostar to London.
We are currently staying in Wembley Central – the outskirts of the outskirts and really enjoying it. Finally made it into London central today to do some “business” and spent the day walking around the city. Can’t believe that we are here! Had no idea where we were wandering to but ended up at many of the main highlights such as Piccadilly Circus, London Eye, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. Tomorrow will be a down day as we get our CV’s into order and apply for our national insurance number. Yes, tax to pay no matter where you go. Until next time….

The surrounding farmland has amazing cherry trees along with the usual vineyards, pine trees, birch etc. This morning as we were having crepes I thought a delicious cherry jam might be worthwhile trying. So here are the pictures from that experience. Not too bad if I may say so myself. The hardest part is ensuring you don’t squirt cherry juice all over the place while still ensuring you keep as much cherry pulp as possible!