Musings of a Muppet

Can’t believe I didn’t blog about Valentine’s Day last week!

We don’t go mad with it, but we like to make an effort. I got J a bit of a joke gift, and he got me a gorgeous bunch of flowers which are just now coming into full bloom!

My bouquet consisted of 2 white and 1 red rose, 2 different types of greenery and 4 lilies. The lilies are now coming out and are absolutely gorgeous and smell lovely.

On top of that I had a lovely bottle of Cava to myself as for some reason, J doesn’t like it!

I therefore declare our first Valentines Day as Mr and Mrs, a success!

I’ve been watching the 3 part thriller about a Jack the Ripper copycat – one of my favourite websites used to be crimelibrary.com before it got too commercial, as I find reading about the motivations of murderers fascinating. If I didn’t love the internet so much I would seriously consider a career as a criminal profiler!

Anyway, back to the point of this post! The ending of this was truly awful. The copycat murderer got away despite not killing the final victim, then he committed suicide. Kinda made me think the whole series was pointless. Everything built up to this final murder and the ending was a major let down.

I set up a Twitter account a few months ago but never really saw the point. As it seems to have hit the headlines with loads of celebs now “tweeting”, I thought I would give it another go.

Still not convinced that it’s a worthwhile use of my time, but I will give it a few months and see what I think then…

Just got back from a very pleasant evening with bosses and a few others! Dinner and a few glasses of wine and good company is always a nice idea!

In addition, today I received a request from the God that is Stephen Fry to follow my tweeting on Twitter – I genuinely feel so privileged!

Oh, and just to add to the unpredictable weather – now the floods have started to subside, it has snowed again – and it’s a couple of centimetres deep despite the wet ground everywhere. The A12 was slush and to be safe, we didn’t say in the outside lane because it felt so unsafe! God help us all tomorrow – ice will be everywhere!

FSA employs the very people that caused the problems in the financial sector

Thank god he’s gone – if the FSA employs people from the commercial sector it is asking for problems. This guy and many like him are the cause of the failure of the banks as they were not able to see past the short term gains and look at long term stability (much like the current government so I don’t know why they are moaning).

There is no doubt in my mind that this Sir James Crosby will have shares in HBOS and so has a conflict of interest.

The FSA is supposedly in existence to stop bad banking practice – if you were involved in that bad practice and did nothing to try and stop it when you worked within that culture, you are not going to try and stop it when you leave.

The FSA needs to be truly independent and clearly needs to employ old school bankers who always err on the side of caution – you will then get the correct mix of innovative ideas from the banks which are steadied by the caution of the FSA.

I know this and I’m not an economist or mathematician.

Oh, and no-one in the banks should get any bonuses regardless of where they are in the business. You only have your jobs because my money was used to bail your companies out. Are you going to do the same for me if I lose my job because of the unstable economy your bosses have created? Be grateful you have a job and income and stop whining. I won’t be getting the pay rise I am due let alone any bonuses.

LloydsTSB are paying one of the failed HBOS managers £60k a month on a consultancy basis – I suggest if you want a bonus you ask him for a slice of that pie.

If any banks give any of the bailout money to staff as bonuses for failure then either I will start looking for a job in a bank as it doesn’t seem to matter if you screw up – you still seem to expect a bonus – or I will be looking to take my business away from the banks who have been bailed out and will move to a local building society.

Bonuses should only be paid for excellent work. Unless you think that you deserve a bonus for ruining the economy so well, you should not be expecting one.

Blimey – I have never seen Essex as flooded as it was this morning!

Our normal route to work was blocked by flooding at the bottom of Boreham down by the campsite, so we decided to play it safe by going back on ourselves and go down the Maldon Road. On the way we passed miles of traffic queing to get on the A12 at Boreham – going home and waiting for the traffic to disappear was no longer an option! It would have taken us about an half an hour to get home! To put this queue into perspective, on a normal day it barely goes back to the start of Boreham – this queue went all the way back through Boreham all the way back to the start of Hatfield Peveral! That’s about 3 miles of traffic!

We got as far as a bridge at Langford over what is normally a gentle stream/small river – it is now a lake and covered the road too deeply for our lowered car to get through! That explained the overlong queue through Boreham all the way back to Hatfield Peveral!

We ended up going away from work up to Witham so we could get to Maldon the back way – the road to Wickham Bishops was flooded but we managed to get through and the rest of our journey was fine. However, the normal 20 minute journey turned into a 55 minute ordeal – but we still managed to be at work before some others!

Luckily I am not going to drama tonight – I dread to think what Blackmore is like!

In the midst of the worldwide doom and gloom at the moment, it’s nice to take some time out and find out I have been given a really good review for my part of Abdul el Bulbul in Aladdin!!

I’m not sure how old the NODA reviewer thought I was, but hey, it’s a really good review!

“The excellent Craig Stevens made a very evil Abanazar with his wonderful ability to work the audience. From the very onset they were booing and hissing him with abandon while he made the most of it. His henchmen, Abdul el Bulbul and Ming Farz were also were very good and with their comedic timing worked well together. Young Sandra Marriott shone for me and maybe future directors should think of giving her a chance as principal boy.”

So we have finally had some decent snow in the UK – yes the country ground to a halt but it’s years since we’ve had “proper” snow! And the fact that I can do my job from home means I don’t have to drive!!

Because I am a dedicated professional, I didn’t go out and build a snowman during the day – so I worked through my lunch then James and I went out and played in the snow at 5pm! I soooo love snow!

I am getting frustrated by the comparisons with the 60’s – the world has changed a lot and far more people do not work in the town in which they live. The roads can only be gritted, trains and buses can only run if the staff turn up. I do think we should cope better with the weather but the majority of problems would be solved by better driving from the public, and companies showing some understanding and allowing staff to work from home – we live in the digital age!

I personally think that a compulsory part of passing your driving test should be spending time on a skid pan and learning about how to control skids – this would certainly help with some of the weather we are now experiencing.